On December 11, Centreville’s six orchestras performed their winter concert to spread holiday cheer before winter break. With over 120 students in the program and a wide variety of talent, the concert’s program covered numerous styles and genres of music.
Led by Centreville’s orchestra directors, Dr. Taylor and Ms. Kohut, each ensemble performed two contrasting pieces during the course of the concert. Among the 12 pieces were traditional holiday tunes like “Winter Wonderland” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” as well as a medley of Hanukkah songs called “Festival of Lights” performed by the Chamber orchestra. Alice Sengstack is a sophomore in Chamber, and remarks on their unique pieces.
“It’s not just Christmas music,” said Sengstack. “[The concert] contains songs for everything winter-related.”
Centreville’s orchestra department performs four concerts each year, so the students had been preparing for their winter performance since the fall. According to Lily Koudmani, a junior violinist in Centreville’s Vivace Orchestra, “all the orchestras have worked extremely hard to practice outside of school, and the music sounds phenomenal.” She also notes that she heard the Philharmonic orchestra, Centreville’s most advanced group, rehearse, and that their pieces sounded fantastic.
Vivace is also one of Centreville’s advanced orchestras, and debuted a student composition as part of the concert. Taylor and Kohut typically opt to showcase a student composition in the spring, but they were approached by Junior Joshua Bendel to perform one of his works earlier.
“He’s actually been asking us since he was a freshman,” noted Ms. Kohut, director of Vivace. “[Bendel] has self-published maybe 12 pieces on J.W. Pepper, and he sent them to me and Dr. Taylor to look through. This winter, we decided to perform one of his pieces called ‘Skyward Spirit’ for the concert.”
The Vivace Orchestra thoroughly enjoyed the chance to work on the student composition. While Kohut taught “Skyward Spirit” like any other piece, she took the opportunity to ask Bendel questions about it to better understand his vision for the material, and she worked with him to modify sections of the piece for the orchestra. Koudmani admits that the original work was her favorite piece to prepare for the concert.
“Joshua composed ‘Skyward Spirit’ to sound like superhero music,” said Koudmani. “When the piece reaches its climax, you can almost picture the events that are happening.”
Knowing that many audience members have emotional ties to the holidays, the students took great care to prepare their pieces. Congratulations to the entire orchestra department on a successful concert!
