Contact: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Friday, December 4, 2009

Lafayette High School’s chamber orchestra will perform at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago, the largest annual gathering of school band and orchestra conductors in the world.

More than 15,000 people from 30 nations are expected at the weeklong conference. The Lafayette musicians, under third-year director Jennifer Grice, will perform Dec. 16.

The students will offer the local community a free preview at 8 p.m. Dec. 8 at the University of Kentucky’s Singletary Center.

School concert band and orchestra music is rated by difficulty, and three of the 10 works that Lafayette will showcase at the clinic are in the most difficult category, including pieces by J.S. Bach and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The 16-member orchestra includes Michael Goffinet, Heeju Son, Maja Fus, Prangchat Fakto, Ben Healy, Darcy Cassidy, Ole Wendroth, Sarah Grindle, Amy Fan, Geoff Britton, Youhong Jeoung, Nick Blackburn, Jacob Yates, Alex DeMoll, Julia Mead and Jonathan Karp.

Lafayette is only the fourth Kentucky high school orchestra to be invited to perform at the Midwest Clinic, now in its 62^nd year. Only 20 other Kentucky ensembles of any kind have played there. The Lafayette band and Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras both performed in 1993.

In addition to Grice, there will be two guest conductors: Nancy Campbell, orchestra director at SCAPA Bluegrass, and J. Steven Moore, director of bands at Colorado State University. Moore was director of the Lafayette band when it played at the Midwest Clinic some years ago.