All-State posting

New York All-State band audition requirements

Selection runs through the spring NYSSMA Solo Festival, where a NYSSMA-certified All-State adjudicator scores the student live.

NYSSMA | Conference All-State acceptance

Results and your next step

Results go to directors and students, not a public list. Ask your director about yours.

Next for students who advanced: the NYSSMA Winter Conference, December 3-6, in Rochester, New York.

Acceptances are mailed and emailed to teachers, schools and students, not posted as a public results list.

Get results access instructions

Last checked October 6, 2026 | Official source: https://www.nyssma.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Official-Announcements-October-2026.pdf

What to work on this week

Use this plan for your next round, a solo, or next season. Not taking another audition? Choose music with your director and use the same steps.

5 minutes - Choose your direction. Write down one goal: the next official round, solo and ensemble, or next season's preparation. Note one question for your director.
10 minutes - Start a short passage. Use confirmed next-round material or a piece chosen with your director. Read it slowly in small sections.
5 minutes - Practice a related basic. Choose a scale, rhythm, or technical pattern that appears in the music.
10 minutes - Record, listen, and revise. Record the passage. Listen for one detail, practice it, and leave a note for your next session.

This page reports what the official organization posted. Virtunity does not write audition requirements.

Confirm every date and requirement with your director. Organizations update packets.

Back to all states

NYSSMA

New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA)

2026-27 materials are posted.

The full requirements were not readable from a public official source.

Ensembles: All-State Bands, All-State Orchestra, All-State Jazz Ensembles
Season: 2026-27
Audition window: NYSSMA's process page gives no 2026 or 2027 audition date. The All-State evaluation happens at a spring NYSSMA Solo Festival, at one of more than forty designated sites. Roughly 825 students are notified of selection in late August, and the All-State ensembles rehearse Thursday through the Sunday concert at the Winter Conference in Rochester, New York, in late November or early December. Music and instructions for selected students are mailed October 15.
Instruments: winds and percussion (the same evaluation process also covers strings and voice for the other All-State ensembles)

What the organization posted

Selection runs through the spring NYSSMA Solo Festival, where a NYSSMA-certified All-State adjudicator scores the student live. The student prepares a Level VI solo or concerto movement selected from the repertoire lists in the current NYSSMA Manual, plus the scales required for that level and instrument: fifteen prepared major scales for Levels V and VI, played from memory, of which the adjudicator chooses only three to evaluate. Sight-reading is part of the evaluation and is done with observers out of the room. Applicants must be in tenth or eleventh grade at the time of the audition and must be participating members of the corresponding school music organization, with a fifty percent attendance minimum, both at audition time and at All-State participation time.

Notes

NYSSMA's page describes the general process without a school-year label or a dated 2026-27 packet. The actual solo repertoire lists live inside the NYSSMA Manual, a paid publication, so specific 2026-27 solo titles are not confirmed here. NYSSMA names 15 regional zones but does not say each zone sets the date. NYSSMA also runs a large non-All-State Solo Festival at Levels I-VI; only the Level VI evaluation feeds All-State. Choral All-State ensembles also exist; this page covers band. NYSSMA's All-State Selection Process document says all All-State solos must be performed with accompaniment; recorded accompaniments are permitted.

Retrieved from the organization's page on October 5, 2026.

The All-State Process - New York State School Music Association

Practice for NYSSMA with your audition tempo, tuner and drone on one screen

Virtunity is a practice app built by a band director. Set up each scale and excerpt, then work it up a step at a time.

Scan with your iPhone to get Virtunity

Practice now in your browser: free tuner, metronome and drone

How it fits each part of this audition

Scales: Set up each scale in Virtunity and practice it with the metronome at your audition tempo, with the tuner and drone in the same window. Scale Checker confirms scale notes on your iPhone. Notes only. Not tone, rhythm or a complete performance.
Prepared solo: Keep the PDF in your Music Library and set the piece up in practice with the metronome, tuner and your notes beside it. Start under tempo: good reps in a row move the tempo up a step, and Keep lets you stay at the old tempo.
Sight-reading: Sight Reading Sprint in the Lab puts one note at a time on the staff for a 60-second round of fast note reading. It is not a full sight-reading excerpt, so read something new every day too, and keep your counting steady with the Lab's rhythm modules.
Tone and intonation: Every judge listens for these. The tuner shows your note and how sharp or flat it is, and the drone gives you a steady reference pitch for long tones.
Tempo: Tap tempo finds a marked tempo, and subdivision clicks keep your eighths, triplets and sixteenths even.

For students 13 and up. Virtunity helps you prepare. Your playing on audition day earns the chair.