Music On, World Off

Orchestra students tune out the world to prepare for their concert.

Your mind is in a million places all at once. You’re going over sections of music reinforcing it into your mind. A surge of sweat sweeps over your body as you feel the weight of the entire orchestra on your shoulders. The clock strikes seven and you know the time has come.

The Deer Park High School Orchestra preformed their annual Fall Concert recently at the Preforming Arts Center. The Fall Concert is a yearly event put together by the Deer Park High School Co-Directors Meghan Gomen and John Law. Months of preparation and practice go into putting on the show. The concert is meant to showcase the High Schools orchestra students and their talent, along with providing music to the community.

“Every moment you have spent from the first time you pick up your instrument goes into each performance, so a good amount of time. The concert cycle is a few weeks in length, where we start with sight reading the music to learning it, to refining it and reinforcing it. It is not good enough to play it well once. Music demands that you perform at an high level of excellence on a consistent basis,” Ms.Gomen said about how much time, work, and effort, goes into preparing for a concert.

In addition to months of preparation, each and every student have the responsibility for making sure that they give their best performance yet. The entire orchestra includes many individuals who carry the weight of the group on their shoulders. If one person slips it could very well lead to treble. Every member of the orchestra have to be very precise and dedicated to make sure the performance does not fall flat.

“It requires a lot of effort, the music we have isn’t easy, and the amount of effort that you put in will either make your performance better or worse,” Andrew Ham a Freshman cellist in the South Campus Chamber Orchestra said.