KENT, Conn. — Seamus Dietrich is a self-taught musician who has earned his place in the spotlight.
The Kent Center School seventh grader recently performed in the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s 2025 Northern Region Middle School’s Band festival held at Simsbury High School.
“I feel amazing,” Seamus said. “I know how hard I worked.”
Seamus was the only KCS student to be accepted into the 2025 band. Auditions were held in November and acceptance letters were issued in December.
He was one of three tenor sax players to be selected. Seven saxophone players auditioned.
Middle schools in 49 towns (see map) are eligible to audition for the Northern Region Middle School Band. This year, a total of 433 students were selected for jazz band, mixed choirs, treble choir, flute choir, concert band, and orchestra.
“You would not expect that they were all middle school kids performing,” said Seamus’ mother, Melissa McDougall, who attended the March 8 festival with family and friends who had front row seats for the event.
“When I walked out, my grandpa was there and coughed,” Seamus said, noting it made him laugh and helped settle his nerves a little before performing in front of a packed house that seats 1,000.
Then he was on. Seamus joined with his nearly 100 fellow musicians to perform two songs, “Gallop” and “Stay.”
David Poirier, KCS music teacher and band director, has taught Seamus since third grade. He emphasized his student’s “strong interest” in music.
The band director said of his student in school, “He practices well. Whenever I give him a piece of music, you can hear him growing week after week.”
Poirier said Seamus is one of his “hardest-working students” and that discipline prompted him to think Seamus would “be a good candidate to try out” for the Northern Region School Band.
Seamus is a member of KCS’ sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade band and KCS’ jazz band. In addition, he is a two-year member of the Region 1 Band, which is made up of hand-selected band and chorus students from each elementary school in the six-town region. Band members rehearse and conduct a school tour in the region each February.
Seamus began playing the alto sax in fourth grade. He acknowledged he “barely knew how to play anything.” The following year he switched to the tenor sax. That year he performed in a KCS talent show, having learned “Amazing Grace.”
“He had no backup music and performed in front of the entire school,” Seamus’ mother said. “Props to him because I’d have been scared.”
The seventh-grade student has been focused on jazz band since taking up the tenor, and he has had some solos here and there.
“He enjoys (playing),” McDougall said of her son’s love of music. “He will play and teach himself. He’ll look up music and learn it.”
Auditions for the festival began in November in West Hartford, where auditioners had to play a few scales, perform a prepared piece, and conduct a sight reading (read and play a piece never seen before).
“At first I was very nervous to try out” for the Northern Region Middle School Band, Seamus said. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it by a long shot.”
But with self-discipline and practice under the leadership of Poirier, he began to gain confidence once the festival music was received in January.
“I kept practicing and practicing with Mr. Poirier and it made me feel better,” he said.
In addition to weekly practice in Kent, Seamus joined fellow band members in Simsbury the day before and the day of the festival to practice an additional 10-15 hours before taking the stage.
Poirier said KCS has six or seven students who audition for northern regionals and typically three or four are accepted.
“I apply myself to everything I do,” said Seamus, a Luke Combs fan.
In addition to his involvement with the KCS band, he is a member of the school’s chorus and upcoming theater production. He also plays soccer and basketball in Kent, wrestling and rugby in Newtown, and lacrosse in New Milford.
He will sing the Backstreet Boys’ “The Call” in KCS’ production of “The Hang Up.” The middle school musical will be performed on April 9 and 10 at 7 p.m. and on April 10 at 1:15 p.m. in the KCS gymnasium.
“He’s very musically gifted,” his mom said.
Having participated in northern regionals this year “certainly sets him up to be a good role model for our band at KCS,” Poirier said. “And because he’s a seventh grader, I get to keep him for another year and allow his leadership to blossom.”
