The grass is covered in dewy frost as the morning sun rises. Students hop out of their beds and bundle up to face the harsh winds and cold December days. When they arrive at school, flyers and announcements inform the students about the captivating upcoming Winter band, Choir, and Orchestra concerts.
Students who are involved in these Atholton’s Concerts have been working tirelessly to bring you the shows of a lifetime. Classic pieces like “Sleigh Ride” are sure to put students in the holiday spirit.
BAND CONCERT
Ms. Swartz, Atholton High School’s new band teacher, said that she is “very proud of these kids,” and the pieces they performed.
Ms. Swartz, before coming to Atholton’s Concerts, taught middle school orchestra and arranged and organized many Atholton’s Concerts. Since entering the world of high school orchestra, she’s found it to be more challenging as far as ensemble and difficult music.
“It’s a totally different ballpark because I’m the director; it’s my band,” she stated. “I want music that is challenging but appropriate. I want to play to the strengths of the ensemble.”
The pieces in context change every concert, but there is one song that is played at every Winter band concert, and that is “Sleigh Ride”. “It very much gets people in the holiday mood and the kids love it,” Ms. Swartz said, as well as expressing some concern about how the pieces were chosen.
Ms. Swartz felt that it was best to pick pieces that she already knew how to teach, rather than learning new pieces with the students. Despite this, she is very confident in her students.
Freshman band member/student Amelia Dewitt said, “Each concert takes a few months to perform and we rehearse every day at school…The performance is amazing, seeing all of our work that we’ve put in the last couple of months all sums up to that very moment and it’s really exciting.”
The band came together, made adjustments, and prepared for a performance that will surely put students in the holiday spirit.
ORCHESTRA CONCERT
Mr. Reinhardt, Atholton High’s orchestra director, looked forward to having this concert. Their program consists of many different pieces of many different genres. He said, “I look forward to all of them for different reasons because our program is varied.”
Orchestra students performed three pieces for each group concert and chamber orchestra, with songs from The Nutcracker and more. Mr. Reinhardt said that the students had a say in choosing the pieces, he would choose the songs and he would ask the students what they thought.
“To some extent I choose pieces but then I’ll take input from students. For example we were only going to do two of the pieces by Hindemith, two of the movements, and the students really liked the third one that we read, they were like ‘Can we do this’ and I said ‘Sure we can add this.”
Mr. Reinhardt added that the orchestra concert has a lot of thought that has to go into it because they are “balancing different styles.”
Mr. Reinhardt also said that you have to keep in mind “what’s accessible to the students,” based on the skills they’ve learned.
Mr Reinhardt also added, “the process starts in early summer, thinking about what might be possible because then you have to get the music and then you have to put fingerings and bowings in the music. There’s a big long process.”
Chelsea Sun, a sophomore and orchestra student, shared her favorite part of performing in an orchestra concert: “You get to perform in a group of people and it’s exciting and it’s really cool to listen back to the pieces that you’ve played and see it all come together at the concert,” she said.
“It reflects how much work you put in as an orchestra.” Dedication and hard work, according to Sun, is all worth it to hear how well they perform on the night of the concert.
CHOIR CONCERT
Atholton High’s choir concert is one that students look forward to in both Spring and Winter. Ms. Freel, Atholton’s Concerts choir director, has had the pleasure to work with the students this winter to put on a show for the student body to introduce and welcome the holiday season.
Gerson Bercian, a junior and first time choir student said that the rest of the choir had a good bit of say in the pieces they were to perform, “We had a vote with the pop songs. And then with the Christmas songs we submitted ideas.”
Other than song choices, rehearsals are a big part of every concert, performance, and speech, and they “last about two, maybe three hours,” Bercian commented, “but they all go by really quickly.”
The process of putting on a performance can be tedious, and very time consuming but worth all of the time to give everyone a positive and festive environment. With practice hours and picking songs to sing, the music department puts their all into prepping their voices, instruments, and placements in music in order to have shows that are extraordinary to the student body.
