White Plains CitizeNetReporter - WPHS Middle School Concert Fills Eastview Music Hall With a Big Sound

WPCNR STAGE DOOR. May 29, 2003: The White Plains Middle School Eastview Campus held its third concert in three weeks Wednesday evening, showcasing the Eighth Grade Orchestra, the Eighth Grade Band, and the Sixth Grade Chorus. The musical interludes provided an audience of approximately 200 parents proof they could hear that the music program of the White Plains schools (ranked 7th in the nation), is extraordinary in its ability to develop, nurture, challenge and inspire young musical talent.

READY! Conductor Laura Mazziotti takes her trademark stance on the podium to begin the Eight Grade Concert Band performance Wednesday evening. The band, demonstrating remarkable clarity, tone, depth, power and harmony between the sections, filled the hall with excellence.
Photo by WPCNR ArtCam

HIGHLIGHT TRIO: Seth Kreielsheimer, Serena Qui, and Elizabeth Meier, (L to R), perfomed a flawless, lyrical Rigadoon in an enthralling blending of their three crystal-clear violin stylings evoking thunderous applause and cascading "Bravos!" from the audience.
Photo by WPCNR ArtCam

HIP-HOPPERS CAN BE-BOP, TOO: In the reception following the concert, the Middle School Jazz Band made the Eastview halls jump, playing brassy, toe-tapping arrangements of Stand By Me, The Twist, and YMCA featuring mellow sax, solid percussion, the stylish "Kenny Burrell" style of Josh Rosenblum's guitar that got parents nodding their heads in time like a jazz band should.
Photo by WPCNR ArtsCam

TAKE A BOW! The Eighth Grade Band is honored by applause, after presenting conductor Mazziotti with a bouquet for her conductorship throughout the year.
Photo by WPCNR ArtsCam

The Eight Grade Orchestra, under the direction of Lisa M. Giordano impressed the audience with seamless blending of woodwinds, violins and violas and basses on Shaker Fantasia Handel's Hornpipe. Conductor Giordano noted it is rare to have an Eighth Grade Orchestra playing Mozart, and proceeded to demonstrate with their performance of Andante and Allegro, and finished their program with I Want to Hold Your Hand .

The orchestra was precise and delicate in their transitions of themes from section to section, drawing out moments when appropriate, and executing flawless seques in the variety of pieces.

Conductors Mazziotti and Giordano clearly enjoyed both working with and developing their young musicians as evidenced by their tearful goodbyes before the groups' last numbers.

Chorus Develops Difficult Pieces

The Sixth Grade Chorus, directed by Carol Myers, demonstrated poised and fearless transitions on the tricky Addams Family theme and the playful tongue twister song, Peter Piper. Wholesome young voices in the making touched the audience with their sincerity in their versions of Colors of the Wind and Heal the World.

Director Myers consistently challenges her young singers with very difficulty material on all levels. When this reporter went to school, choruses were burdened with straight singalongs of spirituals, patriotic songs and Stephen Forster songs. Ms. Myers never gives her choruses boring material and the attention and effort the young singers deliver is touching. Better microphoning of the young singers, though, would be appreciated.

Not only softball players play up, and down.

An innovation of the White Plains music program is the way musicians support other grade groups. The Eighth Grade orchestra was supplemented by four seventh graders and five high school students, formerly Eastview graduates. In the Band, there were five seventh graders, and one sixth grade member.

The practice of having talented members not in eighth grade "sit in" and play in the orchestra and band groups, challenges younger players and provides more outlets for the developing talent, delivering an orchestral experience, for example, when otherwise there would not be one.

Band In Harmony

The Eighth Grade Band performed two splendid marches, Noble Quest and National Emblem showcasing ranks of accomplished sections, a toney, not too-overbearing brass, a mellow and melodious woodwind and flute corps, and a rumbling percussion bed.

It is a tribute to the conductorship and the ability of the young musicians to respect their roles in the pieces they play with respect to the other sections , that the band coalesces to deliver a complete piece. In many bands, the sections had an "every section for itself" attitude with woodwinds overbearing on the brass solos, and the brass blasting away. White Plains bands are not like that. They play together and as a team.

Pieces that showed this coalescent quality were Two Celtic Folksongs where the band developed an "orchestra" quality, brass respecting the "glen-like" sweetness of the woodwinds carrying the picture-painting melody. There was none of the condesending indifference that young brass usually deliver in those kind of pieces.

The showcase piece of the evening was Song of the Matador that displayed all of the colors of the band in a rousing piece. Beginning with the band's youngest member, Audrey Silverman portraying the power of the bull with her sensitive and awesome timpani solo to the splendor of the matador's cape swirling in the "flash and swirl" of the splendid brass, to the thunder of the bull's charge and clouds of dust evoked by the woodwinds. A difficult piece of changing tempos and blending tides and emotions, the band nailed it.

The band displayed the contrapuntal cohesion of its play ethic on The Lion Sleeps Tonight where trombones, trumpets, baritones, sxophones, clarinets and flutes played variations on the old African folk song with bravado, celebration and flare.


Create an account		The White Plains Daily Internet Newspaper...Founded 2000 A.D....


			Designed and hosted by WestchesterInternet.com