STERLING — Two students from Great Bend participated in the first-ever Sterling College Online Music Festival which ran for most of the month of April. Because spring regional and state music festivals were canceled due to COVID-19, Sterling College music professor Larry Brownlee organized the first-ever “virtual” music festival. In total, almost 400 solos were entered in the festival. Students from 100 different towns from Kansas City to Garden City to Pittsburg and a few towns in Oklahoma and Missouri participated.

Each student provided a musical solo performed on a YouTube video, which was adjudicated by a Kansas music educator. All students were given ratings and a critique of their performance. Area students who received Superior 1 ratings include Paige Koehn, Soprano and Tessa Fry, Flute.

Music Professor Larry Brownlee coordinated the online music festival.

“I am very pleased by the numbers of participants from all across the state and all sizes of schools,” Brownlee said. “We had students from the smallest 1A schools to the largest 6A schools and everything in between. I was also very grateful for the 70 directors who volunteered to help. I was also thankful for the publishing companies who allowed us to hold the festival through digital means.”