For a brief moment in time, the crowd will be hushed before Michael Golemo, director of the ISU Wind Ensemble, steps up to the platform and lifts his baton, beginning the 30th annual ISU Honor Band Festival.

The honor band festival is a two-night event this weekend at Iowa State. On the first night, which is free and open to the public, the U.S. Army Regimental Brass Quintet and the ISU Wind Ensemble will be featured. The second night features high school honor bands, which include Iowa All-State Music Festival participants.

Golemo said hosting the U.S. Army Regimental Brass Quintet is a big event for Iowa State. The quintet is a very prestigious group from West Point, N.Y, and Golemo said it wasn’t easy to get them to come to campus.

“It’s a lot of red tape to go through to get somebody like that on your campus,” Golemo said. “You’ve got to send some letters and all of that. The good news is once you’ve got that figured out, everything is paid with tax dollars, so it doesn’t cost the university anything to get them here.”

ISU alumnus Bryan Uhl, who is a member of the quintet, proposed the visit to Golemo. Iowa State became a stop on the quintet’s national tour. Uhl said the concert is very valuable for the high school honor band participants.

“It’s going to give them a chance to hear professionals playing live,” Uhl said. “The communities where the kids are coming from don’t always have professional musicians coming through – or definitely not living there -because it’s a smaller town.”

Joseph Missal, director of bands at Oklahoma State University, said he is excited about coming to direct. He will be guest directing the ISU Wind Ensemble and also one of the honor bands with Johnny Vinson, director of bands at Auburn University.

“My expectation of the concert is to take [the students] to a level they’ve not herefore achieved in the amount of time we have,” Missal said.

This concert for the wind ensemble is the beginning of a very busy semester. The band is preparing for its next concert on March 3, which is themed as “Vegas Night.”

“Music-making is fun,” Uhl said. “It takes a lot of hard work and patience to make these great performances happen, and these performances are really rewarding.”

Other ISU students are benefiting from the festivities of the weekend, and many music classes have been canceled in light of the weekend events.

Ashley Nodgaard, sophomore in pre-journalism and mass communication, said some of her classes have been canceled for Friday and Monday.

“Two of my classes are canceled, which is even better because I have a lot of stuff to do this weekend. So it’s marvelous,” she said.

Nodgaard said she receives double benefits from the weekends’ events, because she will get class credit for attending the concerts.

“It’s an opportunity for me to get concert credits for my [Music] 102 class, so it’s even better,” she said.