IRONWOOD -- Ironwood School District sent three concert bands to the Band Festival held at the Hurley School. In addition to Ironwood and Hurley other school districts sending bands to the competition included: the Junior High Band from Butternut and the High School Band from Mellon.

The Band directors for the schools were Steven Boyd, Ironwood, Dan Mykkanen, Hurley, Annika Torkelson, Butternut and John Hall, Butternut.

The festival began at 4:00pm when the Ironwood Jr. High School Band took the stage and performed for the first half hour segment. Their performance included “Sea Song Trilogy”, “Briarwood”,  and “Freedom’s Force”.

The Hurley Jr. High School Band gave their performance following Ironwood. They performed “Cedar Valley March”, “Song For Winds”, and “Knights of Destiny”

The Jr. High School Band from Butternut closed out the Class ”M” competition. The kids from Butternut played “Stargate 6”, “A New Beginning”, “Wyndham Variations”. 

The Butternut District has approximately 300 students. Consequently, there weren’t enough young musicians to for a Senior High Concert Band.

At approximately 6:00PM the Ironwood Class “C” Sr. High School Band began the second half of the program. The Red Devils performed “Westward Journey”, “Cumberland Cross” and Con Brio”

The Red Devils were followed by the Class “B” Sr. High School Band from Mellen. The band played  “Freedom Quest” and “As Summer Was Just Beginning”, two very ambitious numbers for the young musicians from Mellen.

The Mellen band was then followed by Ironwood’s Class “B” Sr. High School Band.  The kids from ironwood performed thee very good numbers: “American River Songs”, “Percy Grainger” and “Steppes of Russia”.

It should be noted that none of the District Bands played “gimmie” songs. All the songs in the second half were both challenging as well as long. We mention “long” only because the longer the piece the greater the chance of a mishap, and after all this was a competition.

The the Hurley Class “A” Senior High School Band finished up the evening performing two terrific songs, “Variations on a Korean Folk Song” and “March Slav”. The selections were complicated and provided a great finale to the great competition.

After each band concluded their songs, judges came on stage to critique the performances. The judges for this Music Festival were: Nick Enz, from Michigan Tech, Christine Hulmer, from Ashland and Arnold Checkalski from Rice Lake. The Judges do a great job. They offer constructive criticism which the students appear to appreciate.  The critiques are nearly as entertaining as the performances themselves.

---------------------------------

Guest article written by Lou Bonagura of IronwoodInfo.com 

For more pictures and video to go along with this story, and for more news around the clock from the western U.P., visit IronwoodInfo.com.