The Iowa High School Music Association All-State Festival is this weekend and for one Perry High School student, it’s been a long time coming.

Junior Olivia Christensen qualified on oboe for the All-State Orchestra and for the previous two years, she was an alternate, which means she would be on “standby” in case the other oboe player from her district got sick or was injured, then she would take that person’s place Christensen describes her initial reaction when she found out that she made it to All-State this year.

“I was really excited and I was really nervous leading up to that because I’ve been practicing for this and preparing for it for like this whole year, and the anticipation of it after the past two years where I haven’t made it. I was really exciting because this year there was a lot of my friends there also waiting with me. So it was just a really nice moment because I made it.”   

With there being few oboe players selected for All-State, six total for just the orchestra, Christensen talks about how she got started playing the double-reed instrument.

“My mom is the band director (and) when I first learned about instruments, I felt that I had a lot of options because I knew I had someone who could help me through it. And I decided I want to play something that not many people play. Maybe I wanted to be unique, maybe I wanted to have something that had less competition within the band. But my mom just told me a bunch of instruments and for some reason I decided to play the oboe.”

Christensen will perform with the orchestra on Saturday at Iowa State University in Ames.