Fluting solo: Local musician to play first solo show in nearly a decade<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tThere was also agreement among many of the students about the first and most noticeable difference compared to performing locally.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“The acoustics were amazing,” said Lua Mangaccat, 14, who said she started playing the viola at age 4 after watching people playing them at the Alaska Folk Festival.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The students were supposed to perform the Carnegie Hall concert in 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the appearance for a year, the elder Hudson said. As a result a few seniors that graduated and other pandemic-related issues meant only 20 local students were available, while a minimum ensemble of 25 was necessary.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“We kind of borrowed some musicians,” she said, noting three students from Anchorage and one from Homer who were known to music director\/conductor Guo Hua Xia joined the entourage, which was met by one additional student performer in New York when they arrived.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Xia, who’s been teaching music to Juneau students for the past 25 years, said the 18 months Aurora Strings had to rehearse their program due to the pandemic delay is the longest for any show he’s been involved with. But having only limited encounters with the out-of-town players was a concern coming to New York, even though he tried to work extensively with them remotely via Zoom and similar means.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I worked very individually with them, telling them what dynamics, what bowing, and so when they got there they all came together,” he said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The Alaska students, many of them accompanied by parents, had plenty of time to explore New York City. Cerys said she saw “Hamilton” in addition to plenty of less-highbrow entertainment<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“We kind of stayed up until 3 or 4 every night, walking around, getting food,” she said. But it didn’t affect the concert since “we were so amped up by the nerves we weren’t really tired.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
But first came the “warm-up” concert at Brooklyn Bridge Park the day before the main event, featuring a come-and-go crowd and the less-than-ideal acoustics.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“There was like helicopters and boats, so that wasn’t the best,” Cerys said. Also, it was sunny and the heat was hard to take as an Alaskan, not to mention “the cellos were going out of tune.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Xia said the park performance was a useful warm-up in a casual setting.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“For me it was a good opportunity that they were playing together, because for me every opportunity to play together is important for me,” he said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Still, some students were still feeling the heat the following day in the climate-controlled confines of Carnegie Hall.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“My son Tobin said his hands were sweating,” said Minta Montalbo, a Juneau String Ensembles board member who helped organize and participate in the trip.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
But Kate Hudson said she couldn’t perceive her daughter’s nervousness, or that of any other students, once the performance began.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
”I don’t think that for us sitting in the audience, you couldn’t tell they were nervous,” she said. The setting literally helped amplify their performance since “when you heard the recording you could really hear the parts so well.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Cerys, who said the recording is distinctive enough to hear her cello passages, noted that despite the nearly non-stop pace leading up to the concert there’s wasn’t an energy letdown afterward.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“We kind of did an all-nighter,” she said, including the sugar infusion of a 3 a.m. doughnut run.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Not everyone has quite that endurance. Montalbo, noting the evening’s program ended at about 11 p.m., stated that after walking a few blocks back to the hotel that “some families went to Times Square for the midnight light show, others went to bed.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Funding for the trip included a grant from city, support from sponsors including Ḵunéix̱ Hídi Northern Light United Church, and fundraising efforts by the students. Saturday’s concert paying tribute to the sponsors will feature a short program by Ursa Major followed by a longer one by Aurora Strings, with Franz Felkl as a guest solo violinist. Compositions will include Classical music from the likes of Mozart, Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky, as well as modern works from soundtracks including Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean movies.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
• Contact reporter Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Juneau student ensemble, among four in U.S. to play in NYC last summer, perform tribute show Sat. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":868,"featured_media":95221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[73,322,116],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-95220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-ccw","tag-events","tag-ccw-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95220"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=95220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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