In December 2023, a group of musicians from the Saratoga Strings ensemble — including seniors Levi McBeth, Samuel Cotta and Han Yeung — put on their Saratoga Music Department windbreakers and prepared to run. On the day of their performance in the Midwest Clinic, they jogged through the chilly Chicago area, observing the beautiful scenery right next to the convention center. This began a “running” tradition among music students dubbed “The Accellorundo.”
Ever since that December, the activity has been solidified into a tradition of orchestra bonding. The Accellorundo consists of a group of cellists and other music department students going on runs. Usually, with about five runners, the group goes to Safeway to get food or to local boba shops.
“The Accellorundo is a play on the musical term accelerando, which means to speed up,” McBeth, a founder of Accellorundo, said. “We were thinking of how to name this orchestra bonding activity and decided the name a-cello-run-do fit perfectly.”
The runs are an homage to the cellists in the graduated Class of 2023 who were notorious for regularly exercising in local gyms as a group. Though the present-day Accellorundo is a run instead of a workout, members hope to maintain the same good community spirit.
“Seeing so many band kids taking on outside bonding activities, we wanted to do something similar with people in the orchestras, to promote this tightly-knit community,” McBeth said.
Members of the Accellorundo plan to hold more runs this semester, especially to welcome freshmen and garner interested students. In the future, the group plans to explore new routes and downtowns. McBeth said they might try out a different boba shop or café for each upcoming run and rank them as a group.
Junior Katherine Zeng, who commonly takes part in the activity, said the Accellorundo is like a casual run with friends without the need to be competitive.
“It’s fun doing things with the orchestra that aren’t just playing an instrument. There are so many things about people that I didn’t notice before, like how fast some of the sophomores were,” Zeng said. “We meet people in the same and different ensembles connected by the same thing: music.”
