Photo by: Stephanie Hall

Climbing the stairs of the University Center Friday afternoon, one would have heard the unmistakable sound of choir voices drifting sweetly out the doors of the UC ballroom, announcing the second day of the Colorado West Music Festival.

Over the course of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, School District 51 and CMU hosted approximately 5,000 students for the 88th annual Colorado West Music Festival. High school and middle school students came from all over the state as well as parts of Utah and Wyoming.

The largest of its kind in the state, the festival is a chance for high school and middle school choir, band and orchestra members to showcase their talents, compete and learn from other students.

“The objective is to have a high-quality music festival that you can take all of your middle school and high school music department ensembles to one place,” Director of Choral Activities Monte Atkinson said.

While the UC Ballroom and the Moss Performing Arts Center primarily hosted choir performances, area high schools welcomed bands and orchestras to perform in their auditoriums and gymnasiums.

“Right now, as we speak, at Palisade High School, orchestras are performing every 30 minutes, at Grand Junction High School, bands are playing every 30 minutes and here in the UC, there are choirs performing every 25 minutes or so,” Atkinson said. “There’s a category for everyone. That’s very unusual, and the fact that it has all these ensembles performing for the same festival, it’s sort of herculean.”

Choir members performing at CMU were judged on “vocal quality, pitch, rhythm, and their interpretation of musicality,” according to Jami Lewis, a District 51 music teacher who assisted the judges during the choir concerts.

Christina Alexander, a senior from Eaglecrest High School in Centennial, was singing with womens’ and mixed choirs at the Colorado West Music Fest for the second time.

“I think what I like best are the clinicians,” Alexander said. “They’re the people that come up and give us advice, compliment us on our performance. Those (comments) are really helpful to kind of give us a new perspective from what the director usually says.”

The university also benefits from the festival, according to Professor Atkinson, who cites the multitudes of students from the Front Range who otherwise would not have a chance to scope out the CMU campus as a prospective choice for higher education.

“It’s tough. Classes are disrupted, but campus is big, so we can handle that,” Atkinson said. “But, it’s a great thing. It’s well known. Whenever I go around anywhere, people refer to it as the Grand Junction music festival.”

cblackmer@mavs.coloradomesa.edu