Thank you to the Chugiak-Eagle River community for your support of the Mirror Lake Middle School Music Department and our recent trip to Boston to compete in the National Heritage Music Festival.
Your support allowed 73 students, 25 chaperones, and seven staff and administrators experience a trip of a lifetime.
While in Boston we studied American Revolution history at the Freedom Trail, U.S.S. Constitution and the monument at Bunker Hill. The musical experience given to these students of orchestra, jazz, and concert bands included a tour of Boston Symphony Hall, a clinic led by Boston Symphony members and attendance at a Blue Man Group and Boston Symphony concerts.
Our students were complimented the entire trip by bus drivers, restaurant and hotel employees, and music festival organizers for being good citizens and representatives of Alaska, Chugiak and their school.
The students' performances at the Heritage Music Festival were outstanding in every sense of the word. At the awards ceremony in the ballroom with 750-plus students and chaperones present, the following awards were announced:
Jazz Band - Gold Award
Concert Band - Gold Award
Orchestra - Silver Award
Concert Band - Certificate of Excellence and invitation to perform in a National Festival of Gold. (This is an exclusive invitation given to the top bands at each city festival to join the “best of the best” in an exclusive festival.)
Best Overall Instrumental Program - MLMS beat all high schools in attendance.
Mirror Lake Middle School Music program has another first. Heritage Festivals announced that this is the first time in their history to award the following: Maestro awards are given to individual students for their outstanding musicianship, selected by the adjudicators. The Heritage director explained that this year there were five awards, and four were going to the same school.
They announced the winner from a New York high school, and then announced, one by one, the entire French horn section of concert band: Jonathan Cannamore, Travis Craig, Kristen Stearns and Isaac Lammers.
The entire ballroom was stunned, including our own students. It was a moment that was captured on video but surely won't share all the emotions of the moment.
To all our friends in the community, the students, parents and staff, thank you for all your support in making this trip possible.
Ñ Barry Schimmack
Parent Committee Chair
Mirror Lake Middle School Music Department
