Perseverance paid off for Lucas Jablonski.
Trying out for the 2022 Indiana All-State Band as a sophomore at Seymour High School, he wasn’t among the students chosen from around the state.
Undeterred, he came back as a junior and gave it another try. Before that, he had received advice from his band directors and began taking private lessons on the French horn.
The result? He was among the 86 students chosen for the Indiana All-State Band to perform Sunday at Purdue University in West Lafayette.
They will be joined by 88 members of the Indiana All-State Honor Band in a concert at 2:30 p.m. at Elliott Hall of Music.
A couple of weeks after auditioning Jan. 15 at Floyd Central High School, Jablonski received word he was chosen for the prestigious band.
“I’m just happy I made it, and hopefully, it gives me good experience for next year,” he said.
“Being around other players, especially ones that are better, just to see what they do and bring that back here and help the band just get better,” he said of what he hopes to take away from the experience.
The 2023 Indiana Bandmasters Association All-State Band Festival will run today through Sunday. After registering today, Jablonski and the rest of the band will learn chair placements for each section and then have their first rehearsal. Saturday will consist of more rehearsals so the students are ready for the finale concert Sunday.
Outstanding musicians in grades 9 through 12 who are students of IBA members are eligible to try out for the band. The student must be a member in good standing of his or her school’s band program throughout the school year.
All students auditioning pay a $10 entry fee per instrument and are required to play a chromatic scale and two etudes for their instrument. The chromatic scales are used to demonstrate the student’s mastery of the full range of the instrument. The etudes for all instruments are chosen to delineate between All-State Honor Band and All-State Band personnel and rank players within the sections of each band.
Each student also must sight-read an excerpt on his or her instrument.
After last year’s audition, Jablonski said he knew he needed to work a lot more on the French horn. That would include practicing on his own and taking private lessons. SHS Band Director Kevin Cottrill encouraged him to take lessons from a professional so he could get a better tone.
“My parents were OK with it. They were like, ‘That’s going to help with one of the biggest parts of your school career,’” Jablonski said. “I just decided to take it outside of class to improve my tone and all of the little details I needed.”
A few times each month, he met with Michael Stiles, a teacher at Columbus North High School who is pursuing a master’s degree in music at Indiana University.
“Obviously, I’ve learned a lot more here (at SHS) and I don’t have to build on as much, and I’ve seen the music theory stuff where you’d have to take a different class to do that, where (Stiles) is teaching me some of that little bits at a time,” Jablonski said.
Cottrill said working with Stiles has been good for Jablonski.
“Not only his tone but his technique is just much, much improved,” Cottrill said.
All of the time and effort he put in paid off at the All-State Band audition.
“It’s a big time commitment, for sure, but I’m a big advocate of go see the process, go learn the process if you want to make it as junior or senior, go through the process as a freshman because you play for another band director, they are taping what you’re playing,” Cottrill said.
After listening to the digital recordings from across the state, the judges picked members of the two bands. Jablonski was among them.
“At the end of that audition process, you just want to be in the mix, you want to be somebody that they want to listen to,” Cottrill said. “Obviously, to make the top 16 is a really special, special thing. We’re really proud of him. It’s an incredible accomplishment.”
Cottrill and the other two SHS band directors, Debra Carroll and Tim Johnston, were in All-State Band, too, so Jablonski has some great mentors at school.
“It’s just fun to see kids still doing things that you valued when you were in high school,” Cottrill said.
Jablonski said he started band in sixth grade and chose French horn.
“My mom had played French horn, so she suggested it,” he said. “I tried the mouthpiece, and I was like, ‘I don’t really know any of the instruments, so I might as well.’ I had a background in playing piano, so I had had some lessons, so I knew the notes and everything, which kind of helped me build. I think that’s why French horn was a little easier.”
He said it’s a more difficult instrument, but having that background in music helped.
“Learning an instrument in middle school is pretty difficult anyway because they are different wind instruments usually, but I think I’ve picked it up pretty well,” he said.
Jablonski earned gold medals at solo and ensemble contests all three years in middle school.
“Around eighth grade where it was my third solo and ensemble competition and I got gold, I was like, ‘OK, I think I could be pretty good at this in high school and stay with it,’” he said.
He has continued to earn medals at solo and ensemble in high school.
“In middle school, you’re learning the instrument, learning all of the things about it, and then you start to get more confident in high school just doing all of the competitions and playing in the wind ensemble and all that,” Jablonski said.
He had upperclassmen on the high end of musical ability to learn from, and that helped him improve and now take on a leadership role as one of the band’s drum majors.
Outside of band, Jablonski is on the newspaper and yearbook staffs and swimming, cross-country and track and field teams.
“He’s a young man of many talents,” Cottrill said. “He’s achieving at the highest level of our school academically.”
While Jablonski hasn’t decided what he wants to do after high school, Cottrill said studying music is a possibility.
“One of the things that begins in an all-state anything is it puts you on a list with music schools where you’re on their radar now. It doesn’t matter what music school it is,” Cottrill said. “This is something if he wanted to do in the future, he could do it. We’re not trying to make music majors, but if somebody wants to do that, he definitely has the opportunity to do that.”