A four-day visit to New York City is a manageable trip, but when you bring along 174 high school students, it can get a little interesting.

Fortunately, the Bangor High School music department had it all under control when its members went to the Big Apple this month for the Heritage Music Festival. From April 17 to 20, directors William Bell, George Redman and Scott Burditt brought the best of the best of their orchestra, band and choir students to the highly competitive festival, and returned bearing an armload of awards.

“The orchestra and the [Bangor High School] fiddlers each received gold awards, and were the only two groups to get that,” said Bell, who directs the orchestra. “Our orchestra had the distinction of being the highest-scoring group of any at the festival.”

In total, BHS music groups received seven plaques, including gold plaques for the orchestra, the fiddlers and the vocal jazz choir. They also received five trophies, including Outstanding Orchestra, the Adjudicator Award for the orchestra and the fiddlers, which recognizes any group scoring more than 95 points, the Sweepstakes Award for the school with the highest overall instrumental scores, and the Festival Sweepstakes Trophy, for schools bringing three or more groups to the festival (BHS brought seven total).

Considering they were competing against groups from even bigger schools from all over the country, that’s no small feat. BHS also had the distinction of being the only group to bring along a fiddling group – an up-and-coming phenomenon among high school music departments.

“Fiddlers are to the orchestra as jazz band is to concert band, kind of,” said Bell, who directs the fiddlers. “It’s all folk music, Acadian and Celtic and Appalachian music. There are a few others in Maine, like the Abbott Hill Ramblers in Farmington. It’s catching on up here in the Northeast. We didn’t have anyone to compete against at the festival, so it just added to our raw score.”

The jazz, concert and chamber choirs, all directed by Redman, had the added bonus of performing in the Riverside Church on Riverside Drive.

“All the choruses got to perform in the main sanctuary at the church, which is a gorgeous old Gothic-style sanctuary that’s built for choral singing,” said Bell. “It sounded amazing. That was really neat for them.”

Bell, Redman, Burditt, the 21 chaperones and their students found time to do some NYC sightseeing as well – they attended Broadway shows, including “Phantom of the Opera,” “The Lion King” and “Blue Man Group,” visited Times Square and museums, and took a cruise around the bay. A year’s worth of concession sales, auctions and raffles to raise funds for the trip paid off big-time.

For more information on the Heritage Music Festivals, visit www.heritagefestivals.com.

eburnham@bangordailynews.net

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