MLHS team advances to State Music Listening Contest
A trio of Mountain Lake Public High School (MLHS) Senior High Band students – Yahayra Sanchez, Sam Hirsch and Lily Kauffman – competed against seven other teams on Friday, January 22 in the Regional Music Listening Contest at Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU) in Marshall.
The team from MLHS – coached by Mountain Lake Public School’s Director of Bands Kurt Jahnke – survived a sudden-death tiebreaker to move on to State Competition to be held on Friday, February 5 at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Nearly 25 teams will be competing in a similar event.
Teams participating, in addition to the one from MLHS, included Montevideo High School, Pipestone Area High School, Redwood Valley High School and Southwest Minnesota Christian High School of Edgerton
Each team competing had been issued a study guide and 3 CDs covering music from over 1,300 years, and some featured music and genres: operatta, Leonard Bernstein and Jewish music. These teams listened to excerpts at the competition and were quizzed on music theory, music history and identification of excerpts.
Established in 1988, the Minnesota High School Music Listening Contest (MLC) is designed to help students at the secondary level develop skills in listening to music. With the stated objective of inspiring students to become lifelong participants in the musical experience, the MLC helps students learn the characteristics of pieces of music from throughout history as well as specific representative works.
SMSU’s Director of Choral Activities, Dr. Stephen Kingsbury, served as the contest manager.
