Thursday, March 23rd to Saturday, March 25th was the PMEA Region Band Festival hosted at our own, Marion Center High School. Over 50 schools flocked to our school to participate and compete for a spot in the PMEA All-State Festival. After sending six students to districts, five of our musicians moved onto the Region level: Dillon Green, Danielle Adams, Carley Shoop, Charles Marshall, and Alex Johnson. Of these five, two moved onto the All-State level; Charlie and Alex.

This was the first festival band director, Mr. Ryan Page has hosted and he got to host it with another name Marion Center knows, our past elementary General Music teacher, Mr. Luke Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton moved to work at United High School in 2019 and has also never hosted a festival. These teachers took on an amazingly large task and pulled it off spectacularly and we think them for all of their hard work.

Mr. Page and Mr. Hamilton chose Dr. Zachariah Cheever, from IUP to be the guest conductor for this event. Dr. Cheever has conducted Indiana County Band and many music students around here know him because of all of his efforts to reach out to local high schools and provide opportunities that many other college music programs don’t offer local high schools.

The festival was a huge success and an amazing way to get back into the PMEA festivals after COVID changed the way they all worked for a few years. We are so excited we were able to host such a big event and hope for more to be as successful as this one was. Final congratulations to Charlie and Alex who made All-State, and Danielle and Dillon who performed in their last PMEA festivals.

Follow @marion_center_bands on Instagram or the Marion Center Band Boosters Facebook Page for more updates.