Hello,

I played this piece for contest in 2025 and the piece is pretty tough. It will depend what you program with it, for sure. The chords in Chorale and Shaker Dance especially were harder to tune for my NV band kids than I thought they would be.

You can find ways to see how frequently pieces are played for UIL. This one seems to be played pretty rarely, despite it being really popular about 20 years ago.

I admire your interest in playing the piece because it is a great piece of music. My main concern for recommending it would be the judge's rubric now does not reward any extra points for difficulty of piece based on type of ensemble playing it. They will want to hear this piece played like a recording... if your group can do it, go for it. If I had a second shot at programming it now that I know what I know, I would not program it for contest with a 2nd group.