Only two weeks after the intense All Region Orchestra competition, selected orchestra members were back at it again on October 29 with the ever-so competitive All State recordings. The annual All State competition was held at Grisham Middle School with over a hundred attendees participating in hope of making at least one of the three orchestras.

“I had a lot of pressure because I had devoted a lot of time to preparing for it,” David Kim ‘19 said, “I wasn’t ‘bring it on’ ready, but I could play it through and that was fine by me.”

The excerpts, unlike All Region, were released a day before the recordings, leaving students in a hurry to practice up to the very last second. Most of the excerpts chosen were difficult passages intended to demonstrate a player’s ability to the max. Even for those who had begun practicing the entire etudes, which had been released earlier in May of last year, getting the strenuous notes under control proved to be a challenge.

“The state excerpts were challenging because of the abundance of techniques,” Hannah Lu ‘20 said, “Playing excerpt after excerpt took a lot of endurance, especially because each passage was long.”

Last year, the Westwood Orchestra broke its record with 20 students making All State. This year, with a greater number of students participating in the event, the numbers are hoping to rise. However, the results are not released until November, adding to the rising tensions of who made it or not.

“To be honest, I’m a lot more nervous this time around than I’ve been in past years because I felt like I wasn’t as prepared,” Min Kim ‘17 said, “It would be awesome to make All-State for the fourth year, but I’ll be happy regardless of what happens because I know I gave my best effort.”