LIBBY — The Music Department at Libby High School will host this year’s Class A Northwest Band Festival on Jan. 28 and 29.

The two-day festival will culminate with the festival concert finale at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 29, in the Libby High School gymnasium. The concert is free and open to the public.

This year, the Northwest Band Festival brings together the bands and their directors from Hamilton (Shawn Thacker), Stevensville (Jeremy Ruff), Polson (Rich Sawyer), and Libby (Brenda Nagode). The bands pair up to create two large festival bands.

They prepare their parts for the selected music back home in their own band rooms and come to the festival ready to have their efforts shaped into a concert performance under the batons of master conductors.

Since there are generally more percussionists in these combined bands than there are written parts to be played, those musicians will divide up into master classes and percussion ensembles.

They will have the privilege of working with a percussion specialist for the two days. These groups also perform in the final concert.

This year, Libby’s symphonic band will be paired with Polson. The music they have selected to perform include a quick-step march called “Pas Redouble” by Camille Saint-Saens, an overture by Pierre La Plante named “American Riversongs” and a pop-style piece arranged by Jay Bocook featuring the music of “The Incredibles.”

The festival begins at 9 a.m. Monday, Jan. 28.

Each band will perform separately its own prepared program for the festival. The clinicians will act as adjudicators, “district festival style,” which means they will listen to the performance while following along with a copy of the conductor’s score.

They write comments about the band’s performance that include points of criticism as well as words of praise. The bands review these written comments with their own directors. They often have much to learn from the observations of the skilled ears of these master conductors.

The schedule of individual band performances is as follows: 9 a.m. – Libby, 9:45 a.m. – Polson, 10:30 a.m. – Stevensville, 11:15 a.m. – Hamilton. The rest of the two days is spent on combined band rehearsals as they prepare for the Tuesday night concert.