On April 6th, 222 students from 7 different schools were at Weedsport for the spring All County Music Festival. 25 of these 222 students were Weedsport students. All County is an event where certain students are hand-picked from their school to participate in a choir or band group. These students get only a handful of hours to learn and perfect their music before it is performed in front of an auditorium full of people. This year All County was held at Weedsport, this has not happened since 2019. Also, this year was the first year All County has had an elementary chorus. After the performance two scholarships were given out to first year college students who are going to school for some form of music or band. 

At 12:30 all All County students were bussed to Weedsport to start learning their music. When the students first get to the school they all go to the auditorium then are broken up into what group they belong to, whether that is elementary chorus, Jr. high band or senior high chorus. Once in their groups they all went into different classrooms and met their conductors and other teachers that would help them along the way. 

Kyle Quinn, a 5th grade student at Weedsport, was chosen to be in the elementary chorus this year. He said that he and five other students from Weedsport got bussed from the high school to the elementary at 12:30 and got split into his group and stayed in the auditorium. Quinn was in the elementary chorus along with 94 other students from different schools. Then the group met their choir teacher who was Peri Bernstein. Bernstein is a middle school general music teacher, and a chorus teacher at Weedsport. Along with Bernstein was the guest conductor Deborah Cunningham and accompanist Barbra Mushock. After the meeting, Bernstein then cut the elementary choir students up once again into two groups since their songs had two parts. The group read over the music and started learning it piece by piece while the other teachers were helping them along the way. “We practiced the songs over and over for hours until we perfected them,” said Quinn. Then around 5 p.m. the whole group went home. 

The next morning they arrived back at the school at 9 a.m. for more practice and the show. Everyone showed up in all black dress attire. Quinn explained that he wore black dress shoes, black dress pants, a black belt, black button up shirt and a black tie. Once he arrived at the school he started practicing his songs once again. They went on the risers where they were going to perform and learned who they were standing next to when they performed. They did many exercises to learn their songs. One exercise included marching around the room to the beat of the song while singing it. Another exercise was going into the gym and singing their song in there to see how it sounded different. Kyle explained it was tricky because there was such a huge echo. After more hours of practice it was time to perform. 

The performance took place at 1 p.m. First Alex Veiga from Weedsport came out to welcome everyone. Then all the 94 elementary students came out in all black with the lights shining on them. They sang Musica Dei Donum Optimi, Starlight, The Dream Keeper and lastly Ring the Bells. In the song The Dream Keeper a handful of students were asked to come down at a certain time while the choir was singing behind them and tell the audience a dream of theirs. A few included safely for family, to be in the MLB or NFL and even one student said his dream was to sing the right words during the performance. “My favorite part of All County was probably being able to listen to all the people I didn’t know,” said Quinn. 

Nolan Carner was another student at Weedsport who was selected to be in All County. He was selected to be in the senior high chorus with six other students from Weedsport. All together the senior high chorus had 74 total students. Carner had a similar experience as Quinn did. He left his class early to go meet in the auditorium with the other students. He was split up into the senior high chorus group then met his director Caryn Patterson. Patterson is a chorus teacher at LeMoyne and also has a jazz band. She then split them up into smaller groups such as sopranos, tenors, bases and altos. They did some warm ups and learned new techniques such as envisioning the sound coming out to better project your voice. Carner said they then “stumbled” through the songs for the first time. They then went home at 5. 

The next morning all the students showed up at 9 a.m. in their all “concert black” outfit as Carner said. The group did some more run-throughs and more fine-tuning of their songs. Then they had pizza provided by the school for lunch. Then at 2 o’clock they had their performance, the songs included Take Me to the Water, Wanting Memories, Ritmo and Moon River. “It went pretty well…we made some drastic improvements from Friday to Saturday…within a total of 9 hours you can get so much done with an extraordinary group of singers such as ours,” said Carner. Carner’s favorite was Take Me to the Water because it highlighted the bass in most parts. In the song Wanting Memories a student was selected to play the congas during the song and it added the perfect touch. Carner said he appreciated the big choir that All County brings in because he does not get that experience with Weedsport being such a small school. 

After the elementary choir, junior high band and the senior high chorus all performed there were two scholarships given out to students who are in the middle of pursuing music careers in college. The scholarships were given out to Christopher Conklin who graduated from Moravia and Enrique Hernandez who graduated from Auburn. 

It truly was amazing to see how an amazing and talented group of students pulled off learning and perfecting four songs in less than two days.