The North-Central Montana Honor Band and Choir Festival takes place the Monday and Tuesday after Thanksgiving, this year on November 26-27.  Several schools that have nice auditoriums take turns hosting the festival.  This year Cut Bank HS is the host school. 

  
Students in the Class B or C schools of Music Districts 6 & 7 may audition to perform in this band / choir.  This area is more-or-less the Golden Triangle area of Montana.  The band is made up of about 50-60 students from these schools.  Only those who are good enough make it, and the instrumentation of the band has to be considered also, you wouldn't want a band with 40 trombones and 2 flutes!  The choir is usually a little bigger than the band.  Balance is one of the major factors determining the choir's size also.

Congratulations to our musicians who made it into the honor groups!!

The directors for this year's festival are, as usual, wonderful. The choir will be led by Mr. Patrick Ryan. He is currently the lead choir director at Great Falls HS. Mr Ryan has also taught in Shelby and Havre HS. Mr. Ryan always does an outstanding job with our honor choir. Mr. Allen Slater is the band director this year. He comes to us from Kalispel where he directed the Flathead HS band for many years with great success. His high expectations are sure to produce an awesome honor band sound.  Mr. Slater also taught at Shelby HS in years past. We are excited to have these awesome directors work with our students.

This festival is a great experience. The students get a chance to perform in a group with balanced instrumentation and voicing, have a different conductor to learn new things from,  work on more challenging music than most small groups can hope to do, and make music with others who take it seriously.  Some of these factors are hard to come by in a small school.  Meeting new friends is also a benefit of a festival like this. 

Use the menus at the left for our itinerary and permission slip.