On March 28th, 2016, Dublin High School’s orchestra and concert and jazz bands performed their spring concert an appreciative  audience of family and friends. From upbeat marches to jazz band solos, the concert was full of  wonderful and memorable moments.

“The concert was incredible,” Dublin High band director Paul Everts said afterwards. “I was very happy with the students’ performance. It was better than anything they’ve ever done.”

The concert band performed first, amazing the audience with their medley of songs that included “His Honor”, an upbeat circus march by Henry Fillmore, and “On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss”, a moving ballad about a man that lost his four daughters at sea. The orchestra performed two quartets, which were led by Tony Kim, a talented member of the prestigious San Francisco Youth Symphony. Another virtuoso at the concert was cello player Michelle Yun, a member of the California Youth Symphony. The wind ensemble played music by Dmitri Shostakovich, an esteemed classical composer, as well as “Prelude to a Shining Day” by Yo Goto. The jazz band ended the night with a round of crowd pleasers, including a piece that featured the seniors.

Watching their classmates play between their own performances, the band students realized how hard their fellow musicians worked. They learned , in the words of freshman saxophone player Sana Bayat, that there is a difference between playing the music and performing it.

The musicians enjoyed this musical ‘immersion’, and admitted afterwards  that their favorite parts of the concert was hearing their peers play. Members of the band, like freshman clarinetist Ryan Shipps, said that they enjoyed hearing the orchestra play.

By the end, each ensemble felt as though they were bonded together in a way that only performing a song as one can create. . Even the author Sarah Dessen, known for her teenage romances, wrote in her novel Just Listen, “Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.”
As DHS junior and viola player Amy Peng put it,“I like playing with the orchestra–it’s like a little family.”