Music
Over half of the students in the school are involved in the music program.
Williamsville East currently has the following ensembles: a Symphonic Orchestra (audition required for entry), a Philharmonic Orchestra (under the direction of Mr. Wayne Moose), a Wind Ensemble (audition required for entry), a Concert Band, a Jazz Ensemble (audition required for entry), a Chorale (audition required for entry), a Mixed Chorus and a Women's Chorus. There is also a Jazz Band (under the direction of Mr. Carl Mazzio) and a Vocal Jazz group that practice after school on a weekly basis.
The Bands/Chorale and Orchestra alternate yearly trips in the Spring in order to tour and compete nationally, and have won multiple awards for their performances. Most notably, the Williamsville East Jazz Ensemble was a finalist in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington Competition in 2007. The winter concert of the Music Department, Winterfest, is known for the diversity of music presented as it includes all the major ensembles plus small ensembles created by East students.
Most recently, the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors donated a $70,000 grant to assist the Williamsville Poetry Music Dance Celebration, begun at Williamsville East in 2000 by band director Dr. Stephen Shewan and English teacher Mr. John Kryder
In 2010, the symphonic orchestra was awarded the opportunity to play at the New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) Winter Conference. They performed Gustav Mahler's Adagietto from his fifth symphony and Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.
Read more about this topic: Williamsville East High School
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around—the music and the ideas.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“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)