Orange County Music Educators Association (OCMEA) held the annual High School All County music festival at Monroe-Woodbury High School during the weekend of January 26 and 27.
The festival held three groups performing. The groups were a full orchestra, wind ensemble, and chorus. All groups met for the first time on the Friday night of January 26. The groups rehearsed Friday night from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. and then the students returned to MWHS and rehearsed with their groups from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. when the concert started.
The orchestra was conducted by Mr. William Stevens. He is an active performer and conductor throughout the Hudson Valley. He is currently one of the band and jazz directors at Union Vale Middle School in the Arlington Central School District. He plays the clarinet in various orchestras and bands and they perform in many different places in Europe as well as Carnegie Hall.
The orchestra performed three songs. “La Suerte de los Tontos” by Johnny Richards, “The Sea Hawk” by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and “Video Games Live” arranged by Ralph Ford.
“La Suerte de los Tontos” translates to Fortune of Fools. It is a powerful and exciting song with a very rhythmic feel. “The Sea Hawk” was written for the movie, “The Sea Hawk’ in the 1940s. It features many of the main themes of the movie and tells a story with different sounds throughout the piece. Lastly, “Video Games Live” is a piece featuring different video game soundtracks. The games included are “Halo”, “Bounty Hunter”, and “Kingdom Hearts”. This piece is quite long with different tempos and rhythmic feels throughout the song.
“I liked ‘La Suerte’ because of how intense it was,” said bass player William Calohan. “The whole orchestra played very together and it felt and sounded very nice.”
Many students enjoyed playing in this orchestra because Mr. Stevens was able to create a fun environment while playing. Throughout the two days of long rehearsals, Mr. Stevens was able to make the weekend more enjoyable than having to play an instrument for many hours straight.
Even with having lots of fun, the students felt that Mr. Stevens was still able to get all of the pieces to sound very good in the short amount of time that was given.
“Mr. Stevens was very good and was very knowledgeable about music. He was very passionate about music and conducting which made it easy for us to work with him,” Violist Tanay Shah said.
“Mr. Stevens had a great personality and our performance went amazing due to him.”
According to Mr. Stevens he enjoys conducting the orchestra and playing with the students. He was very appreciative to be given this opportunity.
“Conducting is the best part of music because I get to mold the music. I get to shape all the sounds that I hear and I’m in control of everything around me,” Mr. Stevens said.
“I get to really influence what the players are doing and how I interpret what is written on the page,” said Mr. Stevens. “It’s that high-level thinking along with all of the movement involved that keeps me so interested in conducting.”