String Fest Timeline for Planning

 

String Fest is a huge undertaking.  It involves ALL the district's orchestra students and teachers, from elementary through high school.  Each grade level prepares a piece of their own to perform at the String Fest evening concert, and then everyone prepares the same multi-level grand finale piece.  There is a field trip to the high school's field house during the day where each group gets their own rehearsal time and then the combined groups get a combined rehearsal in the afternoon followed by the evening concert for families.  It is a great opportunity to build community and for elementary orchestra students to see and hear the older students and to envision themselves as one day performing as part of the high school orchestras. 

Planning for this one-day event begins the previous spring with scheduling the date and continues throughout the fall and early winter with a lot of collaboration between all the orchestra teachers.  The district that I attended as a student did not have an event like this, so I had a lot to learn when I began teaching in a district that has a tradition of an annual String Fest.  To keep track of everything that needed to be done, I created a timeline for planning.  There is so much that needs to happen behind the scenes in order for the day to run smoothly and can be overwhelming.

Please check with your admin/school/district for procedures and policies (like scheduling dates, reserving rooms, permission slip forms, how to handle student meds on a field trip, etc.), but here is the guide I created to help myself not to forget any of the details from year to year along.  It also includes links to some supporting documents and blog posts:

• String Fest timeline for planning (Google Doc)

I'm sure I'll be adding more at some point, but here's a start towards planning a district-wide String Fest.  What else would you like to know?  Or, what additional resources would be helpful to see?  Happy planning!

Banuwa Arrangement

 

Our combined elementary orchestras just performed my arrangement of "Banuwa" for our district-wide String Fest again, so I thought it was about time I shared the arrangement here.  Second-year players performed "Banuwa" in December for the winter concert, and then they played it again for String Fest a month later--this time together with the first-year players.  It's a very straight-forward arrangement (with a little syncopated section towards the end that can be taught more by rote), with the beginning parts all in unison and only using the D string notes plus open D and A.  Intermediate parts use D Major scale notes (including F# on the E string for violins).  Intermediate cellos get featured at m. 41 along with a little solo moment at m. 44 and m. 48, and intermediate basses have a couple of spots when they are the only instrument playing on beats 3 and 4.

I updated the parts this year to include a version with limited alpha notes, like just at the beginning of a phrase or at a bigger skip, and then printed parts out double-sided, regular notation on one side and the alpha version on the other, so students could choose which side they wanted to read from.

I like the sound of the different layers adding and building, with a big unison phrase at the end.

Sheet music (PDF):

• Score and parts (includes both regular notation and alpha parts)

Audio (WAV files) to preview or for students to play along with to practice:

• Whole piece, quarter = 80
• Whole piece, quarter = 120
• Whole piece, quarter = 200

• Beginning-m. 17, quarter = 80
• Beginning-m. 17, quarter = 160

• Beginning-m. 9, quarter = 60
• Beginning-m. 9, quarter = 100

Enjoy!  I'd love to hear if you end up trying out this arrangement with your students!

Updated Repertoire Sheets/Packets

 

Happy New Year!  While preparing to make copies for second semester, I noticed the notation for some of the handouts wasn't as clear as I thought it could be.  I went into Finale, took new screenshots, and, sure enough, the print was much easier to read.  No student had ever complained to me that the music was hard to read, but once I get started with making one thing better, I'm on a roll and it's hard to stop.  So...here is a list of blog posts with updated handouts.  If you've used any of these in the past, you may want to check out the updated versions and try these instead.

Look for the note:

* = updated January 2026 for clearer resolution

Enjoy!

• Elementary Orchestra Solo/Ensemble, Part 1: Description and Additional Repertoire (both 1st and 2nd year additional repertoire sheets)
• Composition #4--G-string Notes (also added a reference of what the G string notes look like on the staff + finger number + letter name)
• G Major Composition (also updated to include G Major clues and musical tools)
• Scale Warm-up Sheet (D Major, G Major, C Major) (added more bowings including spiccato for all three keys as well as a higher octave and lower octave version for different instruments/keys)
• C/E String Notes (all three versions of this handout--regular notation, some alpha notes, all alpha notes)
• Summer Packets (both 1st and 2nd year summer packets)