Imagine a concert that unites the Beatles lovers and Romantic composition fans, performing music that encompasses the long trajectory of music history. This vision of cross-genre music performances materialized in Parkway Central’s theatre on April 30 during the orchestra’s “Time Travel” concert. Collaborating with Parkway central’s band and Central Standard Time choir, the concert brought a mishmash of different music for audiences’ enjoyment.
Orchestra director Alicia Bont explained that the theme was suggested and chosen by orchestra students last year. The piece “Time Machine” by Richard Meyer served as an important inspiration.
“[Students believe] that piece would be a good entry way into the time travel theme,” Bont said. “We’re playing that piece to start out the concert and to introduce the idea of traveling through music history. It keeps coming back throughout the concert whenever we need scene change music.”
To prepare for this unconventional concert, Bont asked orchestra members to do information posters for different styles of music. They were displayed in the theater room prior to the concert.
“We wanted the audience to be able to understand the scope of music history,” Bont said. “When the audience arrives at the concert, they can walk by and see all the posters, so that when we are jumping around in time, they will understand where we’re going.”
During the concert, Bont incorporated some theatrical elements as well. The orchestra invited Band director Doug Hoover, junior Kiera Anderson-Pittman and senior Chance McCline to act as time travelers on stage. The acting happens between different orchestra performances, showing the audience which time period they’re going to.
“The idea is that the person in the Time Machine travels here to Parkway Central High School, and she meets Mr. Hoover, who’s very groovy,” Bont said. “And then this terrible event happens that his groove is stolen by the Evil One, and he has to travel through time to get his groove back. That’s kind of the play narrative that’s going to be happening in between the concert.”
In directing and putting together the acting, students played a big role. Senior Kymmie Barnes and junior Lawson Robinson worked on writing the script and directing the play. Sophomore Mia Whitson-Hasky and senior Kathryn Ho did costume designs. More notably, Ho also designed and built a “time machine” that was put on stage and used by the actors.
“Before we got the script, I didn’t know what kind of feel they wanted. So I just presented a bunch of options, and then we eventually settled on a steampunk, Victorian design,” Ho said. “[But] this [the sketch] looks way different from the actual thing, because [of[ time constraints [and] budget constraints.”
Ho describes set design is usually a long-term project, however, she only has one month to finish the time machine. Because of this challenge, she used a lot of pre-made material from the theater department to help her building process.
“It was really tough. We can’t go detailed with the design, which is kind of essential for a steampunk time machine. So it doesn’t totally achieve the historical or old age vibe. But I feel like if we add small details, then it’ll help achieve [steampunk vibe].”
Throughout the building process, Ho brought a Victorian-style clock and different paint to add on to the time machine. She describes steampunk-color as “hard to achieve,” especially on such a large-scale project.
“We wanted it to look like coppery. So we first did a black undercoat, and then an orangish-reddish coat. After that, we texture it with dark brown,” Ho said. “It’s complicated. Hopefully under the stage light and from a distance, it’ll blend together.”
Ho is both an active orchestra student and a member of the theatre costume crew. Although she faces challenges, Ho said she also received help from the set crew in the theater department.
“I only had a little bit of set design experience from the tech theater class,” Ho said. “I’ve had the help of Megan [Hickel], who was leading the process of building the Time Machine.”
Orchestra students not only contributed the setting the scene for the concert, some of them also performed various solo parts in different pieces. Senior Asher Koh and junior Macey Heimburger have separate solo parts in Danse Macabre and Princess Mononoke. Koh also performed piano interlude and accompaniment throughout the concert. For her viola solo, Heimberger described it as beautiful and serene.
“A lot of the pieces that Joe Hisashi [composer of Princess Mononoke] composes, especially for the opening of anime movies, show beauty in the art style and the world they’re creating with the movie,” Heimberger said. “If I was watching an orchestra play this piece of music, I would feel calm and enjoy the music.”
Jazz band and choir also performed with the orchestra students. Senior Sohji Matsuda played guitar for “Dat Groove” with Concert 2 orchestra and “Singin’ in the Rain” with a full orchestra and choir. Matsuda said Bont offered him the chance to play with the orchestra. He arranged his own guitar parts according to Bont’s music in the two pieces and rehearsed with the orchestra.
“‘Singin’ in the Rain’ is a more cheerful song, and I tried to match with what others are playing, and being careful with where to stop and where to come in,” Matsuda said. “For ‘Dat Groove’, which is a faster tempo, upbeat and [has a] more serious tone, I try to play it differently to match the tone.”
In the rehearsal process and countless other orchestra experiences, Heimberger believed the high school orchestra had been fun and prepared her for future music endeavors.
“Concerts like this feel really overwhelming because it’s a lot of moving parts. And sometimes I feel like it’s a little bit showy, but it’s very cool,” Heimberger said. “I do feel that I am ready to go play with people who are exponentially better than me, because it’ll make me a lot better.”
Matsuda said this concert is his first time playing with the orchestra, which was exciting for him. He is also grateful for these experiences in the music department.
“I’ll miss the music department,” Mastuda said. “Because I think it gave me a lot of opportunities where I could play with others. And I think it really helped me grow as a musician.”
Besides the various creativity in this concert, Bont continued the tradition of recognizing seniors in the orchestra during the spring concert. This year, the orchestra has 21 seniors, and Bont recognized many of them as leaders in the music department.
“I’m feeling like I’m going to miss them a lot because they’re such a big leadership class,” Bont said. “The only reason we can do something that is this involved is because we have a lot of student leadership in the senior class. If we didn’t have that group of students, we wouldn’t be able to do all of this.”
Overall, Bont is grateful that the spring concert facilitated collaboration across orchestra, band, choir and theatre department, with everyone putting extra work into it. She also appreciated the support and enthusiasm from the Parkway community.
“It just makes me really happy that we get to work together and do something fun like this,” Bont said. “I’m excited that the orchestra and the music department get to celebrate all the different things that we like to do and that we’re good at, and to serve the community in an entertaining way.”
