The annual Fall Concert was performed in the CPAC, as the “first formal concert of the academic year,” according to music teacher Johnny Johnson. The concert included a variety of instrumental numbers from Symphonic Band, Concert Band, and Orchestra, on November 20.
In a special collaboration,Orchestra and Chamber Choir collaborated in a performance of Gabriel Faure’s “Pavane.” According to Johnson, the collaboration between him and choral instructor Mark Roberts was something new.
“I feel like the two groups complimented each other really well,” said Sophomore strings player Gabriela Asuncion.
Johnson, however, added that it wasn’t easy to organize. “Any collaboration project like that has some difficulty, because we just have the strings in the class [Orchestra],” he explained. “So anything that we add beyond the strings requires extra time of everyone.”
The process of getting everyone involved for rehearsal was laborious.”The wind players and percussion players [Band] come in, and we’re playing full orchestra repertoire. We have to do lunches – you know, lunch rehearsals and 7 a.m. And my colleagues allow them to come to 5th period with the strings, because strings rehearse 5th period, and the combination of all those sacrifices makes it work. So adding the chamber singers was exactly that process. We met a couple of times at lunch, we met once during 5th period, and once in the morning, 7 am, to make it all work, to put everybody together,” Johnson said.
“It was hard to organize, and it was sort of nerve racking,” Asuncion agreed. “But it pulled together, and the final result was pretty nice.”
Johnson noted that his class reacted positively to the project. “I think everyone involved really loved it. It was an unusual experience for all of us, and I think we all grew from it,” he said.
According to Johnson, collaboration Has not happened often. However, he added that he definitely plans to have similar projects with Roberts in the future. “Any new experience add to your depth of understanding of different kinds of music. So that collaboration enriched us, in that way,” Johnson explained.
