two students make All-National honor Band

Kaufman, a multi-instrumentalist in the Edgewood band, was given the opportunity to audition for All-Nationals after making it into the All-State jazz band on Baritone Saxophone. Auditions for All-Nationals this year were recorded, which presented some unique challenges.

"It's weird recording an audition because you feel like you're pressured to have the best take, ‘cause everybody is going to have their best playing. In an in-person audition, if you're a good auditioner, and you make a few errors, that's fine. But when you submit something, it's expected to not have any mistakes. That's the frustrating part for me," says Kaufman.

However, Kaufman also reasoned that there would likely be less competition since auditioning for the All-National band isn't an open audition. The opportunity is only granted to those who were accepted into their state's All-State honor band. And since each All-State jazz band only has one bari saxophone, there would be, at most, only 49 other people competing for that spot in the All-National band.

"I think, partly, I was expecting [to make it in] ‘cause, at most, there would only be 49 other baris, and a lot of states are not aware that the organization exists. So I wasn't expecting that much competition, maybe like 20 other kids," says Kaufman.

Kaufman's favorite part of the experience was getting to rehearse with conductor and trumpet player Todd Stoll of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which is currently the foremost modern "big band" in the world.

"He was the most impactful part of the whole experience for me. He was really cool... He had a lot of knowledge, obviously because he's been playing a lot. But, he was just genuine... he would just be straight up [about the difficulty of the situation] but he tried to make the best of it, and he gave us all really good comments," says Kaufman.

Additionally, the opportunity to play with other talented students really excited Kaufman. Although rehearsing over Zoom wasn't ideal, it's a big deal to know that you're playing alongside the top student musicians in the country.

"Hearing the other kids play was really cool. The trumpets were incredible, and the bones- everybody was really good, obviously, so it worked out," says Kaufman.

On the other hand, Hoang had slightly tougher odds preparing for the audition. Each all-state concert band had many clarinets, so Hoang wasn't necessarily expecting to make it in. However, he decided to pursue the audition for other reasons.

"I prepared for the audition over the summer regardless, because I knew it would be a good experience nonetheless to learn an audition piece, and work on it, practice it, and just prepare for a recorded audition, which is the type of audition I'm probably going to see a lot in the future," says Hoang.

And he definitely put in the hard work necessary. One of the benefits of a recorded audition is that you can do an unlimited number of takes, and Hoang used this to his advantage.

"It's a lot less stressful than a live audition, obviously, and you weren't limited on the number of takes you could do, so I thought overall it was really laid back and chill. I just played my piece like a would normally, but with a camera in front of me. I think [I did] like 20 or 30 takes," says Hoang.

The best part of this experience for Hoang overall was the guest speakers. Since the concert band has much more members than jazz, it's less efficient to spend time actually rehearsing as a group through Zoom, so a lot of time was spent listening to different guest speakers, ranging from motivational speaking to a composer sharing his process of writing music.

Additionally, rehearsing online comes with many new challenges.

"We kind of rehearsed, but it was mostly just the conductor talking. We obviously couldn't play together or anything. He encouraged us to play along when he asked us to, and I did that but it was certainly a new experience. Most of the rehearsal part was done off-camera," says Hoang.

However, this is still a really great opportunity for all of the students. In addition to being able to show off this recognition on college applications, students also got the chance to talk with college representatives, and make a connection with the top directors in the country.

"Now I have that connection with Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is really cool," says Kaufman.

This is helpful to Kaufman since he is in the process of applying to music programs at several colleges, with the goal of obtaining a double major in chemistry and saxophone performance. He also hopes to teach music in a university one day.

"I love performing and teaching music, so that would be cool. I could see myself being a professor of anything, if I choose to do music, and performing at least in some aspect" says Kaufman.

Hoang is also hoping to continue music in college, with a focus on STEM as well.

"Since I'm more into the computer side of things, the schools I applied to were all kind of computer-oriented... I did research on them and they all had music programs with a lot of opportunities," says Hoang.