Music Listening Club has been an official club for two years and has informally been around for five. This year, there are nine kids involved in the Music Listening Club. The club members won regionals and placed 12th at the National Finals.

In the club, students have a list of 50 musical pieces and composers to study from; they then compete against other schools to see who can identify the music piece/composer. During competitions there are five rounds. First there is music identification, then 3-4 historical questions, which leads to a  lightning round of 20 pieces and a written test about musical selections; last is a mystery round from a list of about 50 composers who the kids need to then identify along with the period of music.

“The club is for kids to learn about classical music history from the earliest forms of plainchant to classical music listening today,” band director and Music Listening Club advisor Tim Arnold said, “Our top team this year won the regional contest and placed in 12th of around 25 at the National Finals with teams from Minnesota and Utah.”

Junior Sonja Squiers has been in music listening club for two years so far. She said that it has become a tradition to eat Chipotle right before the competition.

“For the time that I’ve been on the team, I’ve always enjoyed getting to make jokes about some of the ridiculous music that comes up in the study guide. They become some pretty funny inside jokes that nobody really understands, but they are always something that the others and I can laugh about,” Squiers said.

At competitions, students work together in teams of three. Using different strategies, the students divide up the study guide so one person memorizes all the dates and the other memorizes the composer. The club competes at different schools for each competition.

Junior Emma Russin has been apart of the club for two years now. Her favorite part about the club is the moment they first receive their study guides; she said that she enjoys reading the study guide to find the jokes the authors put in.

Russin said one of her favorite memories of being a part of the club was “sitting down at the chairs to do the competitions and having all our hard work go down the drain because because we said a funny joke.”

The club meets in the band room twice a week for an hour, from September until January. Arnold said he first mentioned starting the club to his AP Music Theory class, then it soon started up.

Arnold’s goal is to get more people involved and grow the Music Listening Club even bigger at Orono.