A Night of Broadway: DA’s Ticket to Midwest
Written By: Sophie Baxter
Edited By: Harper Bell-Kimbro
“A Night of Broadway” is an event hosted by DA’s Orchestra. This year, the proceeds from their performance went towards the symphony taking a trip to Chicago for the 2026 Midwest Clinic later this year. The Midwest Clinic is an international band and orchestral conference that attracts over 18000 attendees annually.
The performance was a great success. DA’s Musical Theatre department and Symphony came together to perform songs from 14 different musicals including Wicked, Ragtime, Les Misérables, The Sound of Music, and Sweeny Todd.
As expressed by Reign Cargile a 12th grade visual arts major, “I thought the [performance] was spectacular and very engaging. I loved hearing music I new and learning songs I didn’t know. The performers did a great job communicating the intent of the music.”
Jashaiya-Lee Daniels, a 12th grade piano major stated that “I think the pops concert is the coolest concert we have during the whole year, it was a really good kickoff to the year.”
History
“A Night of Broadway” is from an annually held performance series called the DA Band Fall Pops Concert.
Last year’s pops concert was attended by over 350 people, including students from LaVilla who might eventually attend DA. This is also when Mr. Michanowicz the new jazz director started at DA.
Midwest Clinic
Mr. Griffin, stated that the Midwest Clinic is “an invitation only opportunity for the best high school and middle school bands and orchestras in the country. It’s an international conference, the world’s largest for music educators. Over 17,000 band and orchestra directors attend annually. Most of the time when I or Mr. Shistle goes, were going as directors so we just go to listen to other bands and learn best practices from leaders in our field.” This year, DA was the only high school symphony orchestra to get invited.
Receiving an invitation to this conference is a great honor. The amount of talent it takes to be invited to this event will make a member stand out so much in the band and orchestra world. Mr. Griffin mentioned that “students that are applying to top conservatories and music schools when they say they performed in the Midwest clinic it basically validates and certifies that they can play at the highest level in an ensemble.”
Applying for Midwest
Mr. Griffin highlighted that “This time, we got invited so we applied last spring and it was a really thorough process we had to submit a recording of course, a picture, and bios of our two directors, video, we had to rent Jacoby Symphony Hall downtown for an afternoon to get it done in there. We had to submit rosters of our seniors that were graduating. There’s all kinds of things we had to do to get ready for this. There’s no guarantee that you’re going to get invited, it’s the most competitive thing to get invited to perform at in the country.” This year, 68 students, faculty, and chaperones are going to Chicago.
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