Winter holiday concert puts on a great show

Parents, students, and faculty piled into the Auditorium last week to watch the music department perform the annual Holiday Concert. The event was hosted by music directors Diane Marelli, James Baum, and Kevin McOlgan.

Each part of the music department worked over the past months to get their songs ready for the four performances they put on last week. Every day the madrigals, bands, and orchestra put in countless hours towards the concert.

The concert started of with “Joy to the World’ with Combined Choirs and Brass Choir, that previewed a great start for the rest of the concert. A majority of the songs were Christmas songs, but McOlgan added “Mambo No. 5” played by the Jazz Band which was a well-performed song featuring soloists including senior Keith Brauer.

The Madrigals who are the elite singers of the school,  sang “Winter Wonderland” and worked well together to put on such a fine piece. Senior Madrigal singer Clara Shaw said, “It is a lot of fun to sing with the madrigals and we blend well together.”  They also performed “What Sweeter Music” by John Rutter.

When Men’s Ensemble jumped onto the stage, they put on great piece called Highlights from “Jersey Boys”. They acted out some of the lyrics, and hit some high pitched notes making the crowd errupt in cheers and laughter.  It was one of the best performances of the night and most entertaining.

Tears began to fall from the parents’ eyes as the whole music department played their final three songs. The singers walked down the aisles with candles and sang all together in unison. It was a great final set of songs to finish off the holiday concert and to thank all the people who attended the concerts and to wish them a happy holidays this season.

RB Choir to include parents

When you walk downstairs in RB during the day and enter the music wing, you’ll see myriads of students with various instruments, singing many songs, and generally making lots of pleasant noise. However, on Tuesday nights this April and early May, if you go into the choir room you’ll find a different singing group that doesn’t exactly roam the hallways between 8 and 3.

Choir Director Diane Marelli has decided to add an additional number to the program of the Spring Choir Concert this year: the song Bridge Over Troubled Water by Paul Simon, sung by a choir of, well, choir parents.
Yes, you heard me correctly. The parents of choir students were invited by Marelli to sing the song as part of the spring choir concert on May 6. Marelli reports that between 25 and 30 parents have been coming to practice consistently in preparation for the performance.

Marelli got the idea of asking parents to sing after years of talking to parents after student performances.

“They would say things like, ‘I wish I could be up there singing, I remember when I was in choir, I’ve never sung before in my life but it looks fun.’ I realized that parents were interested, and it was a good time to do it – after the musical – and so I decided to ask them,” said Marelli.

She also said that the song gave her inspiration. “It is a song with powerful lyrics, powerful music. It’s meaningful for the parents because the song is from their generation.”

Many more parents responded to the invitation than Marielli was expecting, and after hearing them and practicing with them she says that they will be a huge success.
Students, parents, faculty, and community members are invited to see the Spring Choir Concert on the evening of May 6, when the four RBHS choirs and the parent choir will be performing.

Musicians perform annual Holiday Concert

On Friday, December 11^th 2009, RBHS musicians preformed the annual Holiday concert for both students, staff, parents and other community members. During the day, the musicians preformed an abbreviated version of the full concert for students and staff. Later in the evening, the full concert, involving all musical groups performing all their prepared music, took place.

This year, due to construction on the building, the concert was held in the gymnasium, as the auditorium is mid-renovation. While probably not the ideal location for the concert, as the gym isn’t built with acoustics in mind, the gym worked well enough and the concert was still able to be held. The renovated Auditorium will be back in use for future concerts.

Band Director James Baum was very pleased with the concert, stating, “I thought [the winter concert] was great! All the groups sounded wonderful, but I was especially pleased with the orchestra, the chamber orchestra, and the Jazz ensemble.”

Students in all music departments, band, orchestra, and choir, preformed various holiday songs for the crowd. The concert started out with the combined ensembles playing all together and ended with the traditional playing of “White Christmas” with alumni helping to sing.

The night lasted about an hour and a half, and was filled with over twenty musical acts. Highlights from the show included the Chamber Orchestra playing “Winter” by Vivaldi featuring freshman Kenzo Esquivel, and the Madrigal Singers singing a highly comical rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” The Jazz ensemble’s tunes were also a crowd favorite.

Baum added, “Senior Jim Sit played a really artistic and tasteful solo on Gingerbread Boy, and Kenzo Esquivel and the chamber orchestra were sublime.”