The music department held its fifth annual “informance” Saturday evening., showcasing what choir, orchestra and marching band students have been learning in the past month as they geared up for the start of the school year.
The 2-hour event started in the McAfee Center, where orchestra director Michael Boitz and Shelley Durbin, the new choir director, led a performance of the Alma Mater. All orchestras also performed a medley featuring One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.”
“I love seeing every part of the music department perform [in one day],” said senior Katherine Zeng, the orchestra’s head manager. “There are so few events where you can see everyone perform together, and it’s the only time the orchestra gets to perform with the choir.”
Attendees then walked to Benny Pierce Field for the marching band showcase, kicked off by percussion director Sean Clark and the drumline, or battery. With 18 members, they performed a short excerpt of the show music and two exercises, called “Saratoga Accent Taps” and “Irish.”
Photo by Jane Lee
The battery set up to play “Irish,” an exercise to practice double sticking. Of the 18 drummers this year, six are freshmen.
The color guard, under the direction of Russell Crow, performed “27 points,” an exercise meant to emphasize time, space and energy — or the ability to find 27 different points in space with the necessary energy.
Photo by Jane Lee
Color guard captain and senior Luke Tjahjadi and assistant captains and juniors Madhura Natarajan and Elisabeth Pattullo lead the guard through 27 Points.
Percussion director Chavadith Tantavirojn led the front ensemble in their vertical stroke triad exercise, along with another excerpt of the show. The winds, led by band director Jason Shiuan, played part of their warm-up routing as well as a separate show snippet.
Before the ensemble presented the first movement of their show, marching band family members were invited to the field to attempt to learn how to march and play their student’s instrument.
The 2025 Marching Band and Color Guard’s field show is titled “The Thread Between Us,” inspired by the “threads of fate” that bring people together. The first movement features excerpts from the piece “Symphonic Metamorphosis” by Paul Hindemith and the song “Fences” by Son Lux.
The informance originally marked the end of the marching band’s band camp, taking place before the start of school. However, after the pandemic, it was pushed back multiple weeks and began to feature the entire music department in an effort to foster a stronger community. Music department students said they find the annual event to be both exciting, as it marks the beginning of a new year, and bittersweet.
“Every year, we see last year’s seniors and other alumni who come to visit the informance,” said senior Mridhula Vudali, another head orchestra manager. “That just goes to show how even the smallest events, like the informance, play a huge role in the community; it acquaints the new families and says a final goodbye to the old ones.”
