Each March, bands from elementary, middle, and high schools participate in this festival.  Each band prepares two to three pieces, with the option of sight-reading, and is adjudicated by professional musicians to receive a rating.  Bands do not compete against each other in this festival.

What is District XI Band Festival?

Virginia Music Educators Association (VMEA) and Virginia Band and Orchestra Directors Association (VBODA) Band Festival provide the incentive for the development of musical understanding, skills, and taste through performances which aimed at exhibiting each group at its most mature level of performance.  The festival affords both students and directors with an opportunity to hear performances by other groups of their peers.  They stimulate constant growth, and they provide constructive criticism from objective adjudicators. 

Each director will select and prepare two compositions from the VBODA selective music list.  In order to adjust to the acoustical properties of the auditorium, temperature, pitch levels, etc., each group will precede their concert selections with a “warm-up” march.  In addition to the prepared concert selections, participating bands will be required to “sight-read” a newly published selection which is graded approximately two levels below their selected grade of concert music. 

A composite “final rating” will be given, which is the average of the ratings given on the warm-up selection, the two concert selections, and the sight-reading performance.  The categories are: Rating I – Superior Performance (equivalent to a letter grade “A”), Rating II – Excellent, Rating III – Good, Rating IV – Fair, Rating V – Poor.  Four adjudicators are used for this event, three for the concert performance, and one for the sight-reading.  The adjudicators give written and tape-recorded feedback to the bands. 

Festival is the event by which the quality of our band program is measured according to National and Local standards.  Festival results are published in local newspapers and the VMEA magazine.  The event is not a competition.  Bands are critiqued according to tone quality (beauty, blend, control), intonation (chords, melodic line, tutti), technique (articulation, facility, precision, rhythm), balance (ensemble, sectional), interpretation (expression, phrasing, style, tempo), musical effect (artistry, fluency), and other factors (choice of music, instrumentation, discipline, appearance).  Bands prepare diligently throughout the year for this event. 

The state of Virginia is divided up into “districts” according to Music Educators National Conference (MENC), the organization that sponsors local, regional, state, and national events for its members.  Stone Middle School is a member of Virginia District XI along with Robinson Secondary, Lake Braddock Secondary, Irving MS, Frost MS, Lanier MS, and Liberty MS.

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Revised 26 May 2007

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