Quad State Honor Band serves as recruitment tool for music program

High school students from four Midwest states gathered in Aalfs Auditorium Monday for the 18th Annual USD Quad State Honor Band.

The Quad State Honor Band is a two day festival held at USD for students attending high school in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. It offers some of the best band members in the region a chance to come together to perform a concert for the public.

Associate professor Rolf Olson said the 150 students that attend are split into two bands, each containing about 75 students, one conducted by a USD faculty member and one by a guest conductor.

“We usually bring in a guest conductor,” Olson said. “This year it is Andrea Brown, who is the associate director of bands at the University of Michigan. We have one of our own faculty direct the other band and this year it is director Jonathan Alvis, who is our marching band director.”

USD junior Shelby Wollmuth, a music education major who helped host the event, said sometimes guest conductors bring in their own pieces, which really excites the students.

“What I think is really cool is that we get conductors that bring music that they have written,” she said. “It gets the students really excited to be able to play a piece that is not popular and was written by someone else.”

Olson said that each student must audition to be a part of the band.

“We provide audition pieces for them to practice and then they have to send a recorded audition,” Olson said. “Our faculty then reviews the recordings and choose who will participate.”

About 200 students auditioned this year.

Olson said in addition to serving as a recruitment tool for the university, the event gives students the opportunity to play with others that they haven’t played with before and perform music that may be difficult for them.

“It serves as a great recruitment tool but also as a service to the schools in our region too,” Olson said. “It provides students with the opportunity to play in a really good honor band, but it is also a recruitment tool for us.”

Wollmuth said Quad State gives students the opportunity to play with a larger amount of students and practice with a different director.

“We are one of the larger music departments in the area so the kids that are in South Dakota and surrounding areas can be exposed to good music and music that they may not get in their 20-person band,” she said. “They get to play with a 60-person band and with a different conductor.”

Senior Amber Bock, a music education major and former two-year member of the Honor Band, said USD students also benefit from the two-day festival.

“It serves as exposure for the kids along with us college students,” she said. “Some college students are planning on being educators to it’s nice to be able to already see what these high school students are doing. The conducting class gets to watch the conductors as well, so that’s nice for them as well.”

Bock said she often sees high schoolers coming back to campus as USD students after attending the Honor Band.

“I think it makes a huge difference,” Bock said. “You get exposed to so many people in the area and to the program at USD that I think a lot of people come back because of it. We also do scholarship auditions while they are here as well so that also brings in a lot of students.”

Bock said the best part of the festival is the concert performed on Monday, which marks the end of the event.

“The concert is my favorite part,” Bock said. “It’s fun because the parents are there, the directors are there, the kids have been working hard for two days and seeing concert is a great result.”