By Jack McDermott
Staff Writer
The best musicians from all District 214 high schools were featured this past Thursday in the Honors Music Festival. The event took place from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Forest View Alternative School. The three ensembles featured were honors choir, honors orchestra, and honors band. In In addition, the Concerto Competition winner, Gallia Kastner, was also featured.
Kastner is a violin player from Hersey who has traveled around the world playing everywhere from the Kultursiftung in Germany to the Lincoln Center in New York. She amazed the crowd, especially since she had to memorize a nearly twenty minute song. The other orchestra players and their synchronized bowing also dropped jaws.
After the opener from the orchestra, choir was up. Choir opened with “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” by Williametta Spencer. During this song I realized how different the sounds were that came from the three ensembles. Unlike the orchestra, the choir had many more voices, just over 250. This made the sound resonate from every corner of the room.
All the members of the choir were wearing their own school colors and Prospect wore a dark blue gown with a white color.
For the last of the choir’s songs, four soloists sung “The Awakening”. The music festival chose Prospect senior Sam Hart for one of the soloists and although he was a little quieter than the other singers, he still contributed nicely to the trio.
Lastly, the band played two songs, each well over 15 minutes. To prepare, the group met three times, two hours a piece. In a total of six hours, this group pulled off a masterpiece. With all the large and powerful instruments, the sound exploded throughout the entire school. Even the last song, which was quite slow at times, had sections of the loudest music I have ever heard without help from microphones.
The event is a mixture of musicians from all different schools and one of the biggest challenges is working together.
“It’s not about schools competing, but about all the musicians coming together.” said Chris Barnum, the Director of Bands.
