American Fork Junior High School's wind ensemble has been selected to perform for a national convention in Salt Lake City next week.
The Salt Lake Symphonic Winds will also perform, along with the University of Utah Singers, the Timpview High School Jazz Ensemble, the University of Utah Saxophone Quartet, and the Utah All-State Jazz Ensemble.
The Music Educators National Conference will be held in the Salt Palace Wednesday through Sunday (for information go online to www.menc.org).
"To represent our district is one thing," said American Fork Junior High School band director Jermie Arnold. "To represent the state, obviously, is another thing. And then to represent all of the junior high school band programs in the nation, that's a different thing. And that's the position that we're in.
"We're just thrilled to death and greatly honored to put on the best performance that we can."
The Salt Lake Symphonic Winds, directed by Thomas Rohrer, is the only community group that will be represented. "It's a very small number of groups that get selected from whatever category to play," Rohrer said, "so it's pretty prestigious to get to play."
The MENC is the national professional organization for music educators, Rohrer said. The national conference is biennial.
"They're the largest music organization in the world," Arnold added. "Along with that, they also invite the best performing groups in the nation to serve as standard-bearers."
The selection process begins with a blind audition. Groups from around the country send in recordings of performances that have been screened at the state level. After a preliminary national screening, adjudicators take a look at the groups' locale to try to get some equal representation in their selections.
"I'm told there were hundreds of junior high bands that were applying to perform here," said Arnold. "Somehow, they decided just on us. It's amazing."
Arnold said one other middle-school jazz ensemble will be performing, but the jazz category is different from the regular symphonic band program found at most junior high schools.
Rohrer said it's also unusual for the conference to be held in the western part of the United States. "It's not very common out West here, so it's kind of a nice thing for Salt Lake to have this conference, and be able to host it, and have music educators from all over the country come here."
Rohrer said his band will play music for concert band. "We play a variety of music from time-tested standards to contemporary, more recently written pieces."
Arnold's band will perform several pieces, including "Candide Suite," an arrangement of music from Bernstein's opera, which lasts 15 minutes. "Getting junior high school students to focus for five minutes is difficult. So getting them to play 15 minutes straight on that one piece, let alone two others, is a challenge, and they're doing a fine job of it."
As an additional challenge, Arnold said the band that performed for the audition CD was comprised composed of 80 percent ninth-graders, who are now at high school. So the majority of the current band is made up of eighth-graders — playing music rated for a good high school band. "We had extra rehearsals set by the school.
"Their hearts and souls are into this and they've sacrificed quite a bit to make it happen. They're just incredible. I just couldn't ask them to work any harder."
E-mail: rcline@desnews.com