Local high school, middle school students honored at music festival

PALMER — Each year, the Mat-Su Borough School District gathers the best musicians for the High School and Middle School Honor Festival. These students, from 14 different schools across the district, audition for a spot in a middle school band and choir and a high school band and choir.

Friday evening, around 700 folks were in the audience, and around 200 students all crowded into the Colony High gym for this gala. No one was disappointed in the performance.

Matt Swalling, Palmer Junior Middle School music director, was this year’s coordinator. He said the event was going strong when he came to the district 14 years ago and has grown each year. It now has outside conductors for each group, exposing the kids and challenging them to work to a higher standard. The expectation is that the middle-school aged children will work at a high school level, and the high-schoolers will see what college level work is like.

This year’s guest conductors, Liesl Wietgrefe, who led the middle school band, Andrea Lang, who led the middle school choir, Rick Good, who led the high school band, and Stephen Shrimplin, who led the high school choir, provided that next level of instruction and inspiration.

Swalling praised the district and Superintendent Deena Paramo for the continued and expanding support of this educational challenge and reward. He said he was hoping that this event will garner private and corporate partnership to allow further expansion, especially in this time of difficult budgets. The exposure for partners would be boroughwide, he told the audience of more than 700.

Swalling also emphasized the extra effort the kids and parents had to provide, noting that students had to come to school early for practice and devote hours of work above the usual school day.