Saipan Southern High School\u2019s Manta Ray Band once again emerged champions in the 2nd Annual Tumon Bay Music Festival after successfully defending their crown during the final show in Guam Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s conductor and music director Will DeWitt relayed the good news over the telephone yesterday. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very happy to see how our concert band amazed everyone here [on Guam]. They truly deserved to win,\u201d DeWitt said, adding that members of the Manta Ray Band were elated with the praises and applause from the audience.<\/p>\n
DeWitt and her talented wards are scheduled to return to Saipan today.<\/p>\n
Besides the concert band top honor, three more gold medals were bagged by Manta Ray Band members.<\/p>\n
Last Saturday morning, four students of the group dominated the string quartet category en route to winning the gold medal.<\/p>\n
Early last week, its solo performer in the cello instrument was named champion of the category, while its Manta Flyerz won the gold medal in the rock band category.<\/p>\n
DeWitt said so far, the group already bagged four gold medals and are all scheduled to perform in last night\u2019s Command Performance where top winners were asked for a repeat performance.<\/p>\n
DeWitt said they are still hoping to get three more gold medal awards from the various solo instrument performances yesterday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re waiting for the results\u2026and we\u2019re hoping to get three more gold medals [in the other solo performances],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The music conductor revealed that the support of the school administrators added more confidence to the band members.<\/p>\n
Principal Peter Leau, he said, arrived on the concert band performance along with other school supporters.<\/p>\n
DeWitt\u2019s wife, Lois, also flew to Guam Thursday to lend her support to the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery exhilarating!\u201d as what the music director described his and the group\u2019s feeling.<\/p>\n
DeWitt recalled how the students managed to practice their pieces in the last several months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey really worked hard\u2026and these awards are testament to their commitment and dedication to what they do. We\u2019re very proud of our students and their achievements. These pays off all the difficulties and challenges we experienced,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Tumon Bay Festival is an annual event that aims to promote music among students. Last year, SSHS\u2019 Manta Ray Band entered only one contest category, the concert band, where it was adjudged champion.<\/p>\n
This year, the school sent 44 members of the group that competed in various categories and divisions.<\/p>\n
Participants in the festival are from Guam and other Pacific islands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan Southern High School\u2019s Manta Ray Band once again emerged champions in the 2nd Annual Tumon Bay Music Festival after successfully defending their crown during the final show in Guam Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}