Have you ever walked past the lit-up display of students in the A Wing and wondered why they were up there? That wall showcases the many students from MHS who have competed at ILMEA at an All-State level.
ILMEA stands for the Illinois Music Educators Association, a professional organization of music teachers in Illinois. To students involved, ILMEA often refers to the district and state festivals held by the organization.
“Our state is divided into 9 different districts and each of the districts holds festivals and students audition across the state to participate in their district festival, with the top students from each district performing at the state festival in January,” explained band director Andy Sturgeon. In a nutshell, ILMEA represents the audition process and the festivals students train to get into.
Auditioning is a rigorous, but often highly rewarding conundrum. Band director Jerry Shelato added, “There’s a lot of musical preparation that goes into it, both for the scales that they have to play, but then also for the etudes that they have to play. The music chosen for those is typically very challenging, either technically or musically or frankly both.”
Students competing for choir face an added challenge. Choral director Corey Thompson explained, “One major difference between choir and band is that when the band kids (separate from jazz) go to district level and get their chair assignments, they’ll probably have a good idea of if they’re in the running for All State. At the choir level, you show up to the district festival and you are the same as every other kid. So you really don’t know on the choir side who might make All State until the lists come out.”
Though it can be a challenge, the audition process itself provides numerous benefits. “It provides students an opportunity to be self-reflective in their music making. Anytime you are recording an audition you’re hyper focused on your performance and pushing yourself to make that audition as strong as you can. That process of learning, growing, and continually listening and challenging yourself to improve is really where the growth happens for music development,” said Sturgeon.
The technical aspect of recording and submitting videos provides students with another helpful takeaway. “The reality is you’re doing a ton of virtual auditions in this day and age. I also think it’s a life skill that kids that are going into performance need to know how to do because a lot of auditions have moved to virtual,” said Thompson.
On top of the audition material itself being challenging, our district is among the most competitive in the state musically. “Having grown up and taught in District 3 downstate and now teaching in District 7, I will say that it’s highly competitive among all the districts in Illinois. It can be pretty difficult to get into a state festival if you are auditioning from District 7,” said Shelato.
Along with talent, the sheer size of our district narrows the pool even more. “There’s somewhere between 54-55 high schools participating. Whereas, our athletic conference includes eight other schools, this is 54 schools and so it’s a pretty unique honor to be selected for one of these ensembles,” said Sturgeon.
For MHS alumni, Sam Penteado, who is now a freshman at Berkeley School of Music, ILMEA undoubtedly paid off. Penteado competed at the district level his sophomore year in Jazz Band 2, Jazz Combo for district and All State his junior year, and finally the District Combo again his senior year.
The most difficult aspect of the experience was playing with different ensembles at each of the festivals. “This is a whole new group of kids that have never met each other before. But that makes it a really beautiful thing too. At the end when we’re all playing the music it’s like even though I just met you an hour ago we’re playing as if we’ve been playing together for years,” added Penteado.
Connections like the ones Penteado made tend to be a common outcome of the ILMEA festivals. “It provides students an opportunity to broaden their musical world to include students from other schools who are just as interested and passionate about music making as they are. It’s fun to see our students build friendships and relationships with students from other schools based on these one-day festivals,” Sturgeon explained.
At Berkeley, Penteado carries with him not only the memories and connections from each festival, but also a valuable insight. Competing gave way for a new motivation to continue pushing himself. “It made me want to practice a lot more. Especially after All State because All State is like the best of the best. Being with all those different people and having conversations about their knowledge of jazz when I barely knew anything made me want to learn and become a better player,” Penteado recalled.
His advice to anyone going through the process of ILMEA themselves is to “Just keep practicing because even if you make the highest band there’s always something new to learn.”
