For nearly eight decades, the Omaha Public Schools All-City Music Festival has united students and staff districtwide with a common goal—celebrating music. To mark the event's 75th anniversary this year, students will perform original songs composed specifically for them.

"I'm so excited to visit Omaha and meet the students, educators and community and share some music with them," said Am're Ford, an award-winning composer and music educator from Oklahoma City.

"The piece I'm writing is for Omaha high school students and what they would enjoy listening to but also knowing what they should be developing as a player," Ford said.

First-year performer Robin Kinkaid sees working with an outside composer as an excellent opportunity for students to experience something new.

"It's exciting to branch out," said Kinkaid, a Northwest High junior. "Especially to learn from the person who's writing the piece and where they come from."

Composer and conductor Marques L.A. Garrett, Ph.D., was thrilled to work with Omaha Public Schools again for one of the nation's longest-running K-12 public school music festivals. Dr. Garrett is an associate professor of choral studies at the University of North Texas. He previously taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2020, he conducted the choir at the All-City Music Festival. 

"It's just an honor whenever someone asks me to work with a choir or to write a song for them," said Dr. Garrett. "I know so many teachers at Omaha Public Schools, and I'm looking forward to being back in Nebraska with folks who mean a lot to me."

Omaha Public Schools asked Dr. Garrett to compose a piece set to a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "With the Lark." The Omaha Public Schools high school choir will perform the composition, which is inspired by new beginnings.

"I can recognize beauty, and that's what this poem is," said Dr. Garrett. "I try to make music that feels natural for the singers and think about how we speak words and our natural rhythms."

Ford hopes festival attendees will leave with a new appreciation for the arts and music.

"I hope they have a refreshed sense of, 'Wow, I've never heard anything like this before," he said. "And they see a different component of classical and what it has been for a long time."