REGIONAL—Being selected to perform in the All-State Music Festival Concert is considered the highest honor an Iowa high school musician can achieve.
N’West Iowa had 48 students selected for the honor this year, including a talented two selected for the fourth straight year. Here is a look at them.
Madeline Heemstra
MOC-Floyd Valley High School senior Madeline Heemstra admits she chose to play the viola mostly as a way to set herself apart from her twin sister.
“My twin sister chose violin, and I was like, ‘No way am I doing the same thing as her,’” she said.
Heemstra chose the viola as a small act of resistance, but she has grown to love the instrument.
Finding precise language for that love is as difficult as it is describing what is beautiful about music, however.
“You can never really put music into words — it’s the emotion it evokes out of people that is really quite interesting, and just amazing to watch happen, especially in large crowds,” Heemstra said. “Part of the reason I like the viola so much is because it’s lower than the violin, and so you have more depth to the sound — and it covers such a wide range of notes. You get all that lower octave and that beautiful, rich sound, but yet we can still play almost as high as the violin — it just takes a lot more practice.”
She has been playing in the school district’s orchestra since the third grade, but becoming a four-year all-stater was not on Heemstra’s bucket list as a ninth-grader auditioning for the All-State Music Festival.
“I just kind of tried out for the fun of it,” Heemstra said.
That first year was during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the All-State Music Festival Concert took place virtually.
“My sophomore year, I just felt like, ‘Well, I did it last year, I might as well do it this year’ — and then I somehow got in again,” Heemstra said. “That was the first year we actually got to have all-state in person.”
It also was the festival’s 75th anniversary, and the 2021 All-State Music Festival Concert included a special concert performed by all-state alumni.
“It was phenomenal,” Heemstra said. “Some of them had to be virtual, obviously, because there was still COVID going on, but they were people from all over the world, and they sent in videos and some people were live.”
The concert included music from the festival’s three performance categories — band, orchestra and chorus — and during the performance, information about individual performers was displayed on screen.
“That was really cool to see. What you could do with music, and where you could go in a career outside of high school,” Heemstra said.
Heemstra does not plan to play music professionally — she plans to study a field related to environmental science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins next year — but she said she will find ways to play and perform as often as she can.
“I’ll definitely play in local orchestras and pit orchestras and community things like that,” she said.
Heemstra also plans to audition for the orchestra at Colorado State.
At this year’s all-state concert, Heemstra said she is most looking forward to performing “Jupiter,” a widely known classical piece from Gustav Holst’s Planet Suite.
“It’s just a super cool and pretty famous song,” she said.
Heemstra said she jumps at any opportunity to play classical music with an orchestra on stage.
“I love contemporary music, and it’s fun and different, but the classical stuff is the reason the orchestra is the way it is, so I really love doing stuff like that,” she said.
For four years running, Heemstra said all-state has been a formative experience.
“When you get to a place like all-state, every single one of those kids truly wants to be there, and you can just hear that. And the conductors are usually phenomenal, and excellent at what they do,” Heemstra said.
“It’s really an experience not like anything else I’ve ever done.”
Jaedalyn De Goei
Sioux Center High School senior Jaedalyn De Goei was in fifth grade the first time she performed in a chorus that included student singers from across the state of Iowa.
“I’ve just always kind of felt connected to music,” she said. “It’s been one of those things that I could always go to and rely on.”
De Goei went on to perform three more times in Iowa’s annual OPUS Honor Choir Festival, which is for students in grades 5-9.
Once De Goei became a high school student, she auditioned for the Iowa All-State Music Festival, which is open to students in grades 9-12.
This year, De Goei joins the ranks of the four-year all-staters.
“It’s really chilling, just to be singing with all those people on stage,” she said.
All-state participants spend the weekend of the festival preparing the musical selections they will perform at the festival’s conclusion, taking the stage before a packed audience in Hilton Coliseum on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames.
De Goei said OPUS was good preparation for all-state, but the process of preparing to audition for the latter is more demanding — and ultimately more rewarding.
“It’s definitely a transition,” she said. “Number one, the practice hours, and number two, the commitment.”
De Goei, who has auditioned the last four years as an alto, prepared for her audition each year with a group of three other students — a soprano, tenor and bass.
The group begins practicing the year’s musical selections together early in the fall semester, spending hours learning the music, eventually weaving tight harmonies in the choir practice room.
“You work super hard all throughout the fall, up to and until the audition,” she said.
One of her favorite pieces selected for the all-state performance this year is “Ama Namin,” a setting of the traditional “Lord’s Prayer” composed by Fidel G. Calalang Jr. in Tagalong, the ethnic language of the Tagalong people in the Philippines.
