High school students visit USU for annual symposium

Top high school music students from Utah, Idaho and Nevada will perform in a free concert at the Kent Concert Hall in the Chase Fine Arts Center at Utah State University on Saturday at 3 p.m.

The concert is part of the two-day Eighth-Annual Tri-State High School Band Symposium, which started on Friday morning.

According to Sarah Keene, a student organizer for the event, high school band directors nominated top students. The nominations were sent to Thomas Rohrer, the director of bands at USU, and he accepted enough students to make two different bands: the Wind Ensemble, which is made up of the top 50 students, and the Symphony Band, which is comprised of the rest.

Keene said the students arrived between 9 and 10 a.m., auditioned until noon and were placed into one of the bands by 1 p.m.

Keene said on Friday they had a rehearsal, a break and another rehearsal. On Saturday morning they will have one more rehearsal before they perform.

According to Keene, this event is effective at recruiting music students to USU.

“It’s the biggest recruiter that our band department currently has,” Keene said. “There are plenty of students right now that are at USU who only came here because they participated as high school students in this honor band system.”

Omar Ordóñez, a USU student who attended the symposium three times when he was in high school, said because the students were nominated by their teachers, the experience is different than what they are used to.

“Not only are you around students who tend to be more committed than would be in the regular programs, but you’re also in ensembles that have better instrumentation,” Ordóñez said. “And they’re fuller because in some schools, the students will select which instrument they want to play, and sometimes you don’t have certain instruments or you have way too many of one kind of instrument.”

According to Rohrer, USU students will perform for the high school students in a concert on Friday at 8 p.m.

Rohrer said though the concert is designed for the students attending the symposium, it will be open to the public.

Rohrer said the purpose of the concert on Friday is for high school students to hear higher-level players perform.

“We always want them to hear what the goal is,” Rohrer said.