Baker will host nearly 2,000 high school students participating in the Kansas State High School Activities Association Saturday for the regional solo and small ensemble festival.
Music department chair John Buehler said each school brings its student soloists and ensembles to perform and be judged.
“This is where they qualify to go on to state,” Buehler said. “If they don’t get a No. 1 at this one, they won’t go to the next one.”
Freshman Kristina Krupp received a No. 1 ranking for playing a cello solo when she was a junior in high school. She said the competition is nerve-racking.
“For me, the first notes are always the most important,” Krupp said. “If you start out bad, it usually goes down from there, but if you start off good, it gives you confidence.”
Freshman Kyle Britton said that he has taken solos and ensembles to festival each year since junior high. He played alto saxophone and sang, and he received either No. 1 or 2 ratings each time.
Buehler said that both vocalists and instrumentalists participate in the festival.
“Vocal soloists prepare two songs by memory,” Buehler said. “Although there’s no required literature, these are mostly classical.”
Britton said that he usually had a lot of trouble with memorization. He said he would finish memorizing toward the last moments possible and said that he never really felt prepared enough.
? “One time, I sang a song with the third verse first, the first verse second and the second verse last,” Britton said. “It was scary because I was fighting to remember what I had already done and what I had yet to do.”
Buehler said that students playing string instruments also have to memorize their pieces, while the rest are allowed to use music. Performers are allotted seven minutes to perform their music.
Buehler said this is important to the performers because it gives them a chance to show off their training and receive an outside evaluation of their work.
“I guess most of these students have been preparing since the first of the year, about four months, on these pieces,” Buehler said. “Most of the students who are here, I think, take music lessons.”
Krupp said that she started practicing about four hours each week for about a month and a half before the competition. She also took private lessons each week for an hour.
“Because I’ve been playing cello for so long, it was nice to hear the judges say ‘nice job,'” Krupp said.
Buehler said 15 music teachers or retired music teachers from across the state will participate as judges in the event.
“They have to be selected by the activities association,” Buehler said. “These people are all people with long histories in music, both in solos and teaching them.”
Krupp said having the judges there made it a little distracting to play because she was busy thinking about what they were writing down.