West Salem High School Titan Orchestras - OSAA Orchestra 1st/2nd place Champions ('11, '12, '13): May 2011

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Newsletter #22 emailed 5.19.11

***Save the Date***
The calendar is up-to-date on our website: www.titanorchestras.com
Wed May 25 - Awards Concert (all students) 5pm awards, 6pm concert
Mon Jun 6 - Concerto concert (all students - attend or play) 7pm concert

Contained within:

1) Concert info for audience and students for May 25
2) OSAA State Championship wrap up
3) Prep for June 6 concert
4) Lollipop and State tshirt money due!!

1) Concert info for audience and students for May 25
Our Orchestra Awards, movie themed spring concert and Senior Farewell all happens this next Wednesday, May 25. Parents and guests - the awards part of the program is more for the students... you are more than welcome to come, but the music playing portion of the concert won't begin until 6pm! Here's a complete schedule:

4:30pm - This year Chamber and next year's Chamber dress rehearse Ashokan in the orchestra room. Please come dressed.
4:50 - everyone else please report to the auditorium

5pm - Awards show - featuring 2 slide shows and all orchestras. We will also introduce next year's orchestras.

6pm - Concert begins. Here is concert order:
Titan Strings - Phantom of the Opera and Harry Potter
Sinfonietta - Wizard of Oz and Pirates of the Caribbean
Senior recital - solos featuring some of our graduating seniors
Senior farewell - where each senior and their parents are honored and thanked
Ashokan farewell - the piece where we bid farewell musically to our seniors
Post concert hang out at Dairy Queen

Concert dress = black top (not sleeveless, not t-shirt quality, no print), jeans (not ripped or faded), black performance shoes with black socks. Seniors may wear prom formal, as long as you can play in it and not have the 'improperly dressed' police get you!

2) OSAA State Championship wrap up
In the state of Oregon, we honor the incredible music programs by having what ends up being a 'competition' between the orchestras and symphonies each May. Because of the competitive nature of this event, it falls under the OSAA - Oregon School Activities Association - guidelines. This means that we are on par with the sports in the state, and academic endeavors like Mock Trial. As such, our students need to be enrolled in a certain number of classes, making certain GPA's, and must fall under all the rigorous guidelines that our football, baseball, basketball, tennis players do.

West and South were the only 2 schools in the STATE, as far as I can tell, where all 4 top 'varsity' performing groups - choir, band, orchestra, symphony - not only qualified but placed in the top 4 or 5 of their category. Very impressive!

As you probably have read by now, our orchestra tied for 1st place in the orchestra division and our symphony placed 4th. Very proud of these groups! This win definitely puts us on the 'map', as it were.

3) Prep for the June 6 concert
We have one more concert after this next Wednesday's concert - the final senior concerto concert. All students are either attending or playing. Students not playing in Chamber or in the 2 symphony pieces will need to write a quick concert review, during the concert - papers will be handed out before the concert. The concert will start at 7pm and will run about 90 minutes. This is a wonderful concert featuring our talented graduating seniors.

4) Lollipop and State tshirt money due!!
If you checked out some lollipops or got a State shirt or two, the money is past due. Please pay up!

Thanks for reading all the way down to the end of the newsletter...
~Ms S.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Sunday, May 15, 2011

A journey towards excellence

What a year 2010-2011 has been! This year's Titan Orchestra program has seemed to me to be stronger than ever. From the anthem-playing Titan Violins, to the Sinfonietta students teaching the area's 4th graders, to the 48 Chicagoans who played so beautifully in Chicago's Orchestra Hall, and now to the OSAA Championship winning Chamber Orchestra.

For those who might not have heard, West Salem's Chamber Orchestra tied for 1st place this year at OSAA's Orchestra Championships and our Symphony placed a respectable 4th.

Here's a little bit of detail about Chamber's OSAA award winning performance:
* Chamber Orchestra tied with last year's champion Sprague Camerata
* We actually had the highest score for sight reading of all the groups that read that day
* We played much earlier in the day than the other groups in the top 5
* Our musicians took no less than 30 AP tests in the 2 weeks prior to our performance
* I think we played the best performance of those pieces ever - a real peak performance!
* This is the first time West has even placed in the top 5 in string orchestra
* I very honestly didn't expect that we would win - I knew we did our personal best and had heard rumors that we had aced the very difficult sight reading competition - after they announced the 3rd place winner (South), I truly figured we had done very well but probably placed 6th or 7th. When they announced the 1st place tie, they announced Sprague first and then West - it was so very exciting.

