The Malden High school band attended a competition called The Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors Association (MICCA) and earned a bronze medal. The event was held at the Hopkinton High School. The Malden band left Malden High School at 5:45 AM and had performed at 8:00 AM.
Erin O’Brien Mazza is the band director for Malden High. She had said that “[the MICCA competition] is not really a competition against different schools, it is really a competition against yourself.” She said that “There were probably around fifteen or twenty other schools there [for the competition].”
The competition is scored based, based on a rubric for bands to receive a certain amount of points to reach a score. When a band gets a total amount of one point, they will be ranked as participation. Getting a total of a two, the band gets a medal of merit. Three points gets the band a bronze medal, and at four the band gets silver medal, and at five the band gets a gold medal.
Mazza said that “[they] had gotten a lot of good compliments from the judges.” She said that ‘[they] gotten compliments on [their] balance, tone, and on the soloists that were performing” and that “the judges said that [they] needed to work more on articulation, which is how [they] play the style of the music.”
Mazza also added that “[they] performed one march, a song [she] chose, and a song from the list that the judges had given to [them].” She said that “the song that [she] had chosen was James sequin piece called Novania.”
According to Mazza, “[their] goal is to always try to get bronze since [they] know that [they] had made it past the two lower levels.” She said that “this year [they] had set the goal to bronze but next year [they] setted the goal to silver which is what [they] had talked about.”
Mazza said that the competition was different since they were kind of competing against themselves instead of other teams. Then you are scored on how good you did depending on the amount of points you get.
Wilson Chau is a Freshman in high school and he plays the trumpet for the Malden High school band. He has been playing the trumpet for about five years.
Chau said that “some good things [he] did good in while in the MICCA competition was helping everyone since he is the third support trumpet, [he] thought that [he] could had been a little louder since [he] was a bit quieter.”
Emily Cheang is a Freshman in high school and she plays the flute for the Malden High school band. She has been playing the flute for about two years now.
Cheang said that “some things [she] could had worked better on were accents, articulation, and dynamics.” She said that “[they] were able to keep the sound quality really good and everyone had balanced each other out.”
Cheang said that “[she] was surprised and was really happy, even though [they] wanted to get silver but [they] had a lot of mistakes on the way.”
The MICCA is a competition that the band has been going to every year to perform hard pieces they have been working on for months and be critiqued by music experts. As for future competitions, the band hopes to work harder to perform harder with better quality music.
