ARTICLE BY MICHELLE YIN. VIDEO FILMED & EDITED BY TOBY PITAN.
The Winter Band Ensemble concert was held on December 9th, starting at 6:30pm. This concert was hosted by the Instrumental Methods class and they played many modern pop songs as well as well as classics. The members of this class had spent a lot of energy and dedication to this concert with the motivation of their interest for music. Students from different grades were joined with the common goal, to entertain their audience.
According to junior Lionel Walker, a drummer for the songs ‘Flashing Lights’ and ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ says, “[he’s] always been kind of musically inclined, so [he] felt like this was the perfect class to be in to like experience and do different things with [his] music and come together with other people and make music, it’s really cool.” He had really enjoyed this concert as well as the company of the people he was playing and working with. He recommends that students take the class next year because, “[he learned] from Ms. Mazza, and [he] definitely [learned] from other people, when there’s other people around you will start to pick up things and that’s how you become a better musician, listening and observing basically.”
The students that participated in the Winter Ensemble had enjoyed it a lot. Senior and junior Hebart Desane and Sebastano Bret were drawn to the class because they wanted to make some noise and music has always been part of their life. They both agreed that the class including themselves had done good, although they were nervous when the concert had first started but they grew more confident as it went on.
The advisor of the concert as well as the teacher of the Instrumental Methods class, Erin O’Brien Mazza says that “[she thinks] [the concert] went pretty good overall, this a really hard performance because it’s the very first performance for a lot of [the students]…but [she thinks] they did a really good job.” The Small Ensemble is where people could write their own curriculum and pick their own songs, they could take control of their learning and freedom to choose what they want to do. Mazza had stated that what’s special about teaching this class is “their excitement, it’s so new to them…these students are so excited about it, so it’s really special every time we get to perform.”
