KINBURN – The Stonecrest Elementary School Grade 7 and 8 Band are Capital Region MusicFest 2019 Gold Standard winners.

The band was honoured with the Gold Standard on Feb. 23 after performing three pieces for judging at the prestigious festival which is an affiliate of MusicFest Canada. The annual event features more than 100 concert bands from all over Eastern Ontario performing before professional adjudicators. There is also a jazz division.

This year’s festival was held at Hillcrest High School and Stonecrest performed their pieces on Feb. 20. Stonecrest performed Summit March, As We Sleep and Dark Adventure.

Band leader and teacher Nicole Vaillancourt-Hass says it’s a fun, grueling time.

“It’s four full days,” she told West Carleton Online from the school Friday, March 1 just as the band was breaking up after practice. “From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. From beginner bands to adult professional ensembles. It requires a lot of discipline on the students’ part. It’s really a team activity. They have to focus on their music but listen to the others and work together.”

It is not a competition against the other bands though. Each band is judged on their own performance and awarded their standard based on that. Vaillancourt-Hass has taught music at Stonecrest for the last 13 years.

This year’s band is made up of 46 students “mostly second year students and some really keen first years.”

“I’m extremely pleased,” Nicole Vaillancourt-Hass said. “I feel they did tremendously well considering there was a switch in teachers (maternity) part way through last year. I feel they really pulled together. That’s why I think music education is so important. There are kids that wouldn’t have this opportunity if it wasn’t for this.”

Two Stonecrest students taking every opportunity they get to perform, are band members Garrett Box of Woodlawn and Kieran Martin of Constance Bay. Box, 14, is a second-year member, and it’s 13-year-old Martin’s first year.

Box plays baritone in the band but has taken piano and guitar all his life. Martin, a percussionist, also studies dance at the West Carleton School for Performing Arts.

“It wasn’t that stressful because I felt like I’ve done it before,” Martin told West Carleton Online. “But it was still adrenaline pumping.”

Box agrees.

“It was tons of fun,” he said. “I like doing any performing I can do. I usually do a lot of singing.”

Box also plays a lot of sports, and he says there are lots of similarities.

“It’s actually the feeling I crave most, that adrenaline rush,” Box said. “You feel it, then you just focus on the music. You’re shaking in the halls and then you sit down and you’re ready.”

Martin says the band had their jitters but were confident in their chops.

“We were kind of iffy, but we knew what we could do if we played our best,” she said.

MusicFest requires each band perform three pieces – a march, one chosen from a list and the third selection is up to the conductor.

“For our choice, we went with Dark Adventure,” Vaillancourt-Hass said. “It’s very mysterious, but a driving, exciting piece.”

As We Sleep is a piece written by Canadian Ryan Meeboer.

While Music Fest is over, the Grade 7 and 8 band still has one big show to go.

On Thursday, April 25, the band will be performing a concert at Stonecrest at 7 p.m. that is open to the public. The school band will be joined by the Ottawa Valley Concert Band.

“It’ll be great,” Vaillancourt-Hass said. “It’s a nice way to lose the musical season and then the sports season kind of takes over here in spring.”