By Borislava Panayotova

   The Evdokimo Auditorium has joined the list of places that have held a world premiere, or a first performance of an original piece, which happened on May 8 during the spring Extracurricular Activities Music Concert.

   At the end of each semester the four music clubs on campus hold a performance to showcase what they have done over the past five months. The four groups, Beginning Sinfonia, Sinfonia, Bel Canto and Cantamus, showed off multiple pieces at the “Let Beauty Awake” concert, named after the first song Cantamus performed.

   The concert opened with Beginning Sinfonia, playing the “Wedding March” by Medelssohn. The ensemble was made up of Maeve Waddell and Ka Wu on violin and Niamh Waddell on ukulele. They were also joined by Renae Brown of the advanced Sinfonia and her teacher, Ms. Osborn. 

   Afterwards, Sinfonia, the advanced strings group, came up to perform. They played multiple folk songs from North and Central America, as well as two pieces that were originals; one was written and composed by Colby Pitton-Rocha, a junior cello player for Sinfonia, and the other was written and composed by Dr. Mitton, our 6th, 11th, and 10th grade music teacher and director of Sinfonia. These were the world premieres, as neither song had been performed in front of a public audience before.  

   Dr. Mitton also mentioned while announcing Sinfonia that “this is the most we’ve done at a concert,” with a total of eight performances. 

   Next was Bel Canto, directed by Mrs. Turley and accompanied on the piano by Mrs. Lai Gates. The middle school choir performed three pieces, “Canoe Song,” “Take These Wings” and “Halle, Hallelujah.” For “Canoe Song,” members of the choir William Steenken, Natalie Steenken  and Scarlett Smith accompanied on percussion. For “Take These Wings,” member Rebecca Turley accompanied on the violin.

   Cantamus, the TPA high school choir, were the next to perform, directed again by Mrs. Turley and accompanied by Mrs. Lai Gates. They performed three songs before being joined by the Bel Canto Choir to do a joint performance of “Sing” by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Gary Barlow.

   This song was not only a collaboration between our middle school and high school choirs but also of Mr. Joshua Turley on the electric guitar and Mr. Trevor Gipper on drums. 

   Overall, the performances of the four groups were very uplifting and a wonderful way to end this year’s music extracurriculars.