Olivia Brunner-Gaydos, Joanne Mietzner and Bethany Hansen rehearse for tonight's concert.
Orcas Island school’s all-elementary Spring Concert tonight will have a blustery theme.
Some of the school’s musical groups playing at the Winter Windy concert tonight are:
5th and 6th grade Strings (violins, violas and cellos)
Before-school Beginning and Intermediate Strings
5th grade band
6th grade band
5th and 6th grade choir
Elementary music teacher Pamela Wright says that her students will be accompanied by Ian Gatley from San Juan Island, playing slide guitar, parent Grant Myles-Era on guitar, grandparent Ron Myers on piano, high school student Kailley Grantham on flute, and second-grader Maggie Toombs, who will provide piano accompaniment to the choir’s rendition of “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.”
Other songs to be performed by the choir are a composition by Cat Stevens, a poem by Christina Rosetti, and “Windy” as popularized by The Association in the 1960s.
Back left, Emma Heikkinen, and Liam Tidrington (foreground) prepare their cellos for performing this evening.
The concert begins at 6:15 p.m. in the elementary/Middle School gym.
The school’s strings program includes before-school lessons four times a week with Wright and her 45 students: 10 students playing cello, three learning viola, and 32 violin students.
The beginning group has 18 students who start their lessons at 7:15 a.m., and the intermediate group, who rehearse at the same time on alternate mornings, has nine students.
Next week, the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival is again sponsoring violinist Monique Mead as the Musician in Residence at the school, to work intensively with the string students, as well as other students of teachers Wright and Lizz Hanks.
Mead will aid the elementary students on “finesse in performance as a group,” says Wright. “It’s always valuable to have ‘new ears’ working with the kids, especially at Monique’s level.
“And the kids love her; they can’t wait for her to come back.”
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