I saw the song "Dark Fortress" performed by the Hopewell Middle School Band. I was amazed by their posture and attentive gaze before they started playing. The trumpets started the piece and their dynamics were good, but their articulation could have been much better. They seemed quite muffled and were not very clear. As the piece progressed, I realized that the trombones and French horns were doing a great job with their tone, dynamics, and articulation. However, I felt that the flutes and clarinets were overpowered and needed to play more. Additionally, I felt the band was together for most of the performance. However, it felt like the song dragged along, I felt that if they had a little faster tempo the song would have sounded better. The percussion at times overwhelmed the rest of the band, but they played with near-perfect dynamics, and their rhythms were clear and correct. Overall, I felt that the brass section was probably the most featured section in this piece, but they had some intonation issues. They had a nice style, but sometimes they overwhelmed the flutes and clarinets. The sustain notes were a big problem with this band, they kept cutting off quarter notes and whole notes, which resulted in a chopped up sound. This also helps ruin the flow of the music. The band themselves seemed very attentive and they seemed much more focused than many other middle school groups I've seen. Also, it ended very well, they were together and had a nice ending. The band had many different styles that went well with each other. Furthermore, the band performed very well on stage, they wore matching outfits and looked professional. For the most part, the band did a great... middle of the paper... bringing out the character of this piece. As a band we did that, but if we had emphasized these things further, the song would have been much better. We might even do a better job of being together in the beginning. Finally, we played the song “Heroes Return”. Our start was very strange and we weren't together at all. We also need more articulation at the beginning. Also, we needed better changes in dynamics and to sound more in tune. However, the saxophone played well throughout the piece. We played better as we got to the middle and end. Our main issues with our performance were our dynamics and the fact that the whole band wasn't together at times. Also, we needed to practice the pieces more, so we could perfect the beginning and other things, like articulation. However, I was impressed with our concert and I think we did a good job for our first concert.