Half of high school student body disappeared on March 14. This year, Music Director Michael Ogdon decided to organize a three-day trip to the Heritage Festival in San Diego, CA, taking over 85 students with him. Members of the various band and choir groups left early in the morning on Thursday and came back early Sunday.

At the awards ceremony, percussion ensemble, Celebration Choir, and Adoration Ensemble all won gold, and concert band and jazz band received silver. Both Adoration Ensemble and the music department as a whole won the Sweepstakes Award.

Ogdon says that he personally enjoyed the festival. He appreciated the interactions between the students and other people on the trip.

“I enjoyed the trip,” Ogdon said, “I got the impression that as busy as it was, it wasn’t too busy and it didn’t get boring. I also liked being around all the people. The interactions between students and parents are definitely some of my favorite parts about the trip.”

Ogdon’s found the trip to the mobile home park particularly enjoyable. He enjoyed connecting with the community, and hopes that it had an impact.

“I think my favorite part of the trip was when we traveled to perform for the mobile home crowd,” Ogdon said. “I really like connecting what we do at school to people in the community. I hope there were good results in the people’s lives.”

Ogdon noticed the difference between Heritage and the ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International) festival last year. He found that Heritage focuses more on the judging than other festivals.

“There is a big contrast between Heritage and ACSI last year,” Ogdon said. “The focus at ACSI was less on the judging and more on the participation and involving all the groups at one time. Heritage is a lot more about the individual groups or schools. It’s more about seeing what they can do and good judging.”

Ogdon explains the system for deciding when to go to Heritage. The students go to different festivals on even numbered years.

“We only go to Heritage every other year due to cost,” Ogdon said. “We go to Heritage on the odd numbered years and somewhere else for the even numbered years. Next year we will probably take each music group to an individual event.”

According to Ogdon, one of the main improvements that could be made to the music groups is for better focus on individual parts.

“It is easy to say that the bass section in the choir could be a little bit better, since so few of them actually had experience singing,” Ogdon said. “If I had more time with the bass section, maybe we could have had even more success. I should probably spend more time with each individual group if we do this same type of thing next year.”

Junior Suzy Carroll enjoyed the trip. She appreciated the performances and found the concert for the older people in the mobile home park to be one of her favorite parts.

“It was a really fun trip,” Carroll said, “I thought it was interesting to hear all the different groups perform. I liked the mini-concert at the mobile home park; I think they really enjoyed that. Overall, I feel like we did pretty well. SeaWorld was also a lot of fun.”

Rachel Quiring, ’13, found that the absence of so many students created an odd atmosphere. She mentions some of the work they had in their classes.

“It was really strange when half of the school was gone for Heritage,” Quiring said. “It was very quiet; we mostly just did work in the books or studied. It made Thursday felt kind of like Friday, since we didn’t do as much in class.”

Sophomore Andrew Guthrie felt that the performance went well, and that the awards were fitting for the groups that received them. He also discusses some of the activities during the trip.

“I feel that we performed very well,” Guthrie said. “We got three gold awards for choir, ensemble, and percussion ensemble, and I think that those groups really deserved them. Apart from the performance, it was nice to go on the USS Midway, but even though SeaWorld was fun, it was long and cold from the water rides. I think my favorite part of the trip was actually the bus rides; I really got to know some different people.”

For more features, read the March 20 article, Yee selected as Seymour contender.