“In a smaller group, that one sounds kind of midlevel, but I hope that with the full choir, it’s going to sound a lot more cathedral-like,” De Goei said.
“The most challenging piece this year would probably be ‘Regina Coeli,’ just because it’s a lot of moving parts,” she added.
“Regina Coeli” is a prayer addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the liturgy of the Catholic Church, and the students performing at the all-state festival will perform one of the three settings composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
“It’s in Latin, so it’s in an easier language, but with all the moving parts, all the changing notes, with all the solo aspects in there, it’s just more challenging to put together. But it’s a really fun, upbeat Mozart piece,” De Goei said.
De Goei has auditioned as an alto each of the four years she has auditioned for all-state, but that’s mostly because the alto slot was the only slot open when she made the decision to attend Sioux Center High School rather than one of the Christian high schools in the region after eighth grade.
“I didn’t want to jinx anything the following years,” she said. “But I still think I’m a true soprano.”
De Goei hopes to study music production at Berklee College of Music in Boston after she graduates in the spring.
Even as a high school student, De Goei already has spent plenty of time singing on stage, performing in school musicals and in her family’s church.
But that does not mean she never gets nervous, she said.
“I do get stage fright. I get audition fright,” De Goei said. “But then, the moment I’m in there, the moment I’m performing, it goes away.”
N’WEST IOWA ALL-STATE SELECTIONS:
The top students in N’West Iowa’s high school bands, choruses and orchestras will perform 7:30 p.m. today (Saturday, Nov. 18) at the 77th annual All-State Music Festival Concert at Iowa State University’s Hilton Coliseum in Ames.
Auditions for musicians in Lyon, O’Brien, Osceola and Sioux counties took place in October in Le Mars.
Forty-eight students in N’West Iowa earned all-state honors this year. They were:
CENTRAL LYON:
Gabrielle Rasmussen, senior, cornet, first year.
Amber Langholdt, freshman, soprano, first year.
MOC-FLOYD VALLEY:
Autumn Anderson, sophomore, alto, first year.
Alice Boggs, junior, viola, third year.
Evelyn Bundt, sophomore, soprano, first year.
Sarah Diekevers, junior, violin, second year.
Roman Fude, senior, bass, second year.
Madeline Heemstra, senior, viola, fourth year.
Max Koenig, sophomore, tenor, second year.
Beckett Masters, freshman, tenor saxophone, first year.
Hannah McCoppin, junior, flute, third year.
Charlie Moeller, senior, trombone, first year.
Lily Moeller, sophomore, euphonium, first year.
Austin Taylor, freshman, string bass, first year.
Taliya Van Holland, junior, trombone, first year.
Abby Wallinga, sophomore, trumpet, first year.
Joyce Zheng, junior, trumpet, third year.
OKOBOJI:
Elliana Antoine, freshman, alto, first year.
ROCK VALLEY:
Miles Bulthuis, senior, bass, second year.
Trinity Vander Schaaf, sophomore, alto, first year.
SHELDON:
Valerie Cook, junior, French horn, third year.
Preston Crawley, junior, tenor, second year.
Theresa Nilles, freshman, French horn, first year.
SIOUX CENTER:
Maria Bloom, sophomore, clarinet, second year.
Clara Beutler, junior, soprano, first year.
Jaedalyn De Goei, senior, alto, fourth year.
Anna Else, senior, soprano, second year.
Amy Garcia Granillo, senior, tenor, first year.
Cori Harald, senior, alto, second year.
Abram Hibma, senior, bass, first year.
Ezra Hibma, freshman, bass, first year.
Evan Hurst, sophomore, French horn, first year.
Amanda King, soprano, sophomore, first year.
Bryce Oosterink, sophomore, tenor, first year.
Carlee Pieper, freshman, clarinet, first year.
Anna Truesdell, sophomore, percussion, second year.
Micah Vande Vegte, junior, tenor, second year.
Rylan Vande Vegte, sophomore, flute, first year.
UNITY CHRISTIAN:
Jaiden Kooima, senior, viola, first year.
Jocelyn Muilenburg, senior, string bass, second year.
Benjamin Ploegstra, sophomore, cello, first year.
Laura Ross, senior, violin, third year.
Mikayla Vollink, senior, trombone, second year.
WEST LYON:
Cooper Carolan, sophomore, tenor, first year
Ethan Feikema, senior, trombone, second year
Landon Pottebaum, senior, bass, second year
Jana Ter Wee, senior, alto, third year
WESTERN CHRISTIAN:
Maeva Haveman, senior, violin, first year.