Elementary students present spring concert of band and chorus selections

Elementary school students performed a spring concert featuring band and chorus pieces from folk songs and classical waltzes to contemporary film and Broadway selections.

The program opened with a rendition of "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music and included Johann Strauss Jr.'s "The Blue Danube," Mark Williams's "Rustic Dance," and a band performance of "Kookaburra," "Synergy March" and a three-movement "Midnight Suite." The fourth- and fifth-grade choruses sang selections ranging from a paired-melody arrangement of "Chicken on a Fence Post" to songs drawn from Teen Beach Movie and Wicked. "We hope you enjoy our performance. Thank you," a student announcer said during the program.

The concert combined instrumental and choral repertoire across grade levels to showcase students' semester-long work. Organizers called attention to expressive challenges in the band pieces: the program's narrator described the "Midnight Suite" as containing complex, independent lines and an extended percussion battery and noted the difficulty of sustaining long lyrical phrases for younger wind players. The fourth-grade chorus performed songs that highlighted dynamic range, including passages sung quietly and loudly, as one student narrator described, "We get to sing loudly and softly as well as whisper and shout."

The program credited accompanist Dave Baranowski: an announcer asked the audience to give "a round of applause for our amazing pianist tonight, Mister Dave Baranowski." Speakers also thanked staff members referenced in the program, including Mister O'Donnell and Mister Mint, in remarks acknowledging rehearsal support.

Other program details announced during the concert included composers and contextual notes: the program identified Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein as the writers of "Do Re Mi," said Johann Strauss Jr. composed "The Blue Danube" (noting Strauss was born in Vienna in 1825), gave Mark Williams and the composition date for "Rustic Dance" (02/2004), and noted that the words for "How Beautiful Is the Rain" come from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1866 poem "Rain and Summer" with music by Mary Lynn Lightfoot. Performers said four students would play rainsticks to provide attic sound effects on that number. The fourth-grade chorus introduced a French-Canadian folk song whose lyrics imitate a windmill with the phrase "ticky ticky tocka."

The concert closed with the fifth-grade chorus performing selections including "How Beautiful Is the Rain," "Give Me a Kite," and a final Broadway selection from Wicked titled "1 Short Day." An announcer invited the audience to stay for an additional school chorus performance after the final number.