By Daniel Kokoski and Arthur Hoang
The Choir Department hosted its winter concert “Warm on a Cold Night” last Wednesday featuring the Treblemakers, Varsity Choir and Concert Choir, while music department’s Winter Concert “All Bundled Up” performed in the L-Building on Friday.
“(I really enjoy) just seeing people sing and express their emotions,” remarks Choir Council Vice President Vanessa Nguyen.
The instrumental concert consisted of performances from String Orchestra, Concert Band, Percussion Ensemble, Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra. The evening included classical renditions from “Inverno” by Vivaldi to “Sleigh Ride” by Leroy Anderson.
“The music is very intense,” admits freshman Victor Xie, who plays for String Orchestra. “I really love the care Ms. Ray puts into selecting the music.”
The choir concert featured songs such as “Voice Dance,” “Tollite Hostias” and “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind,” along with recognizable holiday songs including “Deck the Halls” and “Sleigh Ride.”
“Every concert is unique because of how different the songs are,” says Vanessa. “We may never sing those songs again.”
The Instrumental Department’s “All Bundled Up” is the product of one month’s worth of practices both in and out of class. While it was at first challenging for each player to match tempos, their cohesion has improved over their many practices.
“We are pretty prepared. We’ve run through the pieces many times, and we always make sure all the different sections of the group are balanced so we have the right amount of each section heard in each part,” explains Sarah Dao, a member of Symphony Orchestra.
For the choir members, one significant difficulty was to convey the songs’ intent to the audience and set the right mood with each tune.
“For the past few weeks, we’ve been trying to piece together all of the lyrics along with the actual meaning of the song,” explains Choir Council President Catherine Tran. “For example, we’re singing a song called ‘Soneto De La Noche,’ a song about death, but we can’t look like we’re singing about death (and evoke a dark mood). It’s actually a very energetic song.”
While these are the last Music Department concerts of the calendar year, the musicians have many more ahead of them. Classes are preparing for their Disneyland trip in March as well the spring CMEA (California Musician Education Association) concert.
“I’m excited for the challenges we may face together as an orchestra at the CMEA festival,” claims Victor.
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