The IMS wind ensemble is an audition-only group. 6th, 7th and 8th grade musicians make up the group. The auditions are videos and the students need to do scales and parts of the music.
The students who do the best job are the only students who are selected to play in the ensemble. Since this is an auditioned group, the students are doing a lot of the work and Mr. Vazquez fixes the bigger issues like finding the perfect volume to make it all balanced together.
The students already know what they have to play and if they want a good performance, they have to practice for it. “Hard work world,” said Mr. Vazquez. If the students put in time and effort then they are going to be good but if they don’t, the results won’t be good.
Pieces are graded in bands. It’s through grade one to grade six but that’s not like 1st grade to 6th grade, what you really do is you start a band in 4th to 5th grade and by then you are playing 0.5 level pieces. In middle school, you start playing level 2 but the “Wind Ensemble” plays level 2.5 or 3 sometimes because of how talented they are. The pieces get chosen according to the grade level, or which group can handle it the best.
This ensemble won’t be meeting until 2025. Their first meeting will be in the month of February. The wind ensemble will be meeting every Thursday at 7:20 A.M.
The instruments that can be tried out for the ensemble are the same instruments for the regular band. Flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpets, trombone, bass clarinets are the main instruments in the wind ensemble.
There is a difference between the wind ensemble and regular band is that the wind ensemble is a little smaller than a regular band because it’s only the selected students. The biggest difference is the level of difficulty of the music.
Mr. Vazquez has to make sure that the ensemble is balanced so he needs less instruments would be needed to balance the ensemble.
“So if there are 50 flute players auditioning, there would only be a few chosen to make sure there are other instruments included too and to balance it,” said Mr. Vazquez. “I’m looking for hard workers and kids who want to improve.” Those two traits are important in this ensemble.
You are only eligible to audition for an ensemble if you’re in 7th or 8th grade. Some 6th graders were so good so last year that they were put into the ensemble. However they weren’t just put in, they had to audition like other students.
Since the ensemble starts in spring, Mr. Vazquez doesn’t really want to give away his theme.
“Let’s just say, it’s going to be very exciting and super cool,” said Mr. Vazquez.
