Hicksville High Orchestra wins NY State Gold! [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Geoffcin
05-25-2005, 03:26 PM
My daughters graduating in June, and her last concert was last night. They put on truly sublime performance too. It ended with 5 minutes of standing ovation, tears, and many of the graduating Seniors leaving with music scholarships. That's what a good music program can do. Support your local schools music program!

kexodusc
05-25-2005, 03:40 PM
Congrats on your daughter's big achievement.
Couldn't agree more...it seems today with budget cutbacks, rising costs, etc, that the maths and science are heavily beating out the arts. This would explain why there's so many narrow minded people out there in the world today. For the 1/200 people that decide to become scientists or engineers, that's great, but I don't see how differential equations, mitosis, etc are going to be of much value to anyone else. Hell I don't even remember all that stuff.
I was fortunate enough to have good music programs and had a scholarship myself (majored in chemistry though, then did the MBA, go figure).
There's a lot of valuable lessons learned from classes like theater, music, and phys ed.

MindGoneHaywire
05-25-2005, 03:42 PM
Does NYSSMA still exist?

Geoffcin
05-25-2005, 03:45 PM
Congrats on your daughter's big achievement.
Couldn't agree more...it seems today with budget cutbacks, rising costs, etc, that the maths and science are heavily beating out the arts. This would explain why there's so many narrow minded people out there in the world today. For the 1/200 people that decide to become scientists or engineers, that's great, but I don't see how differential equations, mitosis, etc are going to be of much value to anyone else. Hell I don't even remember all that stuff.
I was fortunate enough to have good music programs and had a scholarship myself (majored in chemistry though, then did the MBA, go figure).
There's a lot of valuable lessons learned from classes like theater, music, and phys ed.
Wait till she sees here present! Just to make my other daughter not get too jealous I got her one of the new Fender G-DECs. Have you ever seen this thing?

Geoffcin
05-25-2005, 03:57 PM
Does NYSSMA still exist?

Actually they won "Gold with distiction" The very highest honor avialable. My younger one in the middle school won a Silver.

MindGoneHaywire
05-25-2005, 04:18 PM
No--NYSSMA, the New York State School Music Association. I would've looked it up but I thought you might know. It's not a band competition, or at least it didn't use to be. It was an assessment of individual performance, in a classroom with a judge who graded each instrumentalist. I only went once, I think the high school was in the Five Towns. I was talking about it with a friend recently & we were wondering if it was still in existence. I could see it being eliminated at some point in the past couple of decades by budget cuts or something.

ForeverAutumn
05-25-2005, 05:13 PM
My daughters graduating in June, and her last concert was last night. They put on truly sublime performance too. It ended with 5 minutes of standing ovation, tears, and many of the graduating Seniors leaving with music scholarships. That's what a good music program can do. Support your local schools music program!

Here's the pity click that I promised you! ;)

Seriously, congratulations Geoffcin. Lucky for your daughter that she's in a school with a good music program. That's become hard to come by around here. Too many budget cuts have cost some of our schools their music programs. In fact, there's a commercial that's sometimes shown in the movie theatres here, asking people to support music programs in our schools. It's a very sad state of affairs.

On the other hand, we live in a townhouse with thin walls and our next door neighbour has three kids taking music in school. Do you have any idea what it's like to hear a brand new clarinet player rehearse through the walls? Then the second year sax player joins in. And this is at 8:00 on a Saturday morning!!! They're lucky that I do support the music program. I've never once complained about the noise. Although we did have a little discussion about what time of day would be appropriate for practice. :)

Geoffcin
05-25-2005, 05:52 PM
No--NYSSMA, the New York State School Music Association. I would've looked it up but I thought you might know. It's not a band competition, or at least it didn't use to be. It was an assessment of individual performance, in a classroom with a judge who graded each instrumentalist. I only went once, I think the high school was in the Five Towns. I was talking about it with a friend recently & we were wondering if it was still in existence. I could see it being eliminated at some point in the past couple of decades by budget cuts or something.

And they didn't win against anyone, the were given the highest award that NYSSMA gives out.

Geoffcin
05-25-2005, 05:57 PM
Here's the pity click that I promised you! ;)

Seriously, congratulations Geoffcin. Lucky for your daughter that she's in a school with a good music program. That's become hard to come by around here. Too many budget cuts have cost some of our schools their music programs. In fact, there's a commercial that's sometimes shown in the movie theatres here, asking people to support music programs in our schools. It's a very sad state of affairs.

On the other hand, we live in a townhouse with thin walls and our next door neighbour has three kids taking music in school. Do you have any idea what it's like to hear a brand new clarinet player rehearse through the walls? Then the second year sax player joins in. And this is at 8:00 on a Saturday morning!!! They're lucky that I do support the music program. I've never once complained about the noise. Although we did have a little discussion about what time of day would be appropriate for practice. :)

In Hicksville every child takes music, and everyone plays an instrument. Even if they never go on to make it a career, it makes a big difference in the ability to appriciate music their whole life.

Dusty Chalk
05-25-2005, 07:48 PM
Hey, that's great. I always love to hear stories like that -- ones that show the true power of music. Moving.