T.U.S.D.’s first guitar festival was held at Sahuaro on March 4, 2024. This is the first-ever, all-day festival for guitar students. A true milestone. This is a very special opportunity, we know this because according to Mr. Hemmo, “Before, each of you guys would’ve had to pay 25$ to have a spot at this.”

This festival has been in the works for about a year now, thanks to our amazing guitar teacher Mr. Hemmo. When it was all said and done, here’s what he had to say: “It was great.  It was a fantastic experience. All the students from all across the district were able to have this really unique opportunity and it was a great experience, so yeah, it was wonderful.”

The groups that attended the festival consisted of Sahuaro’s beginning, intermediate, and advanced guitar classes; Sabino’s intermediate and advanced guitar; select students from Gridley’s mixed guitar; Amphi’s guitar; K-8 schools Safford and Robbin’s guitar; Alice Vail’s guitar; Catalina’s guitar, and Doolen’s guitar.

The event started at 10 AM with all groups gathering in Sahuaro’s auditorium on the stage. Glendale Community College Professor Chuck Hulihan taught the students the chromatic scale, going from no fingers down, to the twelfth fret of the guitar, increasing the amount of fingers on the fretboard at a time.

Next, at around 10:30 AM, schools were split off into 3 groups, A, B, and C. Group A went to Room 223 for timed consultants with Professor Martha Masters on the pieces they had prepared for the day. The same followed for group B with them going to the Little Theater to work with Professor Michael Lich. And lastly, Group C students stayed in the auditorium and continued to work with Professor Chuck Hulihan.  Each professor had about 30 minutes with each group to listen to their pieces and give them tips on how to improve.

Although some students, such as Isabela and Isabella weren’t playing with everyone later that night, they were excited to be a part of the experience anyway.

From 12-1 PM, all students had lunch. Sahuaro catered Domino’s pizza and free water.

From 1-2:30 PM, every student ensemble rehearsed the piece La Sanduga by Laurent Meneret. Due to the amount of effort and hard work put in by each group, this rehearsal was able to end early due to everyone’s mastery of the piece.

Whenever given an extra few minutes, students were hard at work practicing on all of their pieces. We have a very dedicated group of guitarists in this district who all have a promising future. This festival was only just a step in the right direction for many of our fellow peers.

Later that night, a concert was held as well for every group from the festival to perform their singular pieces, and for everyone’s performance of La Sandunga. Call time was 4:45 PM, with doors opening at 5:30 PM, the concert starting at 6:00 PM, and ending around 7:15 PM.

Before performances, every group of students was instructed to wait in either the choir or band room. In these rooms, students were given an opportunity to run their pieces together one last time.

At around 7:05 PM, all groups except the one on stage were called to line up for their entrance to play La Sandunga. Around 320 people were in attendance for the concert.

Thank you to every student who participated, we couldn’t have done it without you!

A special thanks to Natalie Luna Rose, Jennifer Eckstorm, Val Romero, Dr. Ravi Shah, Sadie Shaw, Dr. Gabriel Trujilo, Dr. Joan Ashcraft, Ms. Kreig, Ms. Bradley, and all other staff who helped out with making sure things ran smoothly.