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Schools

Watchung Hills Students Named to All-Eastern Ensembles

Honors program taps the best student musicians and singers from Virginia to Maine.

Three musically talented Watchung Hills Regional High School students had the honor of being selected to perform with the prestigious and highly competitive 2013 All Eastern Honors Ensembles.

Sponsored by the National Association for Music Education, Eastern Division, the youth represented the most talented high school musicians from Virginia to Maine and several overseas American schools. 

The approximately 750-800 students, comprising the All-Eastern Jazz Ensemble, All-Eastern Treble Voice Chorus, All-Eastern Mixed Chorus, All-Eastern Orchestra and All-Eastern Band reported to their various groupings on April 4th for an intensive three days of learning and rehearsing new music, which they subsequently performed at either the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts or the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Conn., on April 7th.

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Only 16 students in the instrumental ensembles came from New Jersey—and two of these were from Watchung Hills: Jackson (“Jake”) Bahr of Watchung and Victor Li of Warren, appointed to the All-Eastern Orchestra.

And, among the vocalists appointed to the Treble Voice Chorus was Watchung resident Tenzin Tsepel.

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To be eligible for the All-Eastern Orchestra, students must first win positions in one of the three regional ensembles in New Jersey, and then gain a spot in the New Jersey All State Band or Orchestra. They may then file an application along with letters of recommendation with the All-Eastern selection committee. The New Jersey All-State panel then selects applicants on the basis of several criteria: recommendations, how high the applicants finished in their respective All-State ensembles, and instrumentation needs (of the All-Eastern groups).

The process is highly competitive at each stage of the process, said David Udell, Hills’ orchestral music teacher, and each student selected will have had many and varied experiences.

Bahr, for example, has played trombone in the NJ All-State Orchestra, and was rated No. 1 in the state for a second straight year on his instrument. He performed with the NJ Youth Symphony abroad last summer—and has even played in the fabled Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Li has played viola in the NJ New Jersey Regional and All-Eastern Orchestras and will perform with the former group again next fall.

Some 120 vocalists performed in the Treble Voice Chorus of which Tsepel was part. Participation in the Chorus from each state is determined by a percentage of the total National Association for Music Education Eastern Division membership, with no state given less than 2 percent representation.

As with the instrumentalists, recommended students must have participated (or will participate) in their home-state festivals . Selection is a “tremendous honor,” said Angela DiIorio, Hills’ choral teacher/coach. “The music the choristers performed under the leadership of prominent conductors was remarkably challenging,” she said.

For students who hope to make music their career, participation in the All –Eastern Honors events might very well serve as an introduction: the high expectations, not only of
performance, but also of personal conduct, the advanced caliber of musical selections, the exposure to conductors and music educators of note, the mature code of discipline.

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