Congratulations to members of the 2017-2018 Westwood Symphony Orchestra for being named one of three National Winners of the Mark of Excellence awards in the High School Full Orchestra category.  The Mark of Excellence is a competition sponsored by the Foundation for Music Education.  The Westwood Symphony Orchestra entered a recording from the UIL Full Orchestra Evaluation last March.  Congratulation to these students and Joshua Thompson and Jack Green, who co-conduct the group.  

The 2017-2018 Westwood Symphony Orchestra was recently ranked #3 in the state of Texas in the TMEA Honor Full Orchestra competition!  This was a result of their performance at UIL Evaluation in March, in which they performed works by Shostakovich, Debussy and Wagner, all of which can be viewed on the "Media" page of this website.  The TMEA Honor Orchestra competition is one of the most competitive in the nation.

Westwood was one of only two schools in the state this year to be a finalist in both the Honor String Orchestra and Honor Full Orchestra competitions!  We're very proud of our students for this honor!

The Westwood Orchestra students recently took part in the UIL Concert and Sight-reading Evaluation, held at the Round Rock ISD Performing Arts Center.  Westwood was proud to have taken THREE full Symphony Orchestras to this event - the most of any high school in the state!  All three orchestras - The Westwood Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestra and Concert Orchestras, received First Division Ratings from all 3 judges for their Concert performance and First Division ratings from all three 3 judges for their Sight-Reading portion.  

We are very proud of our students at Westwood as putting together a full symphony orchestra is a major undertaking that results in several extra rehearsals.   This fantastic collaboration could not have taken place without the Westwood Band and their directors!  We'll post videos soon.

The orchestras will begin diligently preparing for another UIL Concert and Sight-Reading evaluation for String Orchestras, which will take place in Georgetown in April.  Stay tuned!

The Westwood Symphony Orchestra was recently named a finalist in the highly competitive TMEA String Honor Orchestra contest.  The Symphony Orchestra submitted a recording from their Fall Concert for consideration of the judges.  In the First Round of judging, the orchestra was placed second in our zone, to advance to the finals, where we finished in 6th place for this year's competition.  This is the 4th consecutive year that the orchestra has placed in the finals, since being named Honor String Orchestra in 2013.  We're very proud of our students as this is arguably the most competitive competition for school orchestras in the country.  

We're pleased to announce that Westwood had 16 students make the Texas All-State Orchestra this year!  We're really proud of these students - see the Awards tab for a list of these students!

Several Westwood Orchestra students auditioned this past weekend for the TMEA Region 26 All-Region Orchestra.  We're happy to announce that Westwood had 45 students selected into this prestigious ensemble!  This is a very high number for a single school, and we are proud of our students for achieving this honor, and several of them will be auditioning for the Texas All-State Orchestras in a couple weeks.  A list of the names of students that made the All-Region Orchestras will soon be available for viewing on the Awards>All-Region tab of this website.  Congratulations to our students!

The world-renowned Miro Quartet, the professional string quartet in residence at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas, came to Westwood to work with the Symphony Orchestra students on September 19th.  The Symphony is currently working on a piece of string quartet repertoire, two movements of Beethoven's String Quartet in c# minor, op. 131 (with an added bass part by Dmitri Mitropoulus).  As the Miro Quartet performed the entire 42-minute quartet at their recent recital at UT, it was a perfect opportunity for these musicians to share their expertise with the Symphony Orchestra's musicians.

For more information on this fantastic group of musicians, please go to their website, miroquartet.com and see videos and more!  The Westwood students are thankful for this opportunity to work with such world-renowned musicians.