All County band, orchestra, chorus after year at home; Students shine through challenges

Evan Kuzemchak, Features editor

     18 students from North Harford were chosen, including Victoria Allman, Maggie Layman (All County orchestra),  Kaitlyn Calland, Waverly Iriarte, Corbin Peacock  (All County band), Jonathan Roth (All County Jazz Band),  and Lilian Arnold, Mickayla Friedel, Kalyna Lloyd, Lauren Richardson, Allyson Shalenko, Lexi Wood, Isabella Matson, Ethan Jourdan, Patrick Barker, Emily Cassidy, Stephanie Erisman(All County Chorus) Richardson and Lloyd also made All State Chorus.

     Junior Maggie Layman, said she found out about the audition through her teachers.

    Layman said, “it was pretty neat because it’s kind of a big deal as far as orchestra and music goes, so [it was] really exciting.” Layman has been working on “getting into extracurricular orchestra things” and getting into All County is “one of the main reasons for all [her] practice.”

      Layman has been playing since 2nd grade and plans to “look for more extracurricular orchestra stuff and continue to keep practicing,” so she can keep up with her music. Layman thinks this opportunity will “be a lot of fun.”and ends saying “it’s cool to get together with a lot of other people that are interested as much in music as you are.”

    To be selected for All County, student musicians have a rigorous audition.  “The biggest change was that the auditions were done virtually as opposed to in person,” says Director of Instrumental Music, Mr. Wojciechowski. He added that normally there is “one night where everybody comes into an in-person audition, but due to the pandemic and distancing guidelines and things like that we decided to do virtual auditions.” 

      The auditions consist of students “submitting a video of what their audition material was.” Wojciechowski says because the auditions were video based he “ended up tweaking some of the audition requirements, and not asking to do certain things,” that were harder to do virtually 

     Despite the virtual auditions “the plan is to still do in-person rehearsals and in person performances,” as well as having the guest conductor.

       All County is led by the fine arts supervisor, Jeffrey Winfield. Winfield is in charge of organizing the dates, finding out what high school is going to host, and “reaching out to college professors and professional musicians to secure the guest conductor when it comes to the auditions in the scoring.”

      Wojciechowski and choir teacher Ms. Kaitlyn Hemmling “judge different rooms depending on [their] area of expertise.”  After judging the rehearsals are “run by the guest conductor, they are the one that leads the rehearsals” and pick the featured songs. 

     Wojciechowski thinks that North Harford is “represented pretty well based on the challenges that everybody went through last year.” He adds that “having band and chorus virtually took a lot of work.” He says this is because the band wasn’t together as a group as they are used to being. Still Wojciechowski thinks the students did “a really good job as far as our school being represented” and he thinks “the county as a whole did really well.”

     Hemling agrees and  thinks “a student’s individual initiative to commit and then all the sudden they’re singing or playing solo and it’s really vulnerable and scary.” Hemling says for them to “have so many students willing to do that after a year of being by themselves speaks for their love for it.”

            On the state-wide level, the process is similar but instead of the county it is the state. For the All State concert Hemling is still “waiting to see what it’s going to be.” Hemling thinks that the supervisors are leaning towards virtual master classes for those selected at the All State level, where they still have a guest conductor come in.