High School Orchestras Earn Prestigious Invite

It’s an honor to have one Fulton County school perform at the Midwest Clinic, but to have three? Chattahoochee, Johns Creek and Alpharetta high schools all have earned invitations to perform at the prestigious international band and orchestra conference. 

“This is unprecedented,” said Jessica Booth, fine arts coordinator for the Fulton County School System. “Never in the Midwest Clinic’s history have three schools been selected from one district in the same year.”

The Midwest Clinic, which began in 1946, annually draws the nation’s best musical talent to Chicago. It exists to raise the standards of music education and to develop new teaching techniques, and also to hold clinics, lectures, and demonstrations for the betterment of music education. The conference is attended by more than 15,000 musicians and music educators each year and is the largest convention of its kind in the world.

The performances by Fulton County’s schools will take place next week at Chicago’s McCormick Place West Convention Center. The Alpharetta High School Symphony, directed by Sheldon Fisher and Mike Walsh, will perform Dec. 19, while the Johns Creek Philharmonia Orchestra, directed by Young Kim, and the Chattahoochee Chamber Orchestra, directed by Lyndon Lawless, both will perform Dec. 21. The performances will mark the second appearance by both Alpharetta and Chattahoochee’s orchestras and the first for Johns Creek High School. 

Program selections for the upcoming performances include masterworks by Vivaldi, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Wagner, Bartok, and Grieg as well as newly composed works for all performance levels of orchestras.  Also featured will be a newly published jazz piece by Northview Orchestra Director Tim Aucoin whose Northview Chamber Orchestra performed at Midwest in 2004 and 2010.