Burney-Harris Lyons Middle School eighth-graders Detainee Moses (left) and Jazqueline Hernandez (right) practice their instruments in the Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School band room on Feb 7. Moses and Hernandez are preparing for the eighth-grade band’s upcoming Large Group Performance Evaluation on Feb 26. in the Clarke Central High School Mell Auditorium. “We will be playing in front of three judges and after we play our three pieces (of music), we will be doing sight reading which is a challenge because we have to look through a (separate) piece of music we’ve never seen before and try to play it,” Hernandez said. Photo by Colin Frick
The Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School seventh and eighth-grade bands will be performing in the annual Large Group Performance Evaluations at Clarke Central High School on Feb. 26.
The Large Group Performance Evaluation is an annual assessment for bands, orchestras and choirs across the state of Georgia spearheaded by the Georgia Music Educators Association. BHL Band Director Amanda Irby has been preparing her students for the assessment for weeks.
“It’s kind of like the Georgia Milestones but for band, and it’s a big statewide assessment to really see how much our students have retained and learned (over the course of the year) and (identify) improvements that we can make for the coming years,” Irby said.
Leading up to LGPE, the bands will be perfecting their songs in class with the hopes of achieving a superior rating from the judges that will be grading their performance.
“In the past weeks, we’ve been working on certain sections of the music and trying to make sure everyone plays the right notes, rhythms and articulation, things like that so we can get a superior at LGPE,” BHL eight-grade band student Detaizae Moses said.
Jaqueline Hernandez is an eighth-grader at BHL and believes that LGPE will be more difficult now than it was as a seventh-grader taking band.
“Seventh graders play the second part or the easier version of the song, but in the eighth grade, we have to play the first version of the song which is the more difficult version with the more difficult rhythms articulations and much higher notes which are harder to play,” Hernandez said.
Irby believes that by playing more difficult music and performing at Clarke Central High School, she is preparing her students to make the transition from middle school to high school band.
“My middle school band directors were always referencing high school, and we’re always trying to emphasize that because we want we want students to show a commitment to something,” Irby said. “Commitment in any activity across the fine arts that looks good on a college transcript.”
