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)
Read more about this topic: Johnsburg High School
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“Have you ever been up in your plane at night, alone, somewhere, 20,000 feet above the ocean?... Did you ever hear music up there?... It’s the music a man’s spirit sings to his heart, when the earth’s far away and there isn’t any more fear. It’s the high, fine, beautiful sound of an earth-bound creature who grew wings and flew up high and looked straight into the face of the future. And caught, just for an instant, the unbelievable vision of a free man in a free world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)