On Wednesday, December 11, 2023, the music department here at Westtown put on their annual winter concert in front of a packed house at the Barton-Test Theater. Many are saying it was one of the best winter concerts they’ve ever seen, so what made it so special?
The concert started out with Teacher Robert Frazier’s introduction of the concert, and the Symphonic Band were the first ensemble. The music started out with a happy march called “Albanian Dance” (composed by Shelley Hanson). It was a lively, entertaining piece of music. After “Albanian Dance,” the band played “Winter on Emerald Bay,” a fast-moving, jiggy piece. The band’s last piece was a wonderful ragtime piece called “That Old Hound Dog Rag.” It encompassed the values of ragtime, with a swaying melody and a moving beat. Personally, my favorite piece of the band was “Albanian Dance,” but you can always watch it back on Local Live and see for yourself!
After the band had exited the stage, the string orchestra walked onstage and tuned their instruments, with Alena Zhang ’24 leading the ensemble as the concertmaster. The orchestra started their repertoire with no initial introduction, playing the famous tune of “The New World Symphony Mvt. IV” by Antonin Dvorak. The piece started out as spooky and mysterious, but eventually became a complex mix of rhythms and melodies. After some rapturous applause, T. Robert came back to introduce the ensemble. The next piece was “In the Dreams of Zhou” by Stephen Chin, a piece dedicated to celebrating the diversity of Asian culture. It starts off with chilling harmonics, followed by a beautiful melody. The piece gradually gets louder and faster, with Zhang playing a few solos as well. The orchestra’s last piece, “Perseus,” was a boiling cauldron of melodies and rhythms and, as someone who played with the string orchestra, it was the hardest piece. It was very fast-paced and required fast fingers.
The choir entered the stage next, and their vocals were stunning. They started off with “Hard Candy Christmas,” which was a solo piece performed by Soph Butch ’27. It was the type of song you’d find in a musical, and it was executed perfectly. It had plenty of long and high notes, and it ended with loud applause from the impressed audience. After this came another solo, performed by Jerry Li ’24. He successfully showed the audience his immense talent, singing the well-known song “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran. Singing a common melody is especially difficult because mistakes are unmistakable – but Li was perfect. After Li’s melodic solo, the rest of the concert choir came on and performed two songs – “Every Time I Feel the Spirit” and “O Sifu niMugu,” a traditional African song. They managed to capture cultured vocals and put on a great show for the audience. The end of the concert choir’s performance had some of the loudest and longest applause of the whole concert!
The last ensemble was the jazz ensemble, who met the spotlight with a jazzy beat and some wonderful melodies. They first performed “Autumn Leaves,” a widely regarded jazz classic. It had a beautiful melody which almost every musician had mastered. Especially impressive was the pianist, Mandy Zhao ’24. This was a longer piece of music and the group kept up the liveliness the whole time! After that, the ensemble did “Just the Two of Us,” a widely known song that has a very recognizable melody – and they did it perfectly. With Ethan Shaman ’24 switching to piano for this piece, there was a strong backbone for the melody coming from the set. The melody itself was performed masterfully by vocalist Kate Dolan ’24, Otto Hillegass ’24, and Ella Cook ’24 on brass and flute. Joey Kim ’24 and Theo Penders ’24 were on guitar on this piece, and they added a modern feel to the song.
Congratulations to those who stunned the audience in the Barton-Test Theater during Westtown’s Winter Concert and to the music department for creating such a show!
