By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

TURNER – To 16-year-old flutist Elizabeth Byrne, there are few things better than playing music.

But at her 700-student Leavitt Area High School, fewer than 30 kids participate in band. Byrne never gets to perform with a complete ensemble – there’s no regular clarinet and the band recently lost its only French horn – because so few of her classmates share her musical passion. Almost no one wants to play.

When next weekend comes, though, Byrne’s school will fill with bassoon players and trumpeters, oboe players and violinists. She will share her school with 270 teenage soul mates, every one a musician.

Leavitt Area High School is hosting this year’s District II Instrumental Honors Music Festival.

“It’s a really neat experience because other people are really passionate about music. They’re not just taking band for the credit,” she said.

When Byrne started music lessons in fourth grade, she had her choice of instruments: big brass, strings, drums. Her mother and brother played the clarinet, but Byrne liked the flute with its fluttery notes and petite sound.

“It’s such a pretty instrument,” she said. “I wasn’t a loud person. I wanted a quiet instrument.”

Soon, Byrne was good enough to win a spot at the music festival, where the best middle and high school musicians from Androscoggin and Oxford counties and parts of Cumberland County perform together for two days.

One of the geeky things’

Byrne tries out for the festival every year, churning with nerves as judges grade her solo performance. She took up the oboe a couple of years ago and started learning the trombone a few months ago, but it’s the flute that she takes to the festival. She always wins a spot.

This year, with her high school hosting for the first time, Byrne is even more excited than usual. She hopes the festival, which includes students from 35 schools, will show her classmates that it’s cool, and in other schools, popular, to play an instrument.

“Music is one of the geeky things at my school,” she said.

When the festival begins Friday, students will separate into a middle school orchestra for stringed instruments and a middle school band for wind instruments and percussion. High-schoolers will get their own band and orchestra.

Byrne believes that more than 100 other high-schoolers will be part of her festival band this year. She won’t have to worry about a missing clarinet or French horn. There will be at least one player for every instrument. In the flute section, there will be 15.

Byrne has been practicing every day for a month to make sure she knows the songs.

During the festival, she and the other musicians will practice all day Friday and most of the day Saturday. They will perform for the public Saturday afternoon.

Byrne looks forward to the concert – and the camaraderie.

“The best part is hanging out with other people who like music and sharing their talents,” she said.