MUSIC
Best Communities for Music Education’ by the NAMM
(National Association of Music Merchants) Foundation.”
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Trends In Education
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High School have consistently received superior ratings at
the district and state Florida Bandmasters Association Music
Performance Assessments in concert, marching, color guard,
and jazz.”
State and national appearances also are nothing new for
Vero Beach High School students. Sammons notes, “The Vero
Beach High School bands have consistently participated in
Florida Bandmasters Association Festivals since the band’s
founding in the 1930s ... and in 2010 the Vero Beach High
School Symphonic Bands performed in Carnegie Hall.”
Some of Sammons’ students have gone on to become music
teachers in colleges and in Indian River County schools.
Shanti Simon, class of 1998, is deputy conductor of the U.S.
Air Force Band in Washington, D.C., with White House performance
Indian River County was recently named one of the ‘2012
responsibilities.
Fifty students in the Gifford Middle School Symphonic
Honor Band under award-winning director of Bands Ashby
Goldstein will be at the festival in Indianapolis. Goldstein
was director of bands at Key West High School before taking
— Joel Pagàn
that position at GMS. He notes that “Bands at Gifford Middle
School have been rated superior by the Florida Bandmasters
Association every year since its inception in 1995.” Goldstein is
the current Teacher of the Year at his school and was a top-five
finalist for the 2014 Indian River County Teacher of the Year.
Traveling to festivals is expensive. It is usually funded
by community donations and fund-raisers, but Vero Beach
Opera gave the bands a boost for this trip. At a VBO performance
in February, Roman and Joan Ortega-Cowan
presented checks for $1,000 each to the three schools. “Part
of Vero Beach Opera’s mission is to support young artists in
our community, and the Music for All National Festival in
Indianapolis ... gives us that opportunity,” Joan Ortega-Cowan
says. Another $1,000 went to the VBHS orchestra under
Matthew Stott “in recognition of its contribution to the opera
world by its outstanding performances of operatic overtures
— La Forza del Destino, The Marriage of Figaro and William Tell
— in their annual concerts and at some of our VBO Resident
Artists Concerts.”
/www.riversidetheatre.com