HOUNDS

culture and success of Orchestra Programs.

An often overlooked yet extremely talented part of Garfield music is its orchestra program. The program consists of three levels, freshman, concert, and symphony orchestra. The freshman orchestra introduces students to the program and sets a baseline skill level. From there, students can either enter the concert orchestra, or audition into the more selective and challenging symphony orchestra. The program has numerous concerts throughout the year. Their regular concerts where they play classical music for the community, the Pops Concert, in which they play movie and pop songs, the Winter Waltz, which acts as a fundraiser and school dance, and the Senior Concerto Concert, in which seniors are given the opportunity to play a solo while being backed up by the orchestra.

The orchestra’s year will be highlighted by a trip to Los Angeles in late March. Joined by Garfield’s Symphonic Band, the Symphony Orchestra has a packed itinerary. The trip will consist of recording a movie soundtrack at Disneyland, listening to the LA Philharmonic perform in their famous Frank Gehry built concert hall, touring the campus of USC, and working with the music director of the USC Thornton School of Music, Larry Livingston. Garfield orchestra Director Bryan Kolk hopes that students see this trip as an op- portunity to experience the music as well as the culture of another part of the country. “I think both are kind of equally important - to experience the musical life of anoth er community, but also the culture of what it’s like to live and just engage as a human in Los Angeles.”

Miep Barr-Cl ingan

who plays trombone in not only Jazz Band but also Symphony Orchestra shares, “I’m looking forward to collaborating with Symphonic Band. Even though the ensembles are pretty different, I think we have similar musical styles and it will be fun to work together.”

Violinist Athena Brkanac also expressed her expectations for the trip, hoping to get to know her fellow orchestra members better. “Orchestra is the only class where I could not name everyone,” Brkanac stated. This disconnect between students is understandable, as orchestra is one of the largest classes in the entire school. “I’m looking forward to some great community bonding with my peers,” she added. Brkanac also hopes this inspires the orchestra to enter more competitions. “I feel like that’s something our orchestra is missing that we had in the past,” she said.

This lack of entering competitions change was the pandemic. As an activity that relies heavily on musicians being in the same room and collaborating with each other, transitioning to remote learning for a year made rehearsing together essentially impossible, and Kolk says the orchestra is still feeling the effects of that. “Now that we’re together in school, there’s many ways that we interact with each other that are different than they might’ve been.”

Another change the orchestra has faced is changes with the HCC program. Students in HCC tend to have more financial opportunities; musicians in the program are more likely to have access to private lessons, and therefore may have more experience on their instrument. The HCC program would historically bring students, and these more experienced musicians, from all around the city into Garfield. Now, Garfield has become less of an HCC feeder and more of a neighborhood school, so it has been receiving less musicians who take private lessons. As a result, the orchestras now contain a very broad range of skill levels. Howev- er, Kolk believes this has created an extremely unique and beneficial culture within the program, allowing students to teach and learn from one another. “The opportunity to be a model for each other and also to be a student of other students, I think that’s an integral part of every levsician, and I think it’s part of the culture of the orchestra program here,” Kolk said. Brkanac agreed, stating, “The range [of skill level] is important. You need different opinions in an ensemble.”

Overall, the orchestra plays a special part in the Garfield community. “[It’s] a space where people can express themselves through music”, Brkanac said. “Someone who’s never befriended an orchestral musician or gone to an orchestra concert immediately thinks of it as a very stuffy, formal thing…and I would hope everyone could see orchestra as something that is part of their life every day,” Kolk remarked. “I would hope that anybody walking by our hall would feel safe and welcome to open the door and listen and enjoy.”