CHMS band invited to superstate
The Clarendon Hills Middle School eighth-grade band has been invited to perform at the prestigious University of Illinois SuperState Concert Band Festival May 5 at the Krannert Center in Champaign-Urbana.
It’s been a decade since a CHMS band has performed at SuperState, with the last appearance in 2013. At SuperState, three classes of high schools are invited to perform, based on school size, but only one middle school class, which makes it extremely competitive and difficult to be chosen at that level.
The CHMS eighth-grade band and was one of only eight middle school bands across the entire state selected to perform.
In order to be selected, directors need to submit recordings of their bands performing live, which are reviewed by world-renowned adjudicators. Recordings were due in late February, and bands were notified of their acceptance on March 31.
“These students in particular had the most difficult time of anyone coming out of COVID, as they had only started playing their instruments for a few months in fifth grade before COVID hit in 2020,” band director Eric Morong said. “To go from learning to play their instruments through Zoom lessons to getting to SuperState with the best bands in the state of Illinois is a momentous achievement. I couldn’t be more proud to be their teacher. We look forward to representing CCSD181, and the Clarendon Hills/Hinsdale community at this festival.”
TEENS COMPETE AT NATIONAL BOWL
Hinsdale Central’s Jiming Chen and Jeffrey Liu competed in the 2023 National Academic Quiz Tournament’s Individual Player National Championship April 2 in Rosemont. Chen placed 62nd, Liu 63rd.
Two hundred students from 26 states and South Korea competed in the championship, the top single player competitive event for quiz bowl.
This quiz bowl event is extraordinary in that it is an individual competition, without the support of teammates. Quiz bowl is a competitive, academic, interscholastic activity for teams of students. Quiz bowl teams use buzzers and answer questions about science, math, history, literature, mythology, geography, social science, current events, sports, and popular culture. Quiz bowl matches feature a blend of individual competition and team collaboration, since no individual player is likely to be an expert in all subject areas.
Participation in quiz bowl both reinforces lessons from the classroom and encourages players to develop new intellectual interests.
SOLSTICE EARNS SILVER CROWN
The Columbia Scholastic Press Association has awarded a Silver Crown to the 2021-22 edition of Solstice, the art and literary magazine produced by students and staff from Central.
In December, the school learned the magazine was a finalist for a Crown Award, the highest recognition CSPA gives to a student print or digital medium for overall excellence, and that the association would announce in March if the publication won a Gold or Silver Crown.
Solstice is one of 20 high school print literary magazines in the country, and the only one from Illinois, to receive this honor.
