Photo Gallery
Below are some pictures of some of the music we've played so far
One of the many after-school activities that my school provides is Full Orchestra. It is an oppportunity offered to students who play an instrument that would like to expand their skills. Unlike the Orchestra class, Full Orchestra has a combination of both wind, string, and percussion players. Most of the string players are the same as those that play in the Symphony Orchestra class, while the wind players tend to be recommended by the band teacher to the orchestra teacher, or have auditioned to join. The repertoire is that of a typical orchestra, although there are times we perform arrangements of movie scores.
I started playing flute for Full Orchestra in my junior year. I decided not to continue doing Oakland Youth Orchestra because I didn't quite enjoy the way that they were structuring their virtual practices. Also, Oakland Youth Orchestra is a bigger time commitment than Full Orchestra, and with my junior approaching when I made the decision to switch, I knew that I wanted to be able to continue focusing on my education and maintaining my GPA.
It was interesting to figure out how Full Orchestra would run with the challenges of COVID-19 and virtual learning. For the most part, we played pieces with backing tracks and did check-ins with the conductor about once a month. Later in the year, the music department planned a virtual concert, so prepared and recorded a song for that. While I think it could've been a little better in terms of tuning and staying together, it was pretty good for the conditions we did it in.
This year, I'm the principle flautist and I like to think I have been doing fairly well at leading my section. We are currently preparing for our first concert of the year, which has been going fairly well. I have a solo and am also covering the piccolo part on our pieces, so I've been kept fairly busy practicing my parts. I think it's going to sound pretty good, but I'm mostly excited for our first live concert in over a year.
Below are some pictures of some of the music we've played so far