The tie for 1st place is the second time that's happened at OSAA championships - the first time being in 2009 when Sprague tied with Crescent Valley. To check out the past record of championships click here: http://www.osaa.org/band/records/orchestrachampions.pdf.

Symphony has for the past 6 years been 5th, 4th and 3rd, so placing 4th is par for the symphony course. This past week the Symphony started sounding so musical and so mature - a great accomplishment!

Now, for some stats on our chamber champions:

- 5 1st violins, lead by concertmaster Aida Behmard
- 4 2nd violins, lead by CJ Tatman
- Half of our violins played both 1st and 2nd violin on this concert
- 5 violas, lead by Lauren Culver
- 4 cellos, lead by Holly Kim
- 4 basses, lead by Garrett Maltzan
- Bassist Paul Zukowski also played percussion for us at the concert
- We played Tchaikovsky, Whitacre, and Giannini
- 14 seniors, 6 juniors, 1 sophomore, 1 freshman = 22 musicians
- 20 musicians had been in Chamber the previous year
- Deza Byro and Anny Lei were new to the group this year
- Bronte LT has been in the group the longest - she started 2nd semester her freshman year
- Our seniors are going to the following colleges: Yale, Pomona, U of O, OSU, PSU, Chemeketa, George Fox, and St. Olaf's
- Chamber Orchestra rehearses 7.5 hours per week during school hours
- Jamie Yang and Paul Zukowski also performed with the OSAA Band Champions
- Kate Lowen performed with the 3rd place OSAA West Choir
- We were coached by Danny Seidenberg, Andrew Sewell, Andy Dabcynski, and Todd Zimbelman the 2 months before the performance
- Chamber won the Dairy Farmers 6A division GPA 'competition' (we had the highest GPA of all the 6A orchestra students in the state)

Lauren and Holly had solos in our slow piece, October by Eric Whitacre. Aida Behmard lead the entire group by tuning and seating them in a beautifully professional manner. She sets the tone for the performance, and did so with great finess at our OSAA performance. Tchaikovsky was great - strong at the opening and closing (great coordination of second halves of the measures!) and together during the 16th note passages. October was chillingly beautiful. Giannini was the fastest and most spirited we'd ever performed it. I can't wait to see the DVD!

And, consider the successes at West this year:

Choir 3rd place OSAA - highest placement ever
Orchestra tie for 1st place OSAA - 1st and highest placement ever
Band 1st place OSAA - 2nd year in a row, they won by 16 points!
Symphony 4th place OSAA - keeping with the tradition of placing in top 5

And West students were very well represented in State orchestra/choir/band, All City orchestra/choir/band (highest number of students ever), All Northwest band/choir, and State Solo competition (our very own Lauren Culver placing 2nd in state viola).

As a director of the orchestra program, I couldn't be prouder. As a team member of a fine arts department that has incredible successes, I couldn't be prouder. For my 4th year at West, graduating my first class of seniors that started with me as freshman, I couldn't be prouder. As a mom, a community member, and musician in Salem, I couldn't be prouder.

Here's to a great school environment where placing and winning is a result of dedicated, hard working, musical students. These students accomplished these successes not because they were pushed to do so, but because they did the work necessary to get them to these places. Thanks to wonderful parents, supportive teachers, and an amazing administration team headed by principal Ed John!

Now I and we prepare to put together 2 more concerts and wrap up this year. There are very exciting things in store for next year's orchestras - a strong and full Titan Orchestra, an experienced and big Sinfonietta, and a young and talented Chamber Orchestra. We move to a 7 period day which means that all musicians get to work together every day - a real bonus for the orchestras!

Musically yours,
~Daryl Silberman, proud orchestra director of West Salem Titan Orchestras

p.s. I look forward to seeing you all on May 25 at 6pm for our year-end orchestra concert (the 1st of 2)