Jan. 25, All-State auditions will be held at Shrewsbury High School. All-States is a music festival with three days of rehearsal. The concert will be held in Symphony Hall on March 22. Seven WHS students will be auditioning. The Massachusetts Music Educators Association is running the festival and auditions.

To qualify to audition, students must be in the top 50 percent of their section in Senior Districts.

“There are about 18 cellists in the Eastern district, so you would have to be in the top nine or top 10,” junior Katherine Wang said.

Seniors Kenny Kistner, Maddie Memoli, Jessie Hoopes and Karen Zhang will be auditioning for baritone saxophone, viola, string bass and alto saxophone, respectively. Wang and sophomore Nick Memoli will be auditioning for cello. Freshman Chris Laven will be auditioning for string bass.

For auditions, each section has a specific piece that the musicians must prepare. For the audition, the judge will ask the student to play two scales, sight read and play an excerpt of the piece.

“The judges are pretty fair. They understand that the sight reading won’t always sound good, so it’s nice,” Wang said.

Sight reading is when a musician must play or sing a piece in which they have not prepared for, only provided with its sheet music. Students will often practice extensively for other portions of the audition.

“I’ve been practicing scales and the sheet music,” Zhang said. “I feel really prepared, but you can never really be fully prepared.”

Overall, many of the students are looking forward to all-states.

“All-states is a lot more fun than districts,” Wang said, “It’s harder to get into, but it’s really fulfilling because the orchestra is better overall. If you know people, it’s a lot of fun.”