article by Stephanie Hobby | photos by Keely Zimmerman

Billings West High School is brimming with musical talent, and if you haven’t caught a concert lately, you’re missing out. As you settle into the wooden auditorium seats, you probably aren’t expecting a goosebump-worthy performance - it is a high school, after all - but ten minutes in, as the music soars, you might have to remind yourself these are teenagers. Even more amazing? Many of these performers picked up their instruments only a few years ago in a middle school music class.

Band Director Steve Patton, Choral Director Angie Langeliers, and Orchestra Director Harmony Hoover are responsible for nurturing this talent. The trio oversees more than 400 students across 19 musical groups: six bands, four orchestras, and nine choral groups, not including soloists and smaller ensembles that meet after school and on weekends.

It takes untold devotion to cultivate harmony among individuals with varying natural talents and work ethic, but faculty members say it is a joy to see performers coalesce and deliver complex, spectacular performances. They credit the progress to a hefty dose of patience during freshman year, when students repeat mundane warm-ups, techniques, and scales. It’s usually not until the start of the second semester that those basics begin to pay off.

“My freshman band is to the point where they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we can sound good. We can do this.’ They think they sound really good when they come in, but all of a sudden, they’re realizing, ‘Wow, we sound totally different,’” said Patton, who is retiring after his twenty-fifth year at West, and, before that, 12 years in Laurel.

Hoover and Langeliers agreed that while the goal of middle school music programs is to excite and engage students, high school programs shift the focus toward skill-building. “Sometimes you have to do these things of, ‘I promise you’re going to love this piece in another language, or I promise that you’re going to love that you can sing in six- and eight-part harmonies when you master these patterns, when you master these scales,’” said Langeliers. “It’s really beautiful to see their tone just sync up.” Hoover echoed, “Seeing the results from this time of year, all that work that we did, and just hearing the groups and the progress is exciting.”

Hoover, who is in her sixteenth year at West High, splits her time between West High and Riverside Middle School, where Arts Without Boundaries (AWB) is piloting a program that provides students with musical instruments. AWB supports arts and music education to bolster academic success and increase school retention rates for at-risk students, and it also supports Patton’s band students. Through AWB, high school musicians offer music lessons to middle school students four nights a week.

Mutual respect is at the heart of their success. “We’re all strong, talented musicians and very capable, but when it comes to teaching and working with students, you have to have the connection with the kids. They have to trust you and understand your vision and that you have their best interests at heart,” Langeliers said.

Erinn Ackley, the music department’s secretary, keeps it all organized, allowing the teachers to focus on teaching rather than collecting permission slips, planning performance logistics, or managing office tasks. Having an office close to the classrooms offers pretty great perks. “I will literally get goosebumps some days and just find myself smiling, and I’m just so proud. Once in a while, I will have to stand up and look out the window to see if it’s a recording playing or if it’s the students.”

West High’s concert collaborations showcase the students’ abilities; hearing a choir perform with orchestra and band students is nothing short of magical. This collaborative spirit extends to pep bands. Despite on-field rivalries, Patton wants his musicians to sit with and play alongside students from other schools. “We have more fun, and the camaraderie is amazing,” Patton said, adding that the spirit extends to music teachers across the state, who share advice, raise funds, help each other’s students, and support new teachers.

Last year, West High started a local branch of the national Tri-M Music Honor Society, which encourages students to use their talents to serve others. For Valentine’s Day, Langeliers’s students arranged a visit to a local retirement home to offer singing Valentine’s. Their lineup included classics such as My Girl and For the Longest Time.

Toward the end of every school year, the school’s top performers are selected to go on tour to learn from university music departments and attend well-known symphonies in cities such as Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, Edmonton, and Los Angeles. “Tour is brutal. It’s long, long days on a bus with kids, and they’re excited,” Patton said. “But every tour I’ve been on, there’s been a moment where I’ve said, ‘Okay, it’s worth it.’ You recognize a kid whose life just changed. They got accepted to something that they had never been accepted to before. I’ve always had that moment on every tour where I went, ‘Oh, that’s why we do this.’”

End-of-year performances are scheduled throughout May. For all performances at West, admission is $7 per adult, $5 for students and senior citizens, and free for children in fifth grade or younger. The band concert and senior solos are scheduled for May 12. The orchestra concert will be on May 14 at 6 p.m., and the choir concerts will be on May 18 and 19 at 6:30 p.m. The State Music Festival will be held at Skyview High School on May 1-2. On May 8 at 7p.m., students will host a Big Band Dance at St. John’s.

Originally printed in the April 2026 issue of Simply Local Magazine

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