California State Honor Band 2025
Congratulations to Daniel Cho, Ryan Kim, Ethan Lee, Jayden Lee, Chelsea Li, Yoon-Jae Park, and Richard Zhang for being named to the California State Honor Band. These seven students will represent Hyde at the California All-State Honor Band Conference in Sacramento. At the conference, the students will perform in groups made up of the best musicians from all over the state. These students prepared the audition materials made a recording and submitted them at the end of October. Of the many thousands of recordings submitted, only a few were selected for the honor band. Congratulations! To learn about auditioning for the honor bands read the description below.
How to Audition for the All-State Honor Band
To audition for the California All-State Band, a student needs to find the audition requirements on the website cbda.org. Next, a student needs to fill all out all of the required applications, pay the required fees and make a recording of the audition materials following the recording instructions in a very strict manner. The due dates are generally at the end of October. If you intend to audition, you need to inform me as soon as possible so we can coordinate all of the application procedures. The students who audition for these groups have generally been taking private lessons for a long period of time. To read more about private lessons, go the "Private Teachers" page.
CMEA 2025
Congratulations to the Hyde Advanced Band for an outstanding performance at the CMEA Music Festival!
The music festival took place at Fremont High School and featured many of the best band programs in the area. Some of the high schools included Fremont, Wilcox, Prospect and Leland, and middle schools from Cabrillo, Walnut Creek, Columbia, Sunnyvale, Buchser, Hillview and Monroe. The band performed three pieces in front of three judges and sight-read in front of a fourth judge. Each judge gave a list of comments and a rating. There are five possible ratings: 5-Needs Improvement, 4-Fair, 3-Good, 2-Excellent, 1-Superior. All of the judges gave our band the highest rating of "Superior". When this happens it is called a "Unanimous Superior" and is the highest honor a band can receive at a CMEA Festival. Hyde was one of only three bands to receive a "Unanimous Superior".
What does it all Mean? Music is an art that is meant to be expressive first and not necessarily a mode of competition. However, the ratings and judges are a good way to motivate students to practice and prepare to the best of their abilities. In my mind, the "Unanimous Superior" rating is validation that our students best efforts are exceptional and not just your average middle school band.. Congratulations Advanced Band!
Solo Ensemble Festival 2025
Congratulations to all of the Solo Ensemble Festival participants. This was the second year for the Solo Ensemble Festival since the pandemic (2019 was the last year it was held in the South Bay). We had twenty seven students sign up for the festival hosted by San Jose State. All of them had to put in a lot of work and I was very proud of how they all grew musically.
The Solo/Ensemble Festival is a voluntary event and the students put in a lot of rehearsal time at brunch, lunch and after school to make this possible. Students make their own small ensembles (duets, trios, quartets, or quintets) and some choose to play solos (if they are taking private lessons). It is a great learning experience. Learning to put a piece together on their own where each student plays an independent part is a great challenge. The students have to do all of this with very little help from me which makes the challenge even greater. I believe all of the students grew musically in this process and I hope they also learned some areas for improvement from the judges.
For those who don’t know, the Solo and Ensemble Festival happens every year in late February or March. Students perform solos or small ensemble pieces (duets, trios, quartets) in front of judges. The judges make helpful comments and recommendations and give each group a rating. The ratings are 5: Needs Improvement, 4: Fair, 3: Good, 2: Excellent, and 1: Superior. For a performance that the judge deems truly exceptional, the judge can assign the rating of "Command Performance".
All our were given a rating in the top three and one student, Yoon-Jae Park received a "Command Performance". Congratulations to all of the participants!