Over the course of the fall semester, once a week I went to my Chamber Orchestra class in Alton Auditorium, which included a total of seven people. With each musician on a different instrument, our director knew it would be difficult to find repertoire that would best suit the rare mixture of sounds. He settled on a Haydn symphony to be our main focus for the semester, putting me on the violin part even though I play flute, and improvising with other parts as he needed. We continued through the semester working intensely on this piece, as well as several chorales for the strings and winds, switching back and forth between the groups during class.
On December 3, as the semester came to an end, Dr. Di Santo invited the Bay-Atlantic Symphony, an adult group of profound musicians in the Atlantic county area, to perform the Haydn symphony with us, as well as a few of their own selections. Having their addition of experience and sound to our group only made the symphony all the more powerful and reverberating by the end. Hearing our performance as we played was an amazing experience all in its own, because it creates a sense of accomplishment and surprises one of what they are capable of. This is one of the aspects I have always enjoyed about music, and why I was so interested in continuing music in college.
A week later, on December 10, the last day of the semester, our ensemble performed again, this time on our own. We performed the symphony as well as our string and wind chorales. Although we had a smaller crowd due to it being the end of the semester, my parents were able to attend before bringing me home, and it was as if I were performing as I did in high school again. I fully appreciated the opportunity to work as hard as I could during the semester on making music and being able to display what we have accomplished. No matter the size of the crowd, performing on any level has always been a passion of mine, as well as simply playing during rehearsal. I am currently enrolled for this course again during this current semester, so I am excited to see what we will perform at our next concert!