Gulf Stream School students who will participate in the all-state concert are (l-r): Stefan Awaida,
Tori Wheat, Sarah Vanden Bosch, Daniel Rogers, Bianca Mason, Alivia Roth, Morgan Mattson and Mia Dagher.
Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
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By Ron Hayes
Eight hundred Florida elementary school music students applied.
For 300 spots.
And those who made the cut would face as many as 8,000 music teachers listening to their every note.
The odds were tough, but eight fourth- and fifth-graders from the Gulf Stream School have beaten them.
On Jan. 14, five GSS students will be among the 200 singers of the All-State Ensemble in the Tampa Convention Center when music teachers gather for the Florida Elementary Music Educators annual conference.
And another three will join the 100 members of the Orff Ensemble, performing on xylophones, triangles, maracas and drums.
“It’s a huge conference, with all the state educators from elementary school through college attending and more than 100 schools participating,” says Rob White-Davis, the school’s director of music. “Each school can send a maximum of 10 students and we had eight accepted.”
The audition process itself is enough to scare many away.
During the third week in September, the students recorded their auditions for the music association’s panel of judges to consider, following a 16-page set of extremely detailed instructions:
Are You Sleeping? will be sung a cappella as a round at 90-100 beats per minute.
The student will begin and the teacher will enter after two measures.
Sing only one time. Breath marks are included.
Fifth-graders Morgan Mattson, 10, of Manalapan, and Tori Wheat, 10, of Boynton Beach, know what to expect. They were selected last year.
“First you rehearse your part alone,” Mattson says, “and then when you sing it with the whole group it sounds really, really good. It’s really fun, but the actual performance is 30 to 45 minutes and you rehearse for six hours.”
Other students who won the judges’ approval are:
• Stefan Awaida, 11, Delray Beach.
• Sarah Vanden Bosch, 11, Ocean Ridge.
• Mia Dagher, 9, Ocean Ridge.
• Bianca Mason, 11, Gulf Stream.
• Daniel Rogers, 10, Delray Beach.
• Alivia Roth, 10, Gulf Stream.
“I feel thankful,” said first-timer Roth, “because I didn’t know my voice was that good. I’m kind of nervous, but there’s 200 other people singing, and they’ll be singing so beautifully that if I do a wrong note it won’t stand out.”
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