Past the Spartan head and the cafeteria, down the hall, lies a room full of loud, lively people. That room is the Orchestra room! A place where students from all grades come to play the violin, viola, cello and bass! Taught by the wonderful teacher and conductor, Ms. Albers, the Philharmonic orchestra played their halloween concert in the auditorium on October 24th.
Filled with freshmen and sophomores, the Philharmonic orchestra was ecstatic for the halloween concert. Sophomore Mika Malaespina says, “I am so excited!…Spooky season is coming up and I just cannot wait to hear everybody play”. They played three songs, “The Abandoned Funhouse” by Brian Balmages, “Hidden Passages” by Kathryn Griesinger and “Aliens in the Attic” by Tyler Arcari.
Abandoned Funhouse is a song that takes you through a tour of a creepy, abandoned Funhouse. During this piece, the 1st and 2nd violins switched roles and instead the 2nd violins played the melody and the 1st played the harmony. While played before in past years, it’s a piece that brings positive memories to the musicians at Broad Run.
The second piece, “Hidden Passages” tells the foreboding tale of a man walking towards his execution. Unlike the other two pieces, “Hidden Passages” contained more difficult bowing strategies like slurring, tremolo and bow lifts. While being one of the more difficult songs, the Philharmonic orchestra worked hard to execute this piece during the Halloween concert.
The last piece, “Aliens in the Attic”, was played alongside the 8th grade orchestra from Farmwell Station Middle school. The song had an interesting combination of string instruments and silly sound effects to mimic the chaos of aliens invading your attic. An additional instrument was added to this piece called the whirly tubes. Whirly tubes are a corrugated plastic tube played by swinging them in circles and elicit a sound that mimics an alien spaceship. Unlike the rest of the songs, this piece was conducted by Ms. Geiger.
Some fun aspects of the Halloween concert was that our musicians dressed up in spooky, silly costumes. Like Malaespina, who says, “I’m thinking of doing… dio de los muertos flowers, like a flower crown on top of my head”. Even musicians who weren’t dressing up in costumes still adorned themselves with some halloween flair, whether that be splashes of green, purple, and orange or wearing spooky makeup, everyone is in the spirit of halloween. Ms. Albers also invited the elementary schoolers to join us and participate in our trick-or-treating event at the end of the concert. Here, Ms. Albers and the philharmonic orchestra students handed out candy to the kids as they walked along the stage.
Broad Run High School orchestra’s concerts are always full of fun and amusement. If all that interests you, we invite you to our next concert. The Winter Concert will be held somewhere around December and might feature songs like, “The Grinch” and “Polar Express”. So don’t miss out and join us at our next concert!
