Celebrating success at the All-State Festival

By John C.

The Iowa All-State Festival was on November 18, 2023. Musicians from all over the state traveled to Iowa State University in Ames to perform in the orchestra, chorus, or band. Among them were several students from Roland-Story. These students include Jenna Birkland, Jaina Brunscheon, John Craig, Luccas Hart, William Licht, Heston McIlrath, Lucy Schmidt, Mason Schnurstein, Casey Spainhower, and Jori Witthuhn. Getting accepted into the festival is a long process that takes a lot of time and effort.

The ten students who performed at the All-State Festival had to overcome a lot of hurdles to get accepted into the festival. The conductor for the Iowa All-State Festival picks out six songs that will be performed at the festival. In late July, these pieces of music as well as the annual pieces, “America the Beautiful” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” are given to the students auditioning all over the state of Iowa.

Around this time, Roland-Story students had the opportunity to go to a workshop at Wartburg College to learn the new music. Once the school year starts, the musicians at Roland-Story practice this music every day, and three of these songs were practiced and performed by the Roland-Story Mixed Chorus at the fall concert. The other five songs were practiced individually, with Mr. Stalzer, or with their quartets either before or after school. As audition day approaches, the students went to mini-camps as well as performing mock auditions in front of the school choir in preparation for the auditions.

On audition day, the Norsemen headed to Indianola for a chance to get accepted into the All-State Festival. Indianola is one of six regions in the state of Iowa that hosts the auditions. The other five audition sites are Atlantic, Hampton-Dumont-CAL, Independence, Le Mars, and Washington. During their audition, a student will sing with three fellow classmates in front of a judge. This judge will decide which people in the quartet should make it in or not. In the middle of day, recalls are sent out. Recalls are when judges want to hear a student sing again individually before they decide if they should accept them into All-State or not.

Once recalls are finished, the final results come out on who got in or not. Out of the 18 people that auditioned for the Iowa All-State Chorus at Roland-Story, ten people got accepted. Roland-Story is the only 2A school in the state that had ten or more students accepted into the All-State Chorus. After being in Indianola for about 12 hours, everyone was ready to go home.

A few weeks after auditions is the Iowa All-State Music Festival. The Roland-Story students spent two days practicing their eight chorus songs with their conductor, Ryan Beeken, who grew up in Iowa and is the choir director for Witchita State University. He was chosen to be the director for the 2023 Iowa All-State Chorus because of his work at colleges from around the country. The Roland-Story students, along with 600 other kids, had the opportunity to talk with other students from around the state as well as meet the composers of the music, such as Elaine Hagenberg and Kyle Pederson.

At the end of those two days was the performance. Over 1,000 Iowa high school students performed at the festival in Hilton Coliessuem in front of family and friends. After the performance, the Roland-Story musicians took pictures with each other, Mr. Stalzer, and their families. These students’ hard work they put in since July was finally paid off with their performance at the Iowa All-State Music Festival.

You can watch the full 2023 Iowa All-State Music Festival online: 2023 All-State Music Festival

Location: Ames, IA 50011, USA

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