CHAUTAUQUA – The Chautauqua County Music Teachers Association will hold its annual Spring All-County Concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater.

The concert will feature the county’s best student musicians from 20 school districts located in Chautauqua County in one of several music ensembles. Featured in this festival are the Elementary All-County Orchestra, Elementary, Junior, and Senior All-County Choruses, and the Junior and Senior All-County Bands, culminating in a combined finale of all junior and senior groups.

Each student is selected first by their school’s music teacher and from there the list is pared down by the CCMTA chairpeople, who select the students (in some cases by audition, teacher recommendation, or through a score received by playing a solo for a New York State-certified music adjudicator) who will make the final roster for each group.

Opening this year’s concert will be the All-County Elementary Orchestra, co-chaired by Sai Ceng, Jamestown Public Schools District, and Alexandrea Goff of Fredonia Central School, and conducted by Eve Rousey.

Following the orchestra will be the All-County Elementary Chorus, co-chaired by (Kevin Way of Fredonia Central School and Kasey Way of Bemus Point Central School, conducted by Lauren Helper, who teaches private voice and piano lessons for the South Buffalo School of Music and is the music director for the Musical Theater Intensive

Summer Camp at the Walh Performing Arts Studio in Orchard Park. Accompanying the Elementary Chorus will be Trevor Napoli (Fredonia).

Performing after the Elementary Chorus will be the All-County Junior Chorus, chaired by Jenna Devereaux of Panama Central School. This ensemble is comprised of close to 200 seventh and eighth graders. The guest conductor will be Dr. Vernon Huff, director of choral activities and associate professor of Choral Music Education at the State University at Fredonia. Charles Johnson will be accompanying the Junior High Chorus.

The All-County Junior Band, co-chaired by Carrie Pawelski of the Jamestown Public Schools District and Gina Wakefield of Clymer Central School, will follow the chorus. The band will be conducted by Chris Grifa, an Indiana middle school band teacher who is on staff with the Carmel High School marching band, which has won four Bands of America Grand National Championships during his time on staff.

After the Junior Band performance, the All-County Senior Chorus, chaired by Sally Thompson of Sherman Central School, will perform. Conductor Dr. Stephen Gusukuma will lead the ensemble. Gusukuma has conducted on the stage of Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, at the 2014 MusicFest Canada, Texas Music Educators Association Convention, and in top tier venues such as National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Accompanying the Senior Chorus will be Kent Knappenberger of Westfield Academy and Central School.

Rounding out the evening of music will be the All-County Senior Band, co-chaired by Andrew Minton of Frewsburg Central School under the baton of Andy Oldham, the director of instrumental music at Ragsdale High School in Jamestown, N.C.

Since the 1960s, the concert’s moving finale has been Wilhousky’s arrangement of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” performed by a combination of the junior and senior bands and choruses. This year the finale will be directed by guest conductor Anne Dolce, retired from Panama Central School and the Jamestown Public Schools District. Dolce graduated from Jamestown High School and pursued her bachelor’s in music education degree from Dolce from West Virginia University. Upon graduation from WVU she taught high school band in Prince George’s County, Maryland and taught seventh and eighth grade band at Walt Whitman Intermediate and was also the Assistant Silkline Director for the Mount Vernon High School Marching Band in Fairfax County, Virginia. Dolce moved back home to Chautauqua County in 1992 where she spent the next 30 years as the Director of Bands at Panama Central School until her retirement in 2022.

The concert itself lasts under two hours, but the time and preparation that go into the festival far exceed that moment in time on stage. Students begin rehearsing their music as soon as they receive it from their chairperson, sometime in early spring.

On the day of the concert, musicians will begin arriving on the grounds between 8 and 8:30 a.m. for a prompt 9 a.m. rehearsal start. The day continues with more rehearsals, lunch, and a few small breaks in between, until the students have dinner and dress for the concert.

Presale tickets are now available online at ccmta.ticketleap.com and will also be available at the door one half hour prior to the concert. Adult tickets are $5 cash; children under 5 admitted free. Parking in the institution main lot will be free.