Two trophies for Gilpin School band

At the Winter Park Ski-Music Festival

Lynn Volkens

04/10/2008 - Two trophies came home with Gilpin School’s Middle/High School Band this week. Nine members of the Concert Band performed before three judges at the Winter Park Ski-Music Festival on Thursday, April 3^rd. They will add the “Outstanding Performance” and the “Best in Class” trophies to the glass case by the high school atrium.

  Director Jeanne Sonnleitner, said the band played three pieces. They opened with a strong march, “March Zuma,” then moved on to a “slow and beautiful” composition, “Air for Band.” Their final piece, “Make a Joyful Noise,” showcased the First Trumpet, senior Emma Berg. Sonnleitner selects pieces to show the strengths of the various instruments and diversity of style. With only ten members, each one is key, and this year the band was missing their First Clarinet, Kira Hicks. She was en route from Japan and was delayed just long enough to miss the performance when United Airlines grounded all flights to address safety issues.

  The Ski-Music Festival is the band’s only competition and the highlight event for the year. The students fund-raise year-round, and they need to – it’s expensive. Sonnleitner said this year’s cost totaled $4,638 to lodge the students plus one chaperone for each of the three condominiums. Then there’s the food cost ($750). To get the best value for their hard-earned money, Sonnleitner prepares menus for meals and snacks, then shops and sorts the food into boxes for each condo. These are transported to Winter Park along with the instruments and students’ belongings. It takes a lot of organizing on her part and even with all band members helping, it means a lot of carrying from school to bus or car, and then from bus or car to condominium room. By doing this the group spends only about a third the cost of eating out. Band students raised the money with a car wash, food booths at the county fair, rodeo and arts festival, a barbecue, a spaghetti dinner, bagging groceries at B&F, and selling mistletoe at Christmas and carnations on Valentine’s Day. They received about $1,100 in donations.

  The festival offers a chance for Gilpin’s band students to meet others from around the country, in fact around the world. This year a group from Trondheim, Norway performed. Groups from Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Florida performed as concert, symphonic, jazz and mariachi bands, wind ensembles, drum lines, string and chamber orchestras, military and regimental bands and groups of mixed, treble, tenor/bass, show, jazz, women’s and children’s vocalists. In all, there were 92 individual groups vying for the trophies this year. They ranged in size from Gilpin’s small class (1A), to the very large (5A) class of more than 100 members. Judges came from the participating states to determine the awards and provide critiques that directors will use to improve next year’s performances. Trophies are awarded at a street dance. As the senior member of the band, it fell to Berg to climb the stairs of the disc jockey’s tower at the end of the block and collect the trophies for Gilpin County School. Gilpinites who attend the school’s Fine Arts Festival on April 17^th, or the band’s Spring Concert on May 15^th, will find the trophies prominently displayed.