Jan 8, 2004

Leigh High School Music Department travels
Madrigals, Wind Ensemble participate in contest in Hawaii

By Carol Rosen
Staff Writer

Leigh High School’s Madrigals and Wind Ensemble have been invited to participate in the Pacific Rim Basin Festival this March on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. The groups, which together comprise more than 75 students—with about five to six in both—will be gone from March 19-26.

Last April, the school’s Wind Ensemble traveled to New York and won the Wind Festival, even though most of their competition was college-aged. This festival will have similar international participants, mostly college age, including a choir from New Zealand and a band from Japan.

The two groups applied together, says Stan Neff, who is the Madrigals’ instructor. Both were invited to compete, applied and were invited. The Madrigals have been to this festival before. In 2000, the group placed second.
“You have to be a certain level of accomplishment to be invited,” explains Neff. “It’s a high level of accomplishment and performance. And, we’ll be up against bands and choirs from around the world.

About eight chaperones will join the 75 students, Neff and Richard Alipaz, the school’s band director. Some parents already have indicated they want to attend, says Neff, including one entire family. Besides the festival, the students will visit the Arizona monument and have some free time for shopping, touring and sitting on the beach.
To pay for the trip, it will cost about $1,500 per student for airfare, accommodations and the contest. In order to defray those costs, the groups are holding fund-raisers such as car washes and bowl-a-thons.

They also have scheduled three performances, one that was held in December. The school held seven performances of “A Christmas Carol” in December. It will also perform the long-running Broadway show, “The Fantasticks,” on Feb. 12, 13 and 14 and “The Scarlet Pimpernel” in April. For ticket information, call the school at 997-2590 or 356-2836.

If you’d like to help out the school or a particular student, you can make out a check to Leigh High School with the particular student’s name or trip donation / Madrigal or Wind Ensemble in the memo section. Or contact the school’s Instrumental Music Parent Association, which has set up accounts for each student.