Greetings from Austin Peay!
We are proud to announce the 2027 APSU Honor Band, to be held on February 25-27, 2027! This year’s edition will feature Composer in Residence, Maire A. Douglas, who has brought a fresh and exciting voice to the wind band literature. Our conductor/clinicians are Dr. Cory Schmitt, Associate Director of Bands and Director of Athletic Bands at APSU; James Webb, an excellent and innovative teacher and arts leader in his community of Anchorage, Alaska; and recently retired legendary educator/conductor/composer/designer John Fannin.
Applications are now open, and are due on November 15.
We are excited to offer two improvements to our event! We are proud to offer our traditional 7-9 grade and 10-12 grade Honor Bands, in addition to a reimagined “Festival Band”, which is comprised of students in grades 9-12. And we have brought on board to our staff Kacee Sanders as the Event Coordinator, who will help make the structure, communication, and flow of our event even better.
-APPLICATION AND VIDEO AUDITION-
If a student is applying on multiple instruments, a separate application will be submitted per instrument.
Winds Audition Requirements
AUDITION REQUIREMENTS: Perform your assigned region or district audition literature for your grade level (e.g., Midstate, All-West, All-East, Kentucky Region, etc). All 7-12 grade applicants will submit a video. No scales are required. You will submit this video via link to a YouTube video – be sure the video link works and is set to ‘unlisted’ or ‘public’ (not ‘private’) before submitting.
Percussion Audition Requirements
AUDITION REQUIREMENTS: Perform your assigned region or district audition literature for your grade level (e.g., Midstate, All-West, All-East, Kentucky Region, etc). All 7-12 grade applicants will submit a video. For 10–12 auditions, applicants are required to perform mallet, snare drum and timpani excerpts. For Festival Band auditions, timpani is optional but encouraged. For 7–9 auditions, applicants may select one, two or all three areas to include in their video audition. Applicants who demonstrate proficiency on multiple percussion instruments may be given preference. You will submit this video via link to a YouTube video – be sure the video link works and is set to ‘unlisted’ or ‘public’ (not ‘private’) before submitting.
Video Note To Directors
We specifically asked for the “region honor band prepared material” as the video audition to encourage both APSU HB applications, as well as motivation to create your region honor band video recordings. If you have any technical or personal issue which prohibits uploading a video to YouTube, please contact us via email at apsuhonorband@gmail.comwith the student name and a description of the issue. These emails will be due TWO WEEKS PRIOR to the due date (Nov 1), so a solution can be discussed before the deadline.
Tempo & Omitting Measures Note To Directors
We would like to clarify that for the APSU Honor Band application, it is acceptable to perform the material under tempo and/or to not perform the entire excerpt. We DO REQUIRE a video of the appropriate honor band audition material to assess the applicant’s skill set, but adjustments are acceptable. Please note that submissions of the entire selection at tempo will be prioritized in rankings, but we welcome all applications.
It is important that we are able to accurately assess the applications. Video audition materials are used to help us appropriately rank students and determine band placement. As a reminder, most high school students who are not accepted into the 7–9 or 10–12 bands will be accepted into the Festival Band upon successful completion of their application.