The percussion ensemble earned a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform at the Midwest International Clinic and Conference in Chicago. The performance took place at McCormick Place on Dec. 22.

To perform at Midwest, a school must submit a recording (about a year early) of a certain group playing (percussion ensemble, jazz band, orchestra, etc.) and judges listen to the submission.If they like it, then they keep listening and if they don’t like it, they move on to the next submission. Getting the results take a while because there are so many groups who submit recordings. Between 10-30 percussion ensembles submitted recordings and only two got selected. For us, this is important because out of all of the percussion ensembles that submitted recordings, we got selected. This is a big deal because our percussion group is recognized as one of the best in the nation.

To me, it means a lot to perform at Midwest. It means that our percussion ensemble is one of the best ensembles in the nation. This is my second time going to Midwest since I went in eighth grade and I’m very blessed to go twice. It’s an honor that should be not be taken for granted.

I learned that you need to put in a lot of work for this performance. Our performance at Midwest was about 45-50 minutes and we wanted it to be amazing because we were performing in front of a huge audience. We performed 9 different percussion ensemble pieces. We practiced Monday and Tuesday of every week after BOA Austin during marching season and Tuesday-Friday after school after marching season until the week of the performance. Our director, Mr. Hobbs, was strict and picky with every piece but it all paid off in the end.

For the future, it shows that we are capable of going to an event like this. Whether we submit a recording of a full band, percussion ensemble or jazz band, we have the capability of being selected because of how successful and how good the group is.