By: Don Meador
The Allen County-Scottsville High School band earned a Distinguished Rating Thursday at the Kentucky Music Educators Association assessments at Western Kentucky University. The accomplishment reflects months of hard work put forth by the Patriot band memes.
“Three judges each gave the students a distinguished rating today, the highest score an ensemble can achieve,” noted Director of Bands Tyler Cook. “Our sight reading score was also a distinguished rating, the highest score an ensemble can achieve. That gave us an overall score as a Distinguished Rating. We band directors’ call this ‘straight ones’ which is the highest score possible by any ensemble in the state.”
The high rating comes after performing a very difficult music selection.
“Each year it is the director's job to classify the group based on the level/difficulty of the music chosen to perform,” explained Cook. “This year we classified in Grade 5 (there are six total), which is the second hardest classification in performance in Kentucky. Our song, Variations on a Korean Folk Song, is a legend of a musical selection. It is seriously in the top five standard literature for wind bands in the United States. I played it in high school, I played it in college, and it is just a treasure of a piece. I challenged them this year with this piece of music and their efforts paid off very well.”
Months of practice have gone into perfecting the song---practice at school and practice at the individual level. The work was needed given the overall skill level of the selection. According to Cook, the music selected was the highest difficulty selection in over a decade and a half.
“The last time the ACS band played grade 5 music by my research has to have been over 15 years ago but I do not have concert program for a couple of years but I think I am close” Cook noted.
The AC-S band will now turn their attention to their spring concert in April. For the second consecutive year, the Patriot band will present their spring concert at SKyPAC (Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center) in downtown Bowling Green. The free concert is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 29. The concert at SKyPAC is made possible through support from Houchens Industries, SKyPAC and Curtains Up. In addition to working on their concert music, band members will soon start prep work for the marching band season.