Friday, March 19, 2010
By Iktae Park
Staff Writer
The Mira Costa band held its spring concert, “The Festival Concert,” on March 10 in the auditorium. The orchestra’s spring concert will be tonight at 7 p.m.
The Festival Concert featured five different groups: concert band, jazz band, Manhattan Beach jazz quartet, symphonic band and wind ensemble.
“The concert was really great; I was very pleased with all the groups. They played well and made quality sounds the vast majority of the time,” band director Joel Carlson said.
The orchestras will play a wide variety of music, ranging from Chinese folk songs to classical works by Rossini.
The pieces played by the concert band, symphonic band and wind ensemble were from their performance at the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association Band Festival at Santa Monica High School. Both concert band and symphonic band received “Excellent” ratings and the wind ensemble received a “Superior” rating.
“I think we did really well at our last festival. We have shown our musical talents to the fullest and achieved what we deserved,” said wind ensemble precussionist Ryan Kay.
“I’m glad we were able to play these songs at the concert because we did work hard to master these advanced pieces. We didn’t want to just let all our work go by without sharing them with our friends and family members.”
The orchestra’s spring concert will feature three groups: string orchestra, chamber ensemble and symphony orchestra.
“Each piece that will be played at our concert has its separate merit, and they each stand on their own,” orchestra director Peter Park said.
“Rather than a concert with a specific theme, this concert will showcase the growing abilities of our orchestras,” Park said.
The symphony orchestra also attended the SCSBOA Orchestra Festival on March 16 at Long Beach Polytech High School. The orchestra performed the songs it will play tonight at the festival and received “Superior” ratings.
Manhattan Beach jazz quartet gave its first performance at the Mira Costa Auditorium during the band concert. The extracurricular group consists of seniors Matt Gafney and Devin Norris and juniors Tyler Johnson and Julian Trivers. All are also members of the Costa jazz band.
“I’m glad we were able to perform at the concert. This is the first time we got to play our piece at Costa,” Gafney said.
The next concert for the band and orchestra will be their Pops concerts in June, where they will play various selections from popular music.
“In the Pops concert, we’ll be able to play music that we’ve known before and it will be more fun,” saxaphonist freshman Brian Zukofguski said.
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