On Wednesday, Oct. 16. Garden City Community College hosted their first KMEA prep-day for high school students. Band and choir directors from the college, and other high schools around the garden city area, came to the college to help students prepare for their auditions. Band and choir students form the college also received the opportunity to help high school students and gained experience valuable experience during the day.

“We are here to kind of be the underwing to the professionals and try to understand how they are approaching the kids.” Dalton Janousek, a music major at Garden City Community College, said. “It is for us to understand how they are doing it and how to get to their level.” KMEA prep-days are not uncommon but finding one close to home is difficult. While students could travel to schools hours from home, the trip may not always be convenient. Sean Bowler, the choir director at GCCC, wanted to change that. After some planning and prepping, a KMEA Prep-day was finally introduced to GCCC. Thirteen schools around the Garden City area came to participate in a day full of learning.

“I think it is a great opportunity.” Tristen Cox, a Lakin High School choir student, said. “I have already learned a couple of things from this, like I know the fact that the judges are a lot stricter. Whenever you get to high school the laws of music, if you will, are a lot stricter. You got to work on phrasing and dynamics a lot more and making sure you breathe in the right places” Choir students will audition in Dodge City on Nov. 9. While band students will not have to travel to audition, they will have to have a recording of their audition sent in to be judged. Each student will be given certain measures for their audition in which they will then preform. Students will be judged on how well they sing or play the piece of music by judging specific dynamics, phrasing and more. The KMEA prep-day helps students to make sure that their audition is the best it can possibly be. Hopefully, GCCC will continue to provide a KMEA prep-day to not only give opportunities to high school students, but the music majors who are pursuing their passion in music.