Guess What Happened to Me Today? - September 2025

I am part of a team of volunteer music educators who annually organize a large ensemble festival for high school students in New England. The event involves more than 400 talented musicians accepted from the more than 1200 who apply through the organization’s Solo & Ensemble Festival. They come together for a three-day event to form a band, orchestra and chorus that rehearses and performs under the direction of a nationally known conductor.

The festival culminates with a Saturday performance attended by more than 1,200 parents, teachers and community members. For more than 90 years, local schools and their communities hosted this March event throughout the region, providing rehearsal and performance spaces, meals and lodging, and transportation for the participating students. More than 150 music educators are members of this organization and more than 50 volunteer their time in some way to support the festival participants and the host school community.

Because some host schools do not have three large rehearsal spaces, local churches or community centers are often used for that purpose for one of the musical ensembles on one or both of the two rehearsal days. When the festival was hosted in a small community in southern Connecticut, Friday’s rehearsal for the 240-voice chorus was scheduled in a local church, a church that was not fully ADA-compliant.

Normally that would not be an issue, but this year the chorus included a wheelchair-bound student who was paralyzed from the chest down, but still musically active. She was a member of her school’s chorus, her church choir and had performed well enough in the Solo & Ensemble Festival to be accepted into the festival’s chorus. So, she needed to be able to access the church’s sanctuary to participate in that group’s all-day rehearsal. The church’s main entrance was a huge set of steps, and while lifting the student and her wheelchair up those steps would have allowed her to access the space, the schedule required her to be able to exit and re-enter the building multiple times.

When made aware of this challenge late on Thursday afternoon, I traveled to the church and considered the possibilities. I was accompanied by the president of the local music booster club who was helping their school music educators host this large event. Together, we determined that we could use the side entrance with fewer steps, but again that would require a team of strong people to make it work. Without hesitation, the president got on the phone and within 20 minutes there were six local people there arriving in four trucks that carried lumber, hand tools, power tools and work lights. And within an hour, they had designed, built and installed a handicap ramp for the side entrance and another challenging space inside the church, all done after sunset and in a light rain. Their on-the-spot efforts allowed this student to continue to participate just like any other student, able to focus on making music rather than overcoming challenges.

Steffen Parker is a retired music educator, event organizer, maple sugar maker, and Information Technology specialist from Vermont who serves as the Performing Arts/Technology representative on the NFHS High School Today Publications Committee.