Spring time is the time LB music branches decide to take trips to other places in the country to compete with other schools and to get even closer with their fellow musicians.

Last month LB’s symphonic band took a trip to Indianapolis to perform at an exclusive national festival.

“There is a national festival that they hold,” sophomore Ava Lucero Carter said. “You have to be invited to it, or you have to audition for it. And they take the best high school and sometimes middle school bands and orchestras from America, and they all play in one concert. There are about 50 concerts that people could go to.”

The symphonic band auditioned to participate in the festival.

The band students did not just play the whole time they were on the trip. There were many other events that were planned for the students to participate in.

“I thought it was fun. I wasn’t expecting it to be that fun because they had a bunch activities already pre-organized for us,” Lucero Carter said. “But it was fun because it was just the symphonic band so you got to hang out with all of your close friends while you were there.”

Compared to the LB auditorium, there were aspects of playing at the festival that were not the same as playing a concert in the Little Theatre.

“It was different because it was much bigger auditorium than what we were used to because the one here is obviously a lot smaller and the sound doesn’t resonate as well,” Lucero Carter said.

Among playing at concerts and having the chance to hang out with friends, band students also were given the opportunity to learn.

“We listened to music professionals, and they gave some lectures,” Lucero Carter said. “We saw a lot of concerts, and we saw about 40 high school students from all across the nation …We saw a lot of other schools play. We even saw a school from Hawaii play.”

The symphonic band practiced the pieces for the concert a lot before attending the festival.

“We’ve been preparing [the pieces] for a couple months, and then we played them at the concert so we didn’t play that much,” Lucero Carter said.
From April 8-12, all students in the choral program who choose to go visited Chicago.

“We are going to Chicago to be judged on our assessment music by different judges and compete against other choirs,” sophomore Emma Davis said.

Along with the assessments, choral students will also be given the opportunity to do some sightseeing.

“We are going to the zoo, aquarium, seeing Blue Man Group, shopping and eating at some tourist restaurants,” Davis said.

This is the first time that chorus will be going to Chicago. This trip will not only include choral assessments, but also time for the choral students to bond with one another.

“I am most excited to become closer with my friends and getting to do all the different activities in Chicago,” Davis said.

From April 23-25, all of LB’s high school orchestras will be traveling to New York.

“We are going there for a music clinic with a conductor from Broadway and to perform,” sophomore Jenna Lee said. “Aside from the playing, we have shopping, touring the Rockefeller building and watching a Broadway show.”