The Highland Park High School Wind Symphony and Highland Park Middle School Honors bands have been selected as national winners in the 2021 Mark of Excellence National Wind Band Honors Project sponsored by The Foundation for Music Education.
The Mark of Excellence seeks to recognize and award outstanding achievement in performance by high school and middle school bands, choirs, and orchestras. It is a competition, entered through recorded submissions, in which the top 25% of the groups are selected as National Winners and the second 25% receive Commended Honors. During the past 14 years, the project has received entries from 38 states. This year, 236 entries were submitted.
This is the first time either HP band program has earned the coveted national title. Both have previously received Commended Honors. The HPISD band program congratulated the student musicians for achieving this prestigious national recognition.
“Placement onto the national winner list speaks to the high quality of individual musicians and strength of ensemble playing happening within the HP Band program,” HPHS Band Director Rylon Guidry and MIS/HPMS Director of Bands Loren Taylor said. “We are very proud of the students for pushing through the many challenges that were present last year to maintain the standard of excellence that has come to be associated with the HP Raider Band program.”