Every year, auditions for the Senior District festival are hosted. Anyone who wants to audition is split into one of the four groups that includes a variety of instruments or voice parts. These groups are choir, orchestra, band and jazz band. Each group prepares a piece of music and practices scales along with sight reading. 

Freshman member of the Hingham High School chorus, Asher Ellis, states that she auditioned because “I wanted to see if I would make it…my experiences with honor choirs have been great because they are really fun and a great learning experience to make my choir skills better.” In past years, he has auditioned and been accepted into festivals like Junior Districts and Junior SEMSBA and would highly recommend the experience to others wanting to audition.

Another member of the Hingham High School choir, Reese Warshaw, has experience with the same festivals along with being accepted into Senior Districts last year. She auditioned because she says she has “a passion for singing and it would help me pursue it in the future and it looks great on resumes.” She describes the festivals as “prestigious and hard to get into.” Reese says, “My experience with these choirs is that, yes, it is a big commitment and very demanding, but I also made a bunch of new friends.”

When someone gets accepted into Senior Districts, they are given multiple songs and a few months to learn them to the best of their abilities using resources around them like recordings or music teachers. On the day of and before the festival, students go to a school that differs each year and the entire group practices together for up to six hours on a Friday, as the students are excused from school. The next day, there are a couple more hours of rehearsal and after, the group has a performance. Typically, festivals like these will split the four groups into two different concerts.  

This article only features quotes from people who auditioned, and got into, the Senior Districts choir, but many people in both the orchestra and band have had similar experiences. Ones in which they have met new people and were given chances to improve their musical abilities past the walls of classrooms.