Freshmen Put on a Show at Spring Concert

Although family members were in fact listening to an annual high school freshmen spring concert, they wouldn’t have known it considering the talent that was performing on stage in front of them.

Freshman symphony, band, and chorus teachers Katherine M. Cahalan, Eva Marie Arnold, and Malcolm Gilbert, respectively, directed their students to a successful concert in the Baldwin Auditorium in Massapequa High School l recently.

“I think they did a fabulous job, they’ve been progressing all year, and it was a culmination of a great year. They did a wonderful job today,” Cahalan said.

All of the members of the band, chorus, and symphony had been practicing and fine-tuning solos and crescendos of their respective songs since the end of January for this performance.

“I told the students, ‘you can’t worry about the end. It’s the means to the end. And it’s all the wonderful things that we do in rehearsal every single morning,’” Arnold said. “I could not be more proud of the progress that they’ve made from the beginning of the year until now.”

Some of the songs performed by the students at the concert included “The Moldau,” “Washington Post March,” “Prayer of the Children,” and “Song for Mira.”

According to Cahalan, the songs played for each concert are determined every year by the group of students she is teaching that year.

“It depends on the group every year. I try to pick songs that I think the group is going to enjoy as well as highlight them,” Cahalan said.

During the chorus’ performance of “Song for the Mira,” the freshmen were joined on stage by the 6th grade advanced chorus from Lockhart Elementary School. The crowd roared with excitement after the fun joint effort was complete.

Gilbert really enjoyed working with the talented group of 6th graders, but also hopes that this will encourage them to continue their studies in music after elementary school.

“It was great. It’s clearly a recruiting tool. Well I hope so, I hope they like me enough to come back in three years,” Gilbert said. “But it really added something to the concert. I’m very glad that we did it.”

The freshmen musicians also recently came back from a trip/competition in New Jersey called Music in the Parks. They received excellent responses from judges after their performances there.

“They’re performance there was absolutely impeccable, especially because they’ve never played in that hall before,” Arnold said. “Here they have the advantage of playing here and having played here before. There their nerves are very high, they’re very nervous, and they actually lived to the occasion and they played quite, quite well, they really did.”