Fifty-six schools, 96 band directors and 550 students came to BV on Saturday Dec. 4 for the annual Northeast District Band Festival.

Seniors Skyler Trieu, Will Retz and Kenneth Tysick; juniors Matt Cooper, Meera Chakravarthy, Tim Smith, Austin Ferguson, Mark Nichols and Turner Smith and sophomores Jake Pettes, Vaughn Ericson and Sam Proulx attended the festival.

“I really just wanted to see how I compared to students from the rest of the schools,” Ferguson said. “Every single person there knows when to focus and knows proper etiquette for rehearsal.”

The students met at the school at 7:30 a.m. and practiced for three hours straight.

“Our director was really fun to work with,” Ferguson said. “One of the pieces we worked on was written by him and another was really long and challenging.”

Band director Avian Bear said one of the best parts of the district festival is watching everyone come together and hearing music from a large number of students.

“A lot of bands have pretty small programs so they get used to what small bands feel like,” she said. “It’s a treat to hear the music performed by a group of 100 students rather than 35 students.”

The students who played in the regional concert were also submitted to the state competition.

These students will learn an outside piece to play for a judge, as well as perform that piece, scales and sight read on Jan. 8 for state.