Dr. Milt Allen in Ms. Andersen's first grade class. Photo Credit: Kerry McNamara

The Unalaska High School band students have had yet another hugely successful year with Regional Honor Band auditions. The audition requires submitting recordings of at least three challenging excerpts of music that are judged anonymously. The difficult level of the music requires the students to greatly prepare for this outside of class. The results for this year's auditions are an incredible 28 out of 37 students were selected for the honor band, with another 5 selected as alternates. Seven students were selected for first chair in their section. 54% of the Regional Honor Band is made of students from UCSD. Congratulations to all!

Last week the music students in UCSD had the opportunity to work with guest clinician Dr. Milt Allen in a week long residency. Dr. Allen is a conductor, teacher, and author who has traveled the world to work with students. In his week here, Dr. Allen delighted the students at Eagle's View Elementary by teaching them about instruments in ways they found to be very funny and engaging. With the high school, junior high, and fifth grade bands, Dr. Allen brought his expertise from 26 years of conducting to inspire the students to new levels of musical performance. On Monday, March 2nd, this residency culminated in a concert, which included another premiere performance for the high school. The concert ended with an Alaskan premiere of the piece "A New Day Dawning" by composer Bryan Sanoshy, which included a slide show of photos of Unalaska taken by the students in the band.

Dr. Allen had this to say about his trip: "I had an absolute blast working with all of the students in the Unalaska bands and the elementary school. The kids were all terrific, kind, funny, inquisitive, and supportive. In particular, the work being done by the high school is terrific - those students really embrace a challenge. Director Kerry McNamara is doing an incredible job and is really taking the entire program to the next level. Unalaska is extremely lucky to have her. From the clinician's perspective, it was a great trip all around and would do it again in a heartbeat."