Concert Wind Symphony takes on the Kennedy Center
The high school auditorium was resonating with the sounds of a symphony. The Concert Wind Symphony played their spring concert on April 17, which showcased all their work leading up to this point.
The group played music they have been working on throughout the school year. Recently, the group visited Washington D.C. and got a chance to play their pieces in the John F. Kennedy Center. This experience helped the group feel more comfortable with playing for a big audience.
“The John F Kennedy Center was the biggest place we have ever played that, which I think helped our class prepare for the concert,” junior Joe Weber said.
At the Kennedy Center the band played for an audience of over 1,000 people. This was the largest audience that they have ever played for. The performance then became more real for the students and they felt more pressure to play their best.
“We got very nervous in the practice rooms before the concert when we saw everyone,” sophomore Maya Yokanovich said.
The students felt like performing in such a large and different place than usual helped them be more comfortable on stage at their final home concert. This new experience was very beneficial to them because the Kennedy Center brought them both nerves and new opportunities.
“I think being able to perform in a place like that helped the band play more naturally when it was time to play at the home concert because we were more used to our own stage and performing for a smaller audience,” Weber said.
This concert was the end goal after a long year of hard work. All the work they have put in since day one of the school year has been leading up to this concert. Every thing they have learned and improved on was used at that concert so that they could have their best performance.
“I felt we really grew as a band together this year and through our trip together; I look forward to preforming next year,” Weber said.
The audience also agreed when it came to the stunning performance of the students. The music program has evidently helped some talented kids grow throughout this year and the audience recognized that. The audience seemed happy with the concert and the music they heard.
“It was cool to see kids in my class on stage playing so well, I was shocked at how good they were. The music was all played very well and professional,” junior Linnea Rustad said.
Many students were featured soloists in the concert including, but not limited to, senior Kristen Diedrichs, junior Charlie Skaret, junior Beatrice Lawrence, and senior Ben Alcorn. These students had a chance to show of their hard work and talent in front of both large audiences in Washington D.C. and in Stillwater.
“The soloists did a great job, they all seemed very confident and professional and they preformed the solos very well,” Rustad said.
This concert was one of the last of this school year and the band thought they performed well. It featured soloists and a wide range of music that showed of the band’s different talents.
“Overall I think this concert went very well, as a band we played one of our best performances and I think we were all pretty happy about that,” Yokanovich said.
Grace Donner is a photographer for the Pony Express Newspaper. She is a junior at Stillwater Area High School. She enjoys taking photos in her free time...
Elise Luoma • Sep 25, 2016 at 9:08 pm
As a member of choir, it’s always fascinating to hear about the music department as a whole. This article had varied sentence structures, interesting quotes, and it was very cool to hear about the incredible opportunity for the wind symphony to perform at the John F. Kennedy Center. I also enjoyed reading about band students’ solo opportunities and the experience performing gave them.
Madison Crain • May 6, 2016 at 8:12 am
This article did a really good job comparing the stress level of performing at the John F. Kennedy Center and the home spring concert. I felt like I was there when they preformed with the good facts and good interviews.
Rachel Zinkgraf • May 4, 2016 at 2:07 pm
The wording of the article makes it feel as if the reader is at the concert yet it covers every aspect of the event. The quotes have a great approach to them so the reader can see it through the eyes of thru student.
Kai Knudson • May 4, 2016 at 8:22 am
This article did a good job comparing the stress levels between playing at the Kennedy Center and at our performance at the high school. I think you could have taken a slightly different approach to the article by talking about the difficulty of the music and the time constraints we had, like how we got some of our pieces the week before our spring concert at the high school.
Alex Serier • May 3, 2016 at 10:47 pm
I liked this article it gave a nice in sight into what went into the band preforming at the Kennedy center. Also included a bit about the bands growth and also how some were looking forward to next year.
Caroline Allessi • May 3, 2016 at 9:32 pm
I think this article provides tons of information for someone who didn’t know about the band events this year, which is great. However, because you jumped between talking about the Kennedy Center and the spring concert so much, it got kind of confusing. Also, as Lauren pointed out, the audience at the Kennedy center was not 1000 people. Overall, though, it is a very informative article
Lauren LeBourgeois • May 3, 2016 at 9:28 pm
I really liked this article. I am a member of this band, and I feel you did a good job representing our band and how we felt about the opportunity to perform at the Kennedy Center. Although, I am pretty sure we didn’t perform for 1,000 people, so maybe double check on that number.