Hannah Akel

2023 Scholarship Recipient

As someone who has been playing the clarinet for eight years and has participated in marching and concert band for my school, jazz and blues music has been very important in my life. Throughout marching and concert band, our school has featured numerous jazz and blues pieces that have been some of my favorites to perform. Through my high school band, we learned the history and importance of the jazz pieces we have played and how important they were for the time period they were produced in.

This has helped me gain a deeper understanding of the music I was playing as a musician as well as further educating me on the importance of blues and jazz music. This makes blues music important to me because I have had the opportunity to perform these pieces for members of my community as well as familiarize myself with more jazz and blues music.

As a member of my high school marching and concert band I believe I play a large role in bringing music to the members of my community. In the marching band, I bring music to people by performing every football game. In marching band, we help bring school spirit and support our football team with our music. We bring music to the team, the fans, and other students during football games. Additionally, at my school, every Friday morning during football season we march around the halls. This is our way of bringing music to the students as well as showing our support for our football team. For basketball games we also come together for pep bands in order to show our support and spread music to our school. During the concert band, we spend months learning and practicing music to perform for all members of the community through our concerts.

In addition to spreading music to my community, I also help support the younger grade levels getting involved in music. We host a concert for the elementary school children and a marching band night for middle school students so that they have the opportunity to experience what being in band is like and encourage them to continue with band and music.

After my eight years of being a member of band, I feel my role in bringing music to other people is continuing to be an active member of band and being an example of how to be a successful musician in band. I hope my participation in band will encourage younger students to want to continue with band as well as showing to my community the talents of high school band members. My participation in band has also spread music to numerous groups of students which also helps display the importance of music in our community.