Nikki in All-State

Nikki Evans, junior music education major, participated in the All-Collegiate Orchestra during the January meeting of the Missouri Music Educators Association.  Here's her wrap-up to the event:

"Participating in this year's All-Collegiate Orchestra at the MMEA Convention is probably going to be one of my fondest memories of college.  It was such a departure from what I'm used to, coming from our standard-sized semi-professional orchestra, to be surrounded by a huge group of students.  (I forget the exact numbers, but I would be willing to bet that the orchestra was the size of our entire department combined.)  The conductor, Thomas Sleeper from the University of Miami, was awesome to work with--he knew exactly what he wanted from us, and he was not going to let us get away with giving him anything less than his precise expectations.  I love the opportunity to work under different people and I was certainly not disappointed by him.  Overall, it was a fairly intense couple of days--we had approximately fourteen hours of rehearsal and a 45 minute performance within 48 hours of meeting--but I feel like everyone grew musically and we had a great time doing so.  It's an experience I would have hated to miss out on."