On April 19-20, Olathe West’s musical arts all earned “1” ratings at the KSHSAA Large Group Festival. The competition involved high school bands, choirs and orchestras and musical arts across the state of Kansas to perform for judges. Each of the participating performing arts, which includes symphonic band, concert orchestra, chamber orchestra, treble choir and chorale choir, earned the top rating.

Each performance is graded into ratings 1-5, with “1” being the best rating for an outstanding performance. The individual judges develop their own ratings first, and the final score for a group is the average between them. 

“A 1-rating means a flawless performance–no mistakes,” orchestra director JJ Wallace said.

For most stringed instruments at West, the concert orchestra is the standard class while the chamber orchestra is the advanced. The contest marks the first time that the school’s concert and chamber orchestra both received “1” ratings.

“It’s not a thing where the concert orchestra is judged easier because it’s a second group,” Wallace said. “Everyone is judged on the same level.” 

Both orchestras performed two pieces for the judges in the auditorium at Olathe Northwest. Concert had only 

“I really liked the sixteenth-note portion of ‘Winter Solstice’,” junior cello player Dominic Hull said. “Just because it was very difficult to do and it helped all of us grow as instrumentalists.”

Hull participated in both concert and orchestra and the chorale choir. The choirs performed at Olathe North on the same day, with a select treble choir performing two songs and the full chorale performing three. The treble choir performed first, with the tenor and bass singers joining their group after to make up the chorale. 

“We sang a song called ‘The Pastor’,” junior tenor singer Evan McCoy said. “And at the end, the girls and the guys sing together and we strike this one chord towards the very end that’s just amazing.”

Choir poses some unique challenges from the band and orchestra, as the singers have to memorize the lyrics, some of which is written in other languages. The chorale choir performed “Bogorodìtse Dēvo, Raduisya” (Virgin Mary, rejoice) in Russian.

“I don’t know what it’s about,” junior alto singer Megan Ullrich said. “The translations at the bottom are just in Russian language.”

The state contest also had a symphonic band performance at Olathe South. The symphonic band performs as the marching band from the summer to the end of first quarter, but transitions to an indoor, seated group for the rest of the year. The band worked on a multitude of pieces before deciding on the ones to be judged.

“We had narrowed it down to four pieces, and then as we got closer to the KSHSAA festival, we narrowed it down to two,” band director Carol Lowman said. Each part of the judging process focuses on the detail of the performance. Spending a lot of time working to make a part as good as possible is the goal of the festival.

“This is definitely the performance of the year that we’ve spent the most time and most detail-oriented work on,” Lowman said. “We should sound our best.”

While results might be exciting, the contest only evaluates part of what every musical group has worked on throughout the year.

“They got just a quick snapshot,” Lowman said. “A very summative assessment of what we’ve learned over the years.”