Walking in a Winter Wonderband

The Fair Grove middle and high school banded together on Tuesday, December 13th to put on a winter concert for friends and family.

The concert included individual performances by the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade bands as well as the high school jazz, and marching bands. The band director, Natalie Palomo stated, “It’s a little tricky to coordinate all the grade levels, but it’s easier to do it this way than to have all the concerts on different nights.”

There were two groups that have never before performed at the winter concert with it being the first performance for the 6th graders, and the first time that the jazz band had been incorporated into the winter performance. Palomo commented, “I loved incorporating the jazz band to the high school concert this year, since they usually only perform once per year in the Spring. I also always love when my 6th graders have their first ever concert, because I feel like it’s a big moment for them to see how awesome the payoff is when they finally get to perform full pieces for an actual audience.”

The jazz band performed songs such as “Hot Chocolate” from The Polar Express, during their part of the concert, Palomo expressed her feelings about the group, stating, “This group of jazz kids is incredibly motivated and very talented. They wanted to play more than the normal year, and I told them that would mean practicing more and more focus, and they absolutely rose to the occasion. Having a group that truly loves jazz made it easy to put together!”

The high school also had a surprise in store for the audience. About halfway through the performance high school principal Dr. Christian Overstreet hopped onto the stand to direct the band for a song, “We have had a guest conductor in some form for one band concert almost every year since I’ve been at Fair Grove. It’s a fun way to involve people from our school with the band who may not have any other knowledge of what we do … Dr. Overstreet did a great job and actually stayed in time which is a harder task than it may seem,” added Palomo.

A great amount of work was put into the concert, Alex Kepes (12) explained, “We practiced for the concert each day, first hour. The band first sight read the piece, then we worked on tricky spots. Closer to the concert, we did full runs of the songs with a focus on dynamics and tone.” Palomo also added that the concert was put together in roughly a month, because of the many events that preceded the concert.