Hi All!

Did you go to the PAC last night for the Oregon High School orchestra concert?  I did and was blown away by the skill level of students.  If you missed out on the concert, let me fill you in on what happened.  Each class, freshmen through senior, played 2-3 songs.  For each grouping, there was first a traditional classical music piece played and then in contrast, their last piece was a modern pop music song from the 20th Century.  This ranged from Led Zeppelin to the Beach Boys. 

Freshmen started out the evening with their first performance of their high school career playing a piece that was written for the Oregon High School!  It was composed by Eric Ewazen after being commissioned by a grant from the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission.  He used an image from the late 1800's of a summertime community picnic in Oregon, Wisconsin.  They then moved on to "Stairway to Heaven".  I'm sure the kids really enjoyed being able to play a piece that was actually written for their school and then getting to mix some rock-n-roll in with it, was probably like icing on a cake. YUM!  Keep up the good work Class of 2014!

Class of 2013 sophomores followed with their two classical pieces from Dello Joio followed by Eric Clapton's "Layla".  While I enjoyed all the performances that night, this one really stood out.  The kids conducted themselves, sans Ms. Sanyer, with Zach Petrie on the electric guitar, Danielle Steinberg on the electric violin, Lucus Tolly on the piano, Cordel Weber playing bass and Andrew Jend on drums.  Seriously, they nailed it.  What a lot of fun that class must have had putting it all together.  I hope to see more of this level of creative efforts in the future.  Orchestra is so much more then just Bach or Brahms as the sophomores made quite clear in last night's performance.

Oregon's Junior class prepared pieces from Ernest Bloch and the Beach Boys!  What an unlikely combination.  While it appears as though their class is a bit smaller than the sophomores, they put all their heart into their efforts.  We all enjoyed their performance and maybe even a trip down memory lane as they finished up the the Beach Boys.  They rocked the harmonies on that one.

Seniors finished out the evening's performance with a challenging piece by Hindemith followed by the Beatles "Elanor Rigby".  Their eight years of orchestra has really paid off in their willingness to take on such a challenging classical piece while expressing their enjoyment of performing a popular contemporary pop classic.  I think while we all enjoyed the Hindemith piece, it was the Beatles that we were all humming to as we walked out the door at the end of the concert.

On the drive home with my OHS orchestra student, dashingly dressed in black, he expressed how much fun his class had in prepping and performing their pieces that evening.  He was frustrated that the start of "Layla" didn't quite go the way they had planned but as I pointed out to him, we parents, in the audience, didn't know and the overall performance had us all rocking a bit in our seats. 

My praise goes out to all the brave kids willing to take on this challenge of comparing and contrasting "classical" music with contemporary popular music.  There was something for everyone to enjoy and keep us coming back for more.  Thank you to Ms. Leyla Sanyer for being so creative and for encouraging the students to not only develop an understanding of different types of music, but also showing them that you can jump out of the box into other genres and still find connections.  Well done!! 

Can't wait for the next concert!

Humbly Yours,

Renée Frank

A Message from the President of FOTO 2010-2011

Music, An Invitation to Express Yourself!

Music by Walter de la Mare
When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.

When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.

When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
And from Time's woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.

As I am sitting in my comfy chair listening to my eclectic collection of music set to a random selection ranging from Evanescence to Bach to Norah Jones to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, I am transported on a journey of emotions that take me from the deepest anger to the peak of bliss.  I listen to music because it inspires me.  It helps me stir up the creative juices in my brain in order for me to formulate my thoughts into something you will want to read.  

Welcome to the 2010-2011 school year and FOTO’s Bridge newsletter.  My name is Renée Frank and I am pleased to join you as the President of FOTO for the upcoming year.  As a child, I attempted to learn the viola and as an adult, I still pick it up and play the fun, easy fiddle songs of my youth, though I long to have the skill I hear in my own children who have the benefit of orchestra every day.  The Oregon community is blessed to have such talented and dedicated orchestra teachers who have helped to inspire the next generation to not only learn to play music many hundreds of years old, they also translate modern music into orchestral compositions.  Students who are involved in playing music are statistically proven to do better in math and have a greater appreciation for the fine arts community.

As a mother of two, Alexander Nasserjah, cello, sophomore at OHS, and Arianna Nasserjah, violin, 7th grader at OMS, I welcome the opportunity to reach out to members of the community and share with them the gift of music that FOTO helps to support in this school district.  I’m often struck by strong emotions a particular song creates.  I’ve had this happen listening to Japanese opera, Linkin Park and Vivaldi.  Music is one of the healthiest ways to express our deepest human emotions.  I know there is music out there that talks about “adult” topics. You know them and sometimes the music talks about death or heaven.  Does this mean by listening to a particular type of music you will be drawn to a certain behavior or does it just mean you recognize that life is full of challenges and that all you really want to do is express the energy that is building up inside of you due to the world outside of you?

As a parent and former teenager, I have loved rock and roll, including the hard stuff that my parents still shake their heads at, but I also loved the classical music that came from Europe 200 years ago.  As an adult, I have discovered African beats, Latin tempos and Persian poetry can also express my emotions on any given day.  Our orchestra teachers here in Oregon have also discovered ways to incorporate many types of rhythms from around the world while still creating a base of musical understanding that makes me wish I could turn back the clock that will turn 40 in December and go back to being 14 so I could once again take orchestra along with the choir and art classes I enjoyed back then.

In the coming year as President of FOTO, I hope to continue to write to you about the successes of our students, staff and parents of the orchestra program and to help bring the Bridge and FOTO into 2011 with an updated look and feel that is relevant to our increasingly tech-savvy population.  I look forward to hosting a blog for FOTO, highlighting events and people related to FOTO and encourage all of you to become contributing editors with stories of how music has influenced your life in some way formative.  

Please watch for an email with a link to the upcoming blog and directions on how you, student, staff or parent, can contribute to the collective experience we all know as music, though heard through different ears.

Humbly yours,
Renée Frank,
President of FOTO 2010-2011