by Betsy Ko, Bridges Director
Despite our worries about how the rain would affect the buses bringing students from 19 of our Bridges sites to Symphony Center this morning, everyone got there safely and with enough time to rehearse together to pull off a fabulous 90′ concert! Today’s program featured the performances of two large bands, guitar ensemble, marimba ensemble and Concert Choir, as well as a solo performance by this year’s Merit Concerto Competition winner.
MeritFest is an extraordinary experience for our students for many reasons, but one of the most compelling is the excitement of being able to perform with students from all over the city in combined ensembles. This is dramatically true for our band and string students, many of whom play in much smaller groups at their Bridges site. Last week, I visited Garvey Elementary School, a longstanding Bridges site in the Washington Heights community (Michelle Miller, Principal). The advanced band students were great sports in letting me videotape them as they drilled the MeritFest pieces with Merit instructor Jess Baker.
Four Garvey students joined us at MeritFest today: Steven Bailey, Dominique Corker, Dominique McGee, and Janiesha Redditt. They were part of our Grazioso Band which filled Symphony Center’s stage with approximately 200 young musicians. Here is an excerpt of their performance of Caribbean Delight by Victor Lopez.
If you couldn’t make it to MeritFest today, I hope that you can join us tomorrow! The concert is from 11 to 12:30 and is free and open to the public. Friday’s program will feature several large string ensembles, piano ensembles, percussion ensemble and Concert Choir. If you can take an early and extended lunch break, you will definitely enjoy the music and smiles of our students!
Kudos to all the faculty, staff, parents and, of course, students that put on such a great show! And the famous Mr. Burnham even appeared to explain the historical significance of these performances – that was a nice touch.