Music
The school offers both a choral program (director: David Smith) as well as a band program (director: Anthony Graffeo). There are three choral groups including concert choir, treble choir, and varsity choir. Concert choir is open to any student, while treble choir (all female parts)and varsity choir are available upon passing an audition based on the skills of singing unaccompanied as well as being able to read music. These are considered to the more advanced choral level. There is also a madrigals group that is also available through audition, but you are not required to be enrolled in a choir. The band program includes a percussion ensemble, jazz ensemble, concert band and marching band, which will feature the music of Elvis Presley on the field this year. (The wind ensemble was eliminated in 2012 due to low enrollment). The marching band is mandatory for any student enrolled in any instrumental ensemble. The Johnsburg Marching Skyhawks march at every home football game, as well as competitions and parades throughout Northern Illinois.
The Marching Band has competed at Marengo Settler's Day's Field Show Competition, St. Rita Mustang Stampede, Sandwich HS Marching Band Invitational, Wheaton North High School Marching Band Festival, and the University of Illinois Marching Band Festival. The Marching Band also performed in Walt Disney World at the Disney Magic Music Days Parade in March 2008.
The Jazz Ensemble has competed at Jazz in the Meadows and the Northshore Jazz Festival. The Jazz Ensemble has also performed at the Fox Valley Jazz Festival and the Johnsburg Educational Partnership Foundation Gala, and recently at Walt Disney World in 2004 and March 2012. Historically, the school's band has also performed at Epcot Center (1988), and aboard a cruise ship in the Bahamas (1990, 2006 and 2010)
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Famous quotes containing the word music:
“Nearly all the bands are mustered out of service; ours therefore is a novelty. We marched a few miles yesterday on a road where troops have not before marched. It was funny to see the children. I saw our boys running after the music in many a group of clean, bright-looking, excited little fellows.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“Not to sink under being man and wife,
But get some color and music out of life?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)