Junior Honors band

[Anonymous]

Hi,

My son who is in 9th grade wants to try out for the Junior honors band. If he registers and gets accepted after the auditions, he has to join it. The practices are Tuesday and Thursdays for 2 months from 6:30-9:00 pm every week. We are trying to see if it is worth the trouble to drive to the practices and worth the time . Please let me know if your son/daughter did the Junior honors band and whether it was worth it?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

What does he hope to get out of it?

[Anonymous]

My 9th grader is auditioning and I think you’re wrong about the number of rehearsals. Here’s the info we have, which is 5 Tuesdays plus a Friday. That number of rehearsals seems worth the hassle to us.

Junior Honors Band rehearsals will take place every Tuesday evening, January 3, 2023 – January 31, 2023, 6:30 – 8:45 p.m., in the instrumental music room at Richard Montgomery High School, 250 Richard Montgomery Drive, Rockville, MD. Rehearsal make-ups due to inclement weather will be on Thursdays. Additionally, there will be rehearsals at Richard Montgomery High School, 250 Richard Montgomery Drive Rockville, MD, on Friday, February 3, 4:00 – 9:00 p.m.

[Anonymous]

OP, I think the snow date for a Tuesday rehearsal is th
Thursday or Vice versa. It’s just a weekly rehearsal.

[Anonymous]

Mine did it a few years ago, pre-Covid (I think it was actually 2020, but they wrapped up before everything shut down?). They were also in the 6th grade honors band, and a lot of the same things applied to both.

It was a minor pain for us as parents, because the size of Montgomery County inevitably meant the school where rehearsals were held was far enough away that we couldn’t come home between dropoff and pickup, and had to kill time during rehearsals. And someone else has noted here about those alternate snow dates: that time of year is always dicey because of snow days, so things often get modified or are up in the air until the last minute.

But my kid enjoyed playing with a different group of musicians, even if the pieces they played weren’t terribly complex. It was a bit chaotic at first, I think, but there’s some satisfaction in hearing it all come together eventually. And it gave them some accomplishments to put on their high school magnet applications, although that certainly wasn’t one of their reasons for doing it.

Also, because my kid was in a middle school magnet program, they ran into kids they’d known from both of their elementary schools (home and magnet) who were now at different middle schools. So that was kind of fun for the kids.