On Tuesday, March 12, the Mount Greylock Orchestra, band and chorus assembled in the school auditorium for the Prism concert: 100 students, 200 community members, 12 songs, one hour. The only stops for the musicians were to flip to the next page of music and to give room to the thunderous applause coming from