March 22, 2008

Represent!

As you, by now, hopefully know, I was VERY involved in the band program in high school (Charles A. Sprague High School). I had a great time and miss it quite a bit. Today I found something online that made something I already cherished even more valuable. At the beginning of this year my director submitted all of our recordings from my senior year to the National Grammy Foundation. Guess what.

Sprague won a Grammy.

14 schools in the nation won Grammys in three different categories:

1) Enterprise Award -- under served music programs earn grants based on need
2) Gibson Grant -- for schools with outstanding piano and guitar programs
3) Signature Schools -- for public high schools with outstanding music programs.

Only 8 schools are awarded the signature award. The top three are awarded the gold level, with the best gold level school winning the grand prize.

We won a Grammy!

Now, not only did we win a Grammy, but look at this chart (please click to enlarge):



WHAT!? TWO SCHOOLS FROM SALEM OREGON!? Not just from Salem, but from the same school district. South Salem is our rival school and we take the fight to the big leagues, we fight over Grammys! People ask me "If your high school had such a good band, why didn't you ever win state?"

Because the other schools in my state are also freaking good at music, note that 3 of the 14 schools are from Oregon.

This puts me in a VERY good mood, knowing that music I was playing was recorded, submitted, and worthy of a Grammy. What did we submit? Here are the recordings, enjoy!

La Fiesta Pacifico

Homage to Machaut

Giannini

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Psh my high school totally already won that a few years ago. You're behind the times man.

Anonymous said...

Geez...my high school's band could never win a cookie, let alone a Grammy.

Excellent recordings, BTW.

Michael said...

@Harrison

It's our second.

Paul said...

Hey, congrats man.

@ Harrison AND Snively: lololololololololol...

Anonymous said...

Psh band is totally only for geeks and nerds and weirdos anyway who cares *runs*

Unknown said...

wow that is cool, you should totally use that to your advantage by using ambiguous sentences like : "I'm a graduate of Sprague High School, winner of a grammy" so that it seems like you won a grammy. =)

P.S. Big Bang Theory tomorrow YAY!

Anonymous said...

Congrats! I'm in love with my band class too even though we aren't very good and only have 2 seniors... Oh well. On this Saturday we get to go to Disneyland and participate in a seminar of sorts...:)

Karen said...

holy crap, congratulations!

also GBS is about 40 minutes from my house. chicagoland high schools represent! it must be because we have to pay tolls :)

i was never a band geek, instead opting for a brief stint as an orchie dorkie. i don't believe our band has ever won anything interesting.

Omar A. said...

Haha very nice man! I only play piano :-(. They dont allow our kind in band.

Anonymous said...

does this really count as a "grammy"? or just recognition by the academy? i would have to say the latter... unless there was some trophies involved.

Anonymous said...

so you didn't actually win the grammy. and also i've never heard of this.

Michael said...

Technically we did win a Grammy. I looked around online found a picture of our previous one.

Click For Pic

Terrible picture, but as you can see, we do get a Grammy.

Well, half a Grammy. But now we have two halves! Too bad they're the same half. . . but Grammy's nonetheless.

new age scheherazade said...

I loved winning stuff for school! mostly because nobody can ever guess what a fool you've actually made of yourself up on stage; and that you only won because the other people made even bigger fools of themselves.

er...I'm sure that's not true in your case :)

Anonymous said...

Um... we were so excited! Did you know excerpt from Fiesta that he sent was our "back page"?? Basically you and I won that grammy for sprague. haha! Hope things are going well for you.