High notes: Lindale students selected as Texas All-State Musicians

Published 3:54 pm Monday, January 25, 2021

Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the Texas Music Educators Association will not host the annual performance event in 2021.

As a result, being named a Texas All-State Musician becomes a prestigious honor to reflect on.

Five Lindale High School students — two members of the Lindale High School Chorale and three members of the All-State Band — earned all-state recognition and talked about the work that goes into performing.

Students receiving the honor include Xander Dickerson and Sarah Richardson, who are in the Lindale High School Chorale, and Kaitlyn Groth, Liv Simmons and Christiana Ussery, members of the Lindale High School Band. They were chosen for the honor through a competitive process that began last fall and included areas from district to area levels.

Dickerson and Richardson sing under the direction of Kerry Baham, choir director and member of the Texas Music Educators Association, which is an organization with over 19,000 members.

“This has three rounds in this process, so as soon as school started back up, we started working on it. The first round, the top 20 get to make it, the second round, the top eight, then move on from each voice part and then the top seven in the last round make it to state,” said Baham.

Over 50,000 students from around the state initially entered the audition process. Of the 50,000, only 1,860 students have been selected for 2021. This competitive process began throughout the state in auditions hosted by 33 Texas Music Educators Association regions.

The musicians perform individually for the panel of judges, who rank each instrument or voice part. From this ranking, a select group of musicians advance from their region to compete against musicians from other areas in eight TMEA Area competitions. The highest-ranking musicians judged at the TMEA Area competitions qualify to a TMEA All-State music group.

Students often faced having to quarantine during the months of rehearsing for all state.

“Overall it’s a five-month process that takes a lot of perseverance, they don’t really get to take any time off. This year was more challenging with covid. Sometimes maybe one of them had to go home, we had to do virtual (practices) until they come back, so it was difficult to remain consistent, so in a lot of ways, it’s more impressive the ones that made it this year because of all the challenges that we had,” he said.

“Among all state, this means they’re the top three percent high school musicians in the state of Texas. This will be the top of their resume now, as far as moving on to college or jobs, because it shows people that they’re hard workers. I try to tell the kids that it is possible, if they work hard enough, they will succeed eventually. It’s very encouraging, very gratifying and it’s good to know that the hard work they put in was successful,” Baham said.

Groth, who plays flute, Simmons, who plays clarinet, and Ussery, who plays alto clarinet, play under the direction of Steven Moore, band director and also member of the TMEA.

“I’m extremely excited for these young ladies and very, very proud of them. To be an all state musician is quite an honor. These young ladies tried out for the 4A all state band and they started coming in for weekly lessons, working every week on this music trying to perfect it and get it to be the best that it can be,” said Moore.

“That’s really where success comes in, it’s the long haul. Working, being diligent, being willing to put in the time. These ladies put in a lot of time, a lot of effort to get to a quality recording. This year with the pandemic going on, it had to all be done by recording. It was a whole new system for everybody,” he said.

“It was an interesting process and a first for everybody to go through that process, but the ladies worked really, really hard,” said Moore.

TMEA sponsors the Texas All-State audition process to promote students’ dedication to their musical knowledge and skill and to encourage educators to support their students in this development. All-State is the highest honor a Texas music student can receive.

The Texas Music Educators Association is an association of over 13,500 school music educators dedicated to promoting excellence in music education.