Music program aims to foster community through holiday performances

Surrounded by family and friends, the Chamber Choir sings for the community at Blaney Plaza.

With percussion kicking off the music program’s winter concert series on Nov. 15, the jazz band, orchestra and choir will each hold their own performances before the final concert band performance on Dec. 14.

During the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Saratoga on Nov. 24, the Chamber Choir, the school’s highest-audition choir ensemble, performed for the community at Blaney Plaza alongside the joint elementary school choir, singing festive songs like “Sleigh Ride” and “Winter Wonderland.”

In previous years, the performance featured a joint elementary school choir led by director Barbara Jones, with fourth-grade students from Argonaut Elementary, Saratoga Elementary and Foothill Elementary, along with the Redwood Middle School Choir. However, RMS was unable to attend this year due to the proportion of students who had holiday travel plans over the week-long Thanksgiving break. The Saratoga High choir filled the vacancy, thus marking their first performance at the event.

The choir has additional plans to perform at other various community events such as the holiday tea event at the Saratoga Foothill Club on Dec. 12 and at Foothill Elementary on Dec. 4 for a holiday book fair.

“It is a nice way to get out in the community because a lot of times our performances end up being our friends and family,” choir director Beth Nitzan said. “We [normally don’t reach out] to new people that haven’t heard us before, so I think it is significant in that respect.”

Besides outreach from the SHS choirs, the band program has also aimed to build community with the younger students who will eventually attend SHS by helping the RMS marching band perform at the 67th Los Gatos Holiday Parade on Dec. 2. Several high school band members volunteered before school during Redwood’s Tuesday and Thursday early morning rehearsals to help the seventh and eighth graders improve in their marching technique.

“We mostly helped them with fundamentals on how to play instruments while marching, and we would sometimes march with them too,” freshman Madin Kaul said. “I think it helps middle school students build connections [with high schoolers] early so they don’t have to struggle so much when they have to perform at a higher level in high school.”

Besides these community events, the percussion program kicked off the music program’s winter concert series on Nov. 15. The advanced jazz band performed in the SHS library on Nov. 30 to give a more laid back atmosphere to the concert, featuring various members throughout their pieces as well as Class of ‘19 alumnus and violinist Charles Yun, who was previously concertmaster in the Saratoga Strings (SS) — the school’s highest orchestra ensemble. Along with the jazz band, history teacher Kirk Abe, a skilled drummer, and his quintet also took part in the concert.

During SS’s Dec. 6 “send off” concert, the ensemble played their entire Midwest Clinic performance set in order to get a full run in before leaving for Chicago on Dec. 19 to represent the music program at the 77th Midwest Clinic International Band, Orchestra and Music Conference. The following week, all the orchestras performed on Dec. 12. Featured during the performance was one of the winners of last year’s concerto competition, senior Andrew Tran, who played Emmanuel Sejourné’s “Concerto for Marimba and Strings.”

On Dec. 13, the SHS choirs performed a total of nine pieces, with RMS Choir and LGHS Choir playing their own sets during the concert before coming together for a large finale. Some highlights included various movements from the “Ceremony of Carols” by Benjamin Britten, Chinese folk song “Rainbow Sister” arranged by Jerry Lim, “Count On Me” by Bruno Mars and “They Are Mother” by Jennifer Lucy Cook.

The bands will close out the winter series on Dec. 14 with the Freshman Band and Symphonic Band performing separate pieces as well as a combined piece. The advanced audition Symphonic Wind Ensemble will be performing about half of their CASMEC (California All State Music and Education Conference) repertoire on Dec. 14, opening with a brass “Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare” by Richard Strauss and plan to feature associate band director Sean Clark and percussion co-director Chavadith Tantavirojn on Emmanuel Séjourné’s “Double Concerto for Marimba and Vibraphone.” The band will close out with the finale of “Third Symphony, IV” by James Barnes and “Sleigh Ride” arranged by Leroy Anderson.