The NYC High School Honors Music Festival planning committee is pleased to announce the 11th annual NYC High School Honors Music Festival, to be held once again at the Grand Street Campus High Schools (850 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY - L to Grand Street) on Friday, March 14th and Saturday, March 15, 2025. This festival will consist of a Full Orchestra, Symphonic Band, Chorus, Jazz Ensemble, and a Modern Band comprising students representing the best of as many NYC Public, Private and Charter schools as possible. The Festival will consist of rehearsals Friday March 14th from 4pm to 9pm and Saturday March 15 from 9am to 130pm with a culminating concert at 2pm. Directors nominating students are highly encouraged to attend the festival with students both Friday and Saturday.
This year's distinguished guest conductors are as follows:
Music Teachers are encouraged to nominate their best and most reliable students for the festival.
Please understand that not all nominated students can be accepted, but as many as possible will be. We seek representation from all participating programs.
Directors are responsible for distributing, collecting and submitting permission slips for accepted students as well as notifying the festival chair ASAP of any students who have to withdraw from the festival. Our goal is to completely avoid having no-shows the day of the festival. Directors are also responsible for printing and distributing music as per part assignments and making sure students prepare their music before the festival. Directors will be sent pdf's of all documents and music, with the legal permission of the publisher.
Please collect the following information from students before nominating them for the Festival:
Student's Name
Student's Email
Parent's Email & Phone #
Emergency Contact Name & #
For the Chorus, Jazz Ensemble, Symphonic Band, and Full Orchestra, music teachers will also be asked some basic questions about each nominee. This will help us create properly balanced ensembles and pick appropriate music. Music teachers are asked to give each nominated student a rank per ensemble. For example, if you are nominating 10 total students for the choir, rank them 1 (best) to 10 (worst) on the grounds of ability and reliability.
For the Modern Band, students will submit their own audition recordings and application.
Follow this link for the Modern Band application.
**NEW THIS YEAR**
For the Jazz Band, students will be required to record an audition in a short video that will be submitted in the form below. Please share
THIS LINK with your interested musicians. They should record themselves in a video and upload that video to YouTube as "Unlisted." Please have your students share the link to their unlisted YouTube video with you once their video is complete, which you will include in the nomination form.
This year music teachers must submit all nominations on the online form below. THERE WILL BE NO PAPER FORM TO NOMINATE STUDENTS.
Nominations are due by
11/22/24 - notifications of acceptance will go out in the end of December.
