Music
Tech High School has a strong music program, with orchestra, band, and choir as the three major components. Many students take two different music classes. The orchestra, led since 2009 by Kara Mather, is broken into three groups, according to ability: Concert Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra, and Chamber Orchestra. The Chamber Orchestra is a smaller elite team of musicians who have volunteered to practice before school one day a week. It performs at special events in the community, as well as at Tech. Symphony Orchestra is the primary orchestral group at Tech, and the Concert group comprises mostly freshman and sophomore students. A notable previous director of the orchestra program is Steven Eckblad, now retired, who is still a prominent musician in the St. Cloud area, teaching cello and bass while playing bass in the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra. Some Tech students also participate in the St. Cloud Symphony. The band is conducted by Gary Zwack, and the choir by Kevin Kiffmeyer. Starting in the 2012-13 school year, an AP music theory course will be offered, taught by Zwack. The Tech Band and Orchestra have a tradition of going on tour every two years to a major city in the United States. In 2012, the destination was New Orleans, Louisiana, and in 2010 the destination was New York City. The 2014 destination is yet to be determined.
Read more about this topic: Technical Senior School
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“See where my Love sits in the beds of spices,
Beset all round with camphor, myrrh, and roses,
And interlaced with curious devices
Which her apart from all the world incloses!
There doth she tune her lute for her delight,
And with sweet music makes the ground to move,
Whilst I, poor I, do sit in heavy plight,
Wailing alone my unrespected love;”
—Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)
“From where Pan’s cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)