Holy Name of Mary students perform in regional event

Student musicians from the Holy Name of Mary School participated in the annual Catholic School Honor Band Festival at St. Anthony’s High School in Huntington on March 7.

The event, now in its thirty-fourth year, included students from 42 of the 43 Catholic elementary schools operated by the Diocese of Rockville Centre. The Honor Band first performed as a group of 100 young musicians in 1982. This year’s concert featured more than 700 students.

The Honor Band is made up of outstanding musicians from Catholic schools across Nassau and Suffolk counties. It performed for two separate audiences of nearly 3,000 people, including family, friends, school principals, and administrators.

The performers have to be separated into two units, the Red Band and Blue Band, to allow for such large audiences to be accomodated

Each band is made up of three separate groups: a junior honor band, senior honor band and a wind ensemble, which features wind instrument musicians from the senior band.

All groups played genres ranging from original band compositions, classical transcriptions, marches, patriotic pieces, film scores and pop arrangements.

The students were led by Allan Fisher, an educational manager with Paul Effman Music Services, which maintains a retail store in Plainview as well as Lagrangeville and Poughkeepsie. Effman served as band leader prior to handing the baton to Fisher in 2007. He was on hand, though, to perform with his staff members.

“There is a wealth of expression in every child,” Effman said. “It is our duty to seek out and nurture the music and art in each and every student we educate.”