A student at Salida High School has been accepted into the prestigious Colorado All-State Band, showcasing their exceptional musical talent and dedication. These outstanding students, including one of our own, Caleb Vold, have worked tirelessly to earn this incredible opportunity. Their acceptance into the All-State Band is a testament to their hard work, skill, and passion for music. The Salida High School community is incredibly proud of their achievement and looks forward to seeing them perform at the highly anticipated All-State Band performance.
The 73rd annual All-State Band performance will be held on April 3rd-5th at Union Colony Civic Center in Greely, CO. The concert will be on the last day, a Saturday, April 5th. Those who participate work with other students from all over the state to make music. Students from all around the state get accepted to go to All-State Band and collaborate to make it a huge performance that is truly a special sight to see.
Getting into the All-State Band is very competitive and extremely challenging. Vold was one of only seven percussionists across the state who was chosen for this honor. The music for the performance gets released months before the event to everyone who wants to participate in the performance. Every student then practices the music and makes their audition to send into the All-State judges. The judges then decide how well each applicant plays the music in order to select the students who will participate in the performance.
The judges need a lot of time to decide on who will get in so it takes a while for them to decide the final students. Students also don’t know if they actually got in for good on the first audition. There are re-auditions after the first auditions to make sure that the students are practicing and are going to take the performance seriously. If the student is not practicing, they can easily be replaced in the performance. So it is best that students who are practicing for All-State are practicing well.
When Vold got selected to go, he explained that it had been a boring week. However, throughout the week he was looking forward to getting his results back. Vold says he felt, “very overwhelmingly excited,” when he had heard that he got accepted into the All-State Band performance. Vold was having a regular day until his friends and band teacher started texting him and telling him he got in. He said he had been a little bit worried to see if he had got it or not. He said that he had only made a couple mistakes on the audition, but he feared that that might be enough for the judges to reject his audition.
Vold is a percussionist, but he says all of the songs in the audition have a different instrument. The most difficult instrument for him was memorizing the mallets. It was difficult because, as Vold explained, “You have to memorize the music in order to play it well.” Because there is so much preparation needed before the event, he practices all the time. In order to get ready for the performance, he practices every other night to keep his mind fresh on the music.
For Vold, this performance is very important. It will help him in many ways in the future, and will look amazing on his college resumes. The All-State Band title looks a lot better on the resumes than most other titles. Vold says it will stand out a lot more for him since he plans to pursue a career in music. He also views it as a great opportunity to meet people and make new friends that are at the same level of skill that chosen students are at.