Andover Band Getting Ready for Trip Across the Pond

Band and orchestra students at Andover High School were honored recently with a very special delivery of the official invitation to participate in the 2012 Edinburgh Easter Festival in Scotland. Catherine Longworth, the lord mayor of Westminster, and Bob Bone, director of Youth Music of the World, visited from London last month to speak to a large crowd of students and parents about this opportunity.

The students will depart April 2, stopping first in London for two days of sightseeing. The group then will travel to Scotland, where it will perform in two gala concerts in historic Edinburgh venues such as Greyfriars Church, St. John's Church and St. George's Church. The highlight of the festival will be April 8, Easter Sunday, when the Andover band and orchestra will perform in the Princes Street Gardens with the backdrop of Edinburgh Castle.

The program has traveled regularly every two years — alternating national and international trips — most recently performing in the London New Year's Day Parade in 2008 and at The National Band and Orchestra Invitational at Carnegie Hall in 2010. The group performed in the Edinburgh Easter Festival once before in 2004. With the pending merger of Lahser High School and Andover to Bloomfield Hills High School in 2013, this will be the last trip for the musicians under the Andover banner.

To help defray the trip expenses, Andover music students will sell Koeze nuts and candy during November. Koeze is a Michigan company best-known for gourmet nuts, chocolates and gift baskets.

If you would like to help send an Andover student to perform in Scotland by making a purchase, please contact any Andover band or orchestra student or Marsha Suszan at marshtron@aol.com.

This article was submitted by Patch reader Brenda Zureick, the mother of three current or former Bloomfield Hills Schools students, including a senior at Andover. She is helping promote the Andover Instrumental Music Supporters.

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