Merrimack High School winter concert features band, choir and jazz performances

Bridal McWalter, the instrumental director, opened the Merrimack High School winter concert with logistics and a reminder that Merrimack TV was recording the event and would post it on its app. He introduced the concert band, which performed Rise of the Firebird by Steven Reineke and Foundry by John Mackey, noting the latter’s use of unconventional percussion, including household items and metal objects to create required sounds.

McWalter described the group’s preparation for Russian Christmas Music by Alfred Reed, calling it one of the most lyrically and technically demanding works he has programmed at Merrimack and saying the students had “truly risen to the challenge.”

RJ Beck, the choir director, introduced the choral portion and referenced arrangements including The Water Is Wide (arr. Luigi Zaninelli) and The Cloths of Heaven (music by Randall Stroop), a setting of the W.B. Yeats poem. Beck noted a recently published piece, Rio by Tracy Wong (2023), featuring beatboxer Eli Pittman and a solo by Amelia Fracano, and highlighted a Schubert movement from his second mass in G major with a solo by Adelina Cameron.

The program included sax, trumpet, trombone and other improvisational solos in the jazz band segment, with named soloists including Colin Plum, Ian Desolate, Hunter Gladding, Jacob Gonzalez, Abbot Davis, Connor Lacey, Sam Greenspan and Evan Carlson. McWalter thanked sound technician Steve McDowell, Merrimack TV, parents and alumni before closing the concert with a heavy-rock arrangement of We Three Kings and wishing the audience happy holidays.