Pennsylvania · PMEA · 2026-2027
Pennsylvania all-state audition prep for 2026-2027.
PMEA All-State runs through three qualifying rounds: District, Region, and All-State. Each requires a prepared piece from the annual PMEA list, scales, and sight-reading. Pennsylvania's audition season runs October through February, with the All-State festival in April.
The Pennsylvania PMEA season is running now. Tell the teacher what is not ready. Real fix in 30 seconds. Free to try, no card.
Verified against pmea.net on August 17, 2026.pmea.net/pmeaall-stateinformation
Your real deadline is your district's, and it lands in the fall.
PMEA's own calendar is about festivals. The dates that decide your season come from one of twelve districts, and all three we could confirm close registration and audition between October and early December 2026. If your district is not listed below it still has its own dates, and they are not in February.
- District 12Chester, Delaware and Philadelphia countiesRegistration closes Friday, November 13, 2026, 11:45pm
- District 7Central Region feederRegistration closes Sunday, November 15, 2026
- District 10Northeast Region feederAuditions Saturday, December 5, 2026
Ask your director which PMEA district you are in and what its registration close date is. Your director has to hold current PMEA and NAfME membership for you to be entered at all, so confirm that in the same conversation.
The February date on PMEA's calendar is a festival, not your audition.
PMEA's Long Range Calendar lists District Orchestra on February 4 to 6, 2027. That is the festival where the district orchestra rehearses and performs. The audition that decides who goes runs two to three months earlier and belongs to your district: District 12 on November 21, 2026, Districts 7 and 10 on December 5, 2026. A student who reads the state calendar and plans to be ready by February has already missed the audition.
Work from your own district's page, not PMEA's calendar. Put its audition date and its registration close date in your calendar this week. Twelve districts, twelve sets of dates.
PMEA's All-State page still carries only last season's orchestra documents.
As of this check, the orchestra materials on PMEA's All-State information page are from the previous cycle, while the documents posted for this season cover jazz ensemble and harp. The file names do not make the season obvious, so a director or a student can cite last year's calendar without noticing.
- 2026 PMEA All-State At-Large Orchestra Instructions, previous cycle
- PMEA 2025-2026 All-State Online Audition Calendar, previous cycle
Do not read a seating audition date off those PDFs. PMEA has not published this season's All-State seating audition calendar, so there is no current date to plan against, and we are not going to project one from last year's pattern.
District 7's string excerpts are not posted yet, and the scale PDFs beside them are undated.
District 7's audition page says the string audition excerpts will be posted after Labor Day. Its wind excerpt list is already up, dated and revised three times. The violin, viola, cello and string bass scale PDFs linked on that same page carry no date stamp, unlike the dated wind list, so the page itself gives you no way to tell whether they are current.
- String audition excerpts, District 7, not posted as of this check
- Violin, viola, cello and string bass scale PDFs, District 7, undated
If you are in District 7, check back after Labor Day for the excerpts, and ask your director to confirm those scale PDFs are this season's before you spend September on them.
Two PMEA districts contradict each other on whether a freshman can audition.
In the same season, District 7 states that District Orchestra is open to string players in grades 9 to 12, while District 12 states that every auditioning student must be in grades 10, 11 or 12. Both are current official district documents. A ninth grade violinist in District 7 can audition for district orchestra. The same player one district over cannot. At Region and All-State the statewide rule is grades 10 to 12 either way, with a maximum of three consecutive years of Region participation.
Check your own district's eligibility page, and do not take a friend's word for it if they are in a different district. This is the clearest case in Pennsylvania where a generic answer is wrong for half the state.
The 2026-2027 PMEA season, date by date
| Date | What happens | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, October 1, 2026 | District 7 registration opens | One district's date. Each of the twelve districts sets its own, and yours may not be listed here. |
| Friday, November 13, 2026, 11:45pm | District 12 director registration closes | Directors register students in District 12. Students may not self-register there. |
| Sunday, November 15, 2026 | District 7 registration closes | Six weeks after it opened, and three weeks before that district's audition. |
| Saturday, November 21, 2026 | District 12 auditions | West Chester East High School for instrumental players. |
| Saturday, December 5, 2026 | District 7 and District 10 auditions | District 7 at Eastern York High School. District 10 at Parkland High School, Allentown. Two unrelated districts on the same Saturday. |
| Thursday to Saturday, February 4 to 6, 2027 | District Orchestra festivals | This is the festival window, not an audition. If you are treating a February date as your audition date, you have already missed it. |
| Thursday to Saturday, March 11 to 13, 2027 | Region Orchestra festivals | The same window across all three districts we checked. |
| Wednesday to Saturday, April 14 to 17, 2027 | PMEA Conference and All-State Festival | Bayfront Conference Center, Erie. |
State level windows come from PMEA's Long Range Calendar, uploaded July 2026. District dates come from Districts 7, 10 and 12's own sites. Three districts out of twelve is not the state: yours sets its own dates. No All-State seating audition date appears above because PMEA had not posted this season's calendar as of this check.
PMEA scale requirements
Pennsylvania has no statewide string audition list. Your district writes its own.
This is the fact that breaks most Pennsylvania search results. PMEA runs twelve districts and each sets its own excerpts, solos and scales, so a generic PMEA string requirement list does not exist and there is no statewide table for us to publish. In the same season, District 10 auditions on solos, Beethoven for violin, Haydn for viola, Klengel for cello and Vivaldi for bass, while District 12 auditions on orchestral excerpts, Mozart and Mendelssohn for violin, Berlioz and Mendelssohn for viola, Mendelssohn and Wagner for cello, Beethoven and Mozart for bass. District 7 had not posted its string excerpts as of this check and states they go up after Labor Day. District 7 does state its own scale rule: scales are played as written, slurred four to a bow, from memory, at a minimum tempo of quarter note = 120 in eighth notes, with a deduction if the printed rhythmic pattern is not used. That is District 7's rule and we cannot confirm it applies anywhere else.
What PMEA publishes about scoring
There is no statewide point total to show you. At Region and All-State level, PMEA publishes that each judge gives a whole number from 1 to 15 in each category, with ties broken on the total of all judges' scores in the order the categories appear on that ensemble's rubric. At district level the weighting belongs to the district: District 12 states prepared excerpts at 50 percent, scales at 30 percent with up to five chosen by the judges from its posted list, and unseen sight-reading at 20 percent. District 7 uses separate solo and scale scoring guides whose point values are not published. District 10 names its categories but not its weighting. Do not carry one district's weighting into another.
Your director registers you, and your district runs the audition.
The pathway is District Orchestra, then Region Orchestra, then All-State Orchestra at the PMEA conference. There are twelve districts, and the district is where your season is actually decided.
A director must hold current PMEA and NAfME membership for their students to audition. PMEA states this in its statewide Region and State Festival Policies, and individual districts repeat it independently.
Whether the student or the director submits the entry is district specific. District 12 states that directors register students and students may not self-register. District 1's documented process allows either the student's or the director's account, at the director's discretion. There is no single statewide answer.
Format is district specific too. District 12 auditions live and in person and states that the judges do not face the student. District 1's documented process is a recorded video uploaded through Submittable, with no earbuds, no cuts or splices, and hands, body and face visible. At Region and All-State the audition is live and explicitly blind: judges may sit facing away, or the student plays behind a screen.
Region and All-State auditions do not use a separately published excerpt list. Judges pick two or three passages from the music the ensemble is actually performing that year, and no music used at the district festival may be reused.
What it costs
District 12 audition fee$7 per auditionConfirmed
Invoiced to the school or director through District 12's Ludus portal rather than paid by the student at registration. This is District 12's own fee, not a statewide one.
Other districtsNot published in one placeNot published
PMEA publishes no statewide fee schedule, and we did not confirm fees for districts other than 12. Ask your director what your district charges and who it bills.
All-State festival participationNot publishedNot published
No official source we read names an All-State festival participation fee, so we are not naming one.
The 2026-2027 Pennsylvania PMEA all-state audition at a glance
- Audition tiers
- District → Region → All-State
- 2026-2027 audition window
- October through February
- Scales required
- Major and minor scales as specified in the current PMEA audition requirements for each level. Three-octave range is standard at Region and All-State.
- Excerpt format
- Prepared audition piece from the PMEA approved list plus scales and sight-reading. The piece list is published annually and varies by level.
- Audition format
- Live blind panel at each level. District scores determine Region eligibility, Region scores determine All-State eligibility. The panel uses a standardized rubric.
This season's official PMEA list
The scale requirements, season dates, and scoring breakdown on this page are read off Pennsylvania Music Educators Association's own documents and dated above. What we do not reproduce is the rotating 2026-2027 etude and excerpt list itself: those files belong to PMEA and change every season. Get your instrument and grade band file from your director or from the official source, and check the season label on it before you practice it.
Orchestra Kingdom has no affiliation with Pennsylvania Music Educators Association. Official PMEA source
A 2026-2027 practice plan skeleton
- Summer (July to August): confirm the posted PMEA requirements, then build fundamentals. Scales from memory at tempo, slow-practice the hardest passages, and record a weekly baseline take to see where you actually stand.
- Six to eight weeks out: run full excerpts at tempo. Let the Audition Simulator score every take on tone, intonation, rhythm, tempo, and musicality, and pour your daily time into the lowest dimension.
- Final two weeks: stop adding material. Mock the audition under one-take pressure, no retries, so audition day is a rep you have already done.
How Orchestra Kingdom prepares you for PMEA
- Same rubric the panel uses. The Audition Simulator scores tone, intonation, rhythm, tempo, and musicality on the same scale PMEA adjudicators do, calibrated against real audition feedback.
- Specific, not generic. Not "work on intonation" but which interval, which passage, how the drift shows up. A real teacher's specificity, between lessons.
- Audition Prep Mode (Kingdom Pass). Set your audition date and target. The Oracle plan rebalances your daily drill schedule against your timeline. Within 21 days: zero new material, review only.
Common Pennsylvania searches we answer
- PMEA all-state orchestra
- PMEA district audition strings
- Pennsylvania region orchestra
Pennsylvania PMEA all-state questions
Answered from Pennsylvania Music Educators Association documents read on August 17, 2026. Where PMEA does not publish something, the answer says so instead of guessing.
Is the PMEA district audition live or a recorded video?
It depends on your district, and that is a real answer rather than a dodge. District 12 auditions live and in person. District 1's documented process is a recorded video submitted through Submittable, with no earbuds, no cuts or splices, and hands, body and face visible. Any claim that PMEA auditions are all live, or all recorded, is wrong for at least one district.
Can a ninth grader audition for PMEA District Orchestra?
In some districts yes, in others no. District 7 states that its District Orchestra is open to string players in grades 9 to 12. District 12 states that all auditioning students must be in grades 10, 11 or 12. Both are current, both are official. For Region and All-State the rule is grades 10 to 12 statewide, so a ninth grader auditioning in District 7 cannot advance past district that year.
What is the difference between District, Region and All-State?
They are three tiers in sequence. District Orchestra is your district's own ensemble, auditioned in the fall and performed in early February 2027. Region Orchestra is next, performed March 11 to 13, 2027. All-State comes last, at the PMEA conference April 14 to 17, 2027 in Erie. Region and All-State auditions are structurally different: judges pick passages from the music the ensemble is actually performing rather than from a published excerpt list.
What excerpts does my PMEA district use this year?
Whatever your district posted, and no two match. District 10 uses solos, Beethoven for violin, Haydn for viola, Klengel for cello, Vivaldi for bass. District 12 uses two orchestral excerpts per instrument, drawn from Mozart, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Wagner and Beethoven. District 7 says its string excerpts go up after Labor Day. Get the list from your own district's page.
Do I have to memorize my scales for a PMEA audition?
District 7 states plainly that string scales must be played from memory, as written, slurred four to a bow, at a minimum of quarter note = 120 in eighth notes. That is District 7's rule. We could not confirm a comparable memorization rule for the other districts, so do not assume it, and do not assume the opposite either. Ask your director.
Are PMEA auditions blind?
At Region and All-State, yes, explicitly: judges may sit facing away, or you play behind a screen, and you may not speak to the judges. District 12 also states that its judges do not face the student. Other districts do not state it either way, so we cannot tell you how your room will be run.
Is there sight-reading at PMEA auditions?
At district level, yes for the districts we checked. District 12 makes unseen sight-reading 20 percent of the score, and District 10 lists sight-reading as a required component. At Region and All-State, the statewide policy describes only the prepared passage mechanism and does not mention sight-reading, so we are not going to tell you it is there.
How much does a PMEA audition cost?
District 12 charges $7 per audition, invoiced to the school or director through its Ludus portal rather than collected from the student. PMEA publishes no statewide fee schedule and we could not confirm fees for other districts, and no official source we read names an All-State festival fee. Ask your director for your district's number.
When are the All-State seating auditions this year?
Not published yet. PMEA had not posted this season's All-State seating audition calendar as of August 17, 2026, and the orchestra documents on its All-State page are the previous cycle's. Last year the seating audition opened the week after the Region festival, but that is last year's pattern, not this year's date, and we are not going to print a projection as a fact.
Does my orchestra teacher have to be a PMEA member?
Yes. A director must hold current PMEA and NAfME membership for their students to audition. This is stated in PMEA's statewide Region and State Festival Policies and repeated independently by individual districts, so it is one of the few rules that genuinely does hold across Pennsylvania.
Keep going
Want your PMEA take scored instead?
That is the Judge, the other tool. Record 30 seconds of your 2026-2027 audition material and it comes back scored on all five dimensions. Free, no signup.
Record a take, get it scored