Several all-state orchestra students on traveled to San Antonio’s Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center on Wednesday to partake in the largest music educators convention in the nation.

Once there, the students had to audition once again for the featured performances on Saturday.  

“This is my first year actually making all state, and since this process was new to me I worked really hard for the auditions in October in order to get in,” sophomore Nandika Chirala said. “After we first got here, we did a reseating to determine our chairs for the concert. This audition was really similar to the all region process, because it was a blind audition and all the other people in my section were in my room listening to me. Since I was aware of this, I tried to prepare in a way that would make me stand out in my audition.”

The 2019 TMEA clinic/convention consists of more than 280 clinics by music education experts, one-day music education technology preconference, about 100 performances by elementary to professional-level musicians, and all-state ensemble performances.

“The TMEA convention so far has been a really beneficial experience so far because preparing for auditions required a lot of hard work, and the orchestra rehearsals will hopefully teach me a lot about ensemble playing,” Chirala said. “Over the next few days, we will have rehearsals for several hours a day in order to prepare for our concert on Saturday night.”