LSE Violinists Dameer Gustafson and Morgan Madsen, Violaists Rowan Johnson, Rachel Odabasi and Nicole Tinius and Bassist Emma von Scheliha were accepted into this year’s Nebraska Music Educators Association (NMEA) all state orchestra.

All state is a yearly tradition for the state of Nebraska, in which orchestra students from all over the state audition for the chance to represent the state in a concert. Participation in the event is held in high regard, in accordance with the difficulty required to get in. Hopefuls complete an audition including eight scales, a prepared piece, and a piece of music given at the time of the audition in front of a live panel of judges. In previous years, two to six Southeast students got in, so to have so many students get in this year is impressive.

That being said, this year the process for entry was slightly different. The live panel of judges was deemed unsafe due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and had to be replaced with virtual admissions. Students still had to play in front of a live audience (for Southeast students it was Orchestra Director Margaret Delaney) but they sent in their auditions to the judges in the form of three audio files. 

The audition still had to be played all in one go, as they would have been were the auditions normal. Last year NMEA introduced a digital option that served as a good test run for this year. Despite that, technical issues did still crop up. The servers that hosted this year’s auditions went down due to an influx of submissions at the deadline date, so the deadline was extended by four days.

Unfortunately, unless things change drastically between now and the currently unannounced concert date, the All State Orchestra will not be playing together at any point. The NMEA does plan on having a virtual concert. The current plan is to have all the individual orchestra members submit audio and video independently, at which point the NMEA will stitch them together for the final product.

Orchestra members will still get instruction by a professional performer of their particular instrument in a one hour master class. They will still be led by world class conductor Troy Petters.