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By NOAH WORTHAM | Managing Editor

Sitting in an unfamiliar room at a school miles away from Shelby County High School, I turned to look at the backwards sheet of paper in front me. On cue, I flipped over the page to reveal a black-and-white page littered with a series of eighth notes, sixteenth notes and half notes complete with a time signature and key signature. I had never seen this sheet of music before in my life, and now I needed to play it as well as I could alongside the rest of the band.

We were allowed to read the sheet of paper, count it out loud and even snap our fingers but we could not play a single note until it was time to begin. After practicing the rhythm and tempo, we raised our instruments, moistened our lips and then played the first note.

The annual Music Performance Assessment was the ultimate conclusion of the concert band year. Yes, there were still concerts to look forward to in the spring, but MPA served as the ultimate judgement of how good the band is as a whole. We would travel together to another location and play a series of pieces and be judged against a metric that included other bands across the state. The highlight of MPA was always the sight reading portion in which we had to play a piece as perfectly as possible in one go.

It is hard to explain how difficult this is to someone who may not know how to read music but imagine you were given a speech in school that was filled with words you have never seen in your life and it’s littered with commas and punctuation marks. Now, you’re expected to stand before a group of people you’ve never met and you need to recite the speech as perfectly as you can, hitting each and every emotional beat and pausing for every single comma without ever practicing. Everything you need is there on the page, you just need to sound it out in your mind before you start. Good luck!

Perhaps, I’m exaggerating a bit, but it truly is an excellent test of how well students understand how to read music—a test I would definitely fail right now years removed from the last time I picked up a trumpet.

March officially marks the start of MPA for several bands in Shelby County who will soon undergo the same nerve-wracking, but exciting brain-teasing experience.

In order to prepare—and show off to their parents—several bands hold pre-MPA concerts to provide motivation and an excuse to practice and get ready for the assessment. Thompson High School’s Concert Band, Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble recently did just that and got to perform alongside a professional pianist—Dr. Rachel Park of Jacksonville State University.

As I bounced about the auditorium snapping photos, I listened to all three bands perform a series of pieces with exotic textures like the sounds captured in Rolan Barrett’s “Arabian Dances” or the mighty and emotional rollercoaster of “Fate of the Gods” by Steve Reineke.

If you listened closely, you would hear mistakes here and there or the hesitant notes of a solo from a nervous student. However, the students definitely played better than I ever did and still have time to patch up any holes with the remaining weeks left before MPA. I wish a hearty, “Good luck” to all the band students in Shelby County in their MPA endeavors, and while I never have to worry about a surprise sheet of music standing in my path, I’ve got plenty of breaking news stories I have to sight-write.