Orchestra and Madrigal Singers Give Remote Community Concerts

The Upper School orchestra and the Madrigal Singers both recently performed virtual concerts to the delight of the entire school community.

At the end of April, Director of Choral Music Kendra Lipman and the St. Stephen’s Madrigal Singers gave an uplifting performance of the classic gospel song "Unclouded Day" from their homes all across the world. The final video production took close to three weeks to produce. Lipman created the audio master, and then 11th grader Toby Wolfson and his father, David Wolfson, spent many hours editing the final compilation.

In addition to Wolfson, the Madrigal Singers include Beck Arnow, Crawford Arnow, Yui Cao, Mia Chamoun, Stella FitzGerald, Anya Ganne, America Gonzalez, Lucille Hancock, Addie McClish, Cole McQuinn, Vincent Moroz, Cooper Price, Hudson Quinn, Aditya Sankaran, Sadie Shea, Arielle Sher, Nic Valdes, Sophia Waugh, Ben Wells and Noah Yow.

The Upper School orchestra also contributed to raising the school community's spirit. In mid-April the orchestra performed a remote concert that was shared with school members online. Matthew Kim, an 11th grader, served as concertmaster for their rendition of “La Cumparsita,” a popular tango by Gerardo Matos Rodriguez.

 
St. Stephen's Director of Orchestras John Moon initially selected the music for the concert and then asked Kim to serve as concertmaster. In this role, Kim chose a specific tempo for the piece and provided notes on how it should be played. “I also specified that everyone wear headphones and listen to a metronome, so everyone would be on the same beat,” Kim explained.

 

“Since we are all self-distancing, it's a unique approach to having a spring concert,” Kim said of the remote performance. “The most difficult part of the whole process was editing the 17 individual videos. It took me six or eight hours to put this together because I had to first learn how to build it in iMovie. Then I had to go in and edit each individual video to make sure they were on beat and had the correct intonation. Moving everyone's sound and video around to match was the hardest part.

 

“When you play in person, it's easier to keep the same rhythm and use the same technique, rather than playing independently where some people may play one way or another way,” he added. “I'm proud that I managed to create one coherent and complete performance.”

 

Despite the many hours it took to create the concert video, Kim is eager to make another. “So many people have responded with positive comments, and the video has had a lot of views — that’s something I didn’t expect,” he said. “I am interested in creating more in the future, because I realized that people enjoy listening to them.”

 

In addition to Kim, members of the Upper School’s virtual spring orchestra included Lizzy Jones, Vivian Fu, Gabby Hoo, Carson Murtuza-Lanier, Salma Mohamed, Jerry Hao, Maya Murtuza-Lanier, Nina Mosler, Sadie Shea, Bella Salazar-Harper, Jael Dammann, James Stephens, Sofia Messer, Natalie Kim and Linda Liu.

 

The orchestra will give a live virtual performance of “La Cumparsita” in Chapel the week of May 11.