Senior Richard Lu and junior Alan Lu have both qualified for the All-State Orchestra and will perform in the concert Saturday, Jan. 28.

They will leave Jan. 25 to travel to the Tan-Tar-A Resort in the Lake of the Ozarks. The next two days will be spent rehearsing the piece that they will play in the concert.

Richard Lu believes knowing the piece of music beforehand aids the performance because he said, “Instead of going through all the things about the notes and playing the notes right, we can go through the music, making sure that we really sound like a cohesive orchestra rather than just all these different instruments playing at the same time.”

This will be Richard Lu’s third year going to All-State Orchestra.

He explained the process of qualifying for All-State Orchestra, saying, “We do an audition around December. It’s a blind audition so we’re behind a curtain. Then we just play the excerpts and they give us a score, and separate us into each of our instruments. Then when we get [to All-State] we do a chair audition with the piece that we get.”

Alan Lu said that the work that he put into practicing was well worth it.

“I’ve been playing violin for ten years, so it’s a pretty big achievement in my violin-playing career to make All-State. I had to practice the pieces for 30 to 40 minutes a day for a few weeks. It was pretty tough but it was worth it to make it,” he said.