An estimated 9,000 people will be coming to Grand Rapids over three days for a music conference that every year holds a slew of events aimed at helping and promoting music educators in Michigan.
The program, which runs from Thursday, January 25, 2018 to Saturday, January 27, 2018 will feature professional development for K-12 educators, and also performances by school orchestras, bands and choirs from across Michigan schools.
The chair of the board of directors for the Michigan Music Conference, Cory Micheel-Mays, said it is the “largest professional development workshop in Michigan for music educators.” He said the workshop offers help to educators on anything from getting students to play the clarinet better, to how to work with a student who has disabilities.
Micheel-Mays said the bulk of the conference attendees will be music educators from across the state, but he said the conference is open to anyone who is willing to pay the fee to get in. Exhibitors from Michigan, and outside, will be there to show and sell different kinds of instruments. Different universities will also be there, Micheel-Mays said, to try to entice students to apply for their music programs. The 38 concert performances the conference will hold will feature honors and all-state choirs and bands, as well as music ensembles from other schools.
One of those ensembles is the East Kentwood High School string orchestra. The orchestra performance will feature multiple works from around the world, including Béla Bartók and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Orchestra director Eric Hudson said he wanted the overall theme of the orchestra’s performance to be multicultural.
“We're just trying to take everybody all over the word,” he said.
Ann Arbor Pioneer High School A Capella choir students will give a mostly A Cappella performance at the conference. Choir instructor Steven Lorenz said the choir is made up of 55 mostly junior and senior students who have been apart of the A Cappella choir since they were freshman. He said his students are ready and excited to perform.
“We treat every performance very similarly; I try to motivate my students to give a 100 percent in every performance,” Lorenz said. “We try to perform the same way whether we're singing for 10 or 10,000.”
Lorenz said there is a big appeal for performing in front of a group of music educators.
“It's fun to get to sing for any audience, but especially fun when the audience are those who engage in this art form.”
This year will be the second time the West Ottawa High School symphony band will perform at the conference. Only six high school bands were chosen to perform this year, including West Ottawa, which band director for the high school, Michael Hamann, called a “prestigious honor.”
Hamann said he is looking forward to getting his students to perform for a larger audience that may not be familiar with their work.
“Hopefully this performance will help get the word out regarding how great our students are,” Hamann said.
The list to find the times of all of the various schools performing at the conference can be found on the MMC website.
The conference will take place across three difference locations in downtown Grand Rapids: the DeVos Place, Amway Grand Plaza Hotel and JW Marriott. Tickets for each individual concert may be purchased online at ticketmaster.com or at the DeVos Place box office.
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