2024 Nebraska Wesleyan Honors Festival

Music at Nebraska Wesleyan is excited to announce the dates for this year’s honor festival ensembles. The band and choir components will take place during different weeks:

Wesleyan Honors Choir

The Nebraska Wesleyan University Honors Choir gathers 100 of the region's most promising high school singers for an inspiring and immersive choral experience with NWU's choir director, Tom Trenney, and guest composer/conductor, Brandon Boyd.

Nominations

We encourage high school teachers to recommend as many singers as they desire through this choir students nomination form. Nebraska Wesleyan accepts nominations until December 1, 2023 and informs teachers and students of selections by December 18. Selected students are responsible for completing a registration form, including a $50 participation fee (which covers music rental, three meals, snacks, and a t-shirt). Students are expected to prepare the music in advance of the festival. Opportunities to participate in vocal masterclasses (musical theater and classical), world drumming and scholarship auditions will be available as well.

Our Conductors

Brandon Boyd

Brandon Boyd is the newly-appointed director of choral activities at the University of Missouri. As an active composer and arranger, he is also the curator and editor of the "Brandon A. Boyd Choral Series," a choral series with Hinshaw Music Publications. He is executive choral editor of Gentry Publications.? As a global collaborator in the orchestral world, Boyd has served as chorus master, assistant conductor and guest pianist with the London Symphony in London, England. In the U.S., he guest conducted for the Nashville Symphony, Missouri Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony.

Tom Trenney

Tom Trenney is director of choirs at Nebraska Wesleyan University. NWU’s choirs had the honor of performing at state, regional and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), and are award winners in the American Prize for choral ensembles. His 50 published choral compositions are sung at churches and schools across the country, and he was a feature performer at places like Kansas City's Kauffman Center, Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center and NYC's Carnegie Hall.

Wesleyan Honors Bands

The 2024 Nebraska Wesleyan University Honors Bands will bring together students from across the region to form two bands that will rehearse and perform with NWU’s band director, Joshua Roach, DMA and guest conductor, Giovanni Santos, DMA. One band will be an audition-based group, and the other will be nomination-based. Students in both groups will rehearse and perform with Santos and Roach.

Selected students are responsible for completing a registration form, including a $50 participation fee (which covers music rental, three meals, and a t-shirt). Students are expected to prepare the music in advance of the festival.

Audition and nomination submissions will be accepted until Friday, December 1, 2023 at 11:59 p.m.

Audition-based “Wind Ensemble”

Students who wish to participate in this band should submit representative audio or video files of their playing.

What to submit: Students can use any audition package of material (scales and etudes) they’ve recently created for other honor ensembles, all-state band/orchestra or solo competitions. If no recent material exists and a student needs guidance for repertoire, they are encouraged to ask for guidance from their school director.

Where to submit:

Students submitting materials themselves should use the student wind ensemble audition form.
Directors submitting audition materials for multiple students at one time should use the director wind ensemble auditions upload form.

Nomination-based “Symphonic Band”

We encourage teachers to nominate as many students as they desire.

Directors who are nominating multiple students should use the director symphonic band multiple-nomination form.
Non-directors, or directors submitting single-nominations should use the symphonic band single nomination form.

Our Conductors

Giovanni Santos

Giovanni Santos serves as director of wind and percussion studies and associate professor of music at La Sierra University, where he directs the University Wind Ensemble, Chamber Winds and Big Band. He teaches courses in graduate and undergraduate instrumental music education, popular music, conducting and composition. Santos has implemented workshops, clinics and conversations with the country’s leading conductors and composers. He also frequently presents at music conferences in the U.S., Mexico and Europe. Santos’ ever-growing catalog of wind ensemble compositions has been performed by many of the country’s large universities.

Joshua Roach

Joshua Roach is director of instrumental activities at Nebraska Wesleyan University. He has also taught at Peru State College, the Crane School of Music in New York, the College of New Jersey, California Lutheran University and Southwestern Michigan College. Before teaching full-time in higher education, Roach lived in Los Angeles, where he was the music director of the Pacific Symphony Youth Wind Ensemble and instrumental coach for Diamond Bar High School. For 11 years, he worked with middle school and high school students at the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program. From 2015-2017, he also taught trumpet for the Phantom Regiment drum and bugle corps.

Schedule

February 1, 2024

1:00 pm : NWU Music Scholarship auditions (optional for seniors considering NWU)
3:00 pm : Registration
4:00 pm : Rehearsal
5:00 pm : Pizza party (included)
6:00 pm : Rehearsal
8:30 pm : Adjourn

February 2, 2024

9:00 am : Rehearsal
10:00 am : Breakout sessions/ sectional rehearsal
11:15 am : Lunch (included)
12:15 pm : Concert by NWU Choirs
1:00 pm : Rehearsal
2:30 pm : Snack break
2:45 pm : Breakout sessions/ sectional rehearsal
4:00 pm : Rehearsal on stage
5:00 pm : Dinner
6:15 pm : Warm-up
7:00 pm : Concert
7:50 pm : Farewell

Repertoire

Dixit Dominus – Marianna von Martines
Love Arrives – Tom Trenney (soprano/alto)
We are All Sons – Craig Hella Johnson (tenor/ bass)
Until I Reach My Home: Negro Folk Tune – arrangement Brandon A. Boyd
O Love – Elaine Hagenberg
Sign Me Up – Brandon A. Boyd
We Shall Overcome: American freedom song – arrangement Tom Trenney  

February 15, 2024

1:00 pm : NWU Music Scholarship auditions (optional for seniors considering NWU) begin
2:30 : pm Check-in begins
4:00 pm : Rehearsals and activities begin
6:15/6:45 pm : Pizza party (included)
9:15 pm : Adjourn

February 16, 2024

9:00 am : Rehearsals and activities begin (lunch included)
5:30 pm : Adjourn

February 17, 2024

9:30 am : Rehearsals and activities begin (brunch included)
2:30 pm : Performance
3:45 pm : Farewell

Date: February 1 - 17, 2024

Location: Nebraska Wesleyan University, 5000 Saint Paul Avenue, Lincoln, NE 68504.

Click here for more information.