New Bern High School band seeking donations for Georgia trip

If you want to make a donation:

Who: New Bern High band

What: Fund-raising concert

Where: Grover C. Fields Middle auditorium

When: 7 p.m. March 10

To donate: E-mail the band director at brandon.hults@craven.k12.nc.us or call New Bern High at 514-6400.

New Bern High symphonic band students will perform in Atlanta in April, and members will hold a local fund-raising concert March 10 to help make the trip possible.

Brandon Hults, the band's first-year director, said the trip will cost at least $20,000. Hults said his students have worked so hard since last summer that they deserve the trip to perform in Woodruff Arts Center and experience a concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

The marching band improved all fall and won first place in its division at the last competition, Hults said. The concert band received two standing ovations at its Christmas concert. This spring, two students made all-district band.

"A lot of good things are going on, and I think the students really deserve something like this," Hults said. "It's to open their eyes and see places in other parts of the world outside Eastern North Carolina."

A group of more than 40 students will perform for three judges and receive a rating at the Dixie Classic Festival in Atlanta.

"We'll perform for well-known college or high school directors," Hults said. "And we'll have a private clinic to help us with concepts of what we do well and what we need to work on. It's an educational but non-competitive atmosphere."

During the April 23-24 trip, students will also attend the Atlanta orchestra's performance of Mahler's Sixth Symphony.

Hults said the March 10 fund-raising concert at Grover C. Fields will prepare the band for the Atlanta performance and the State Band Festival in mid-March at Havelock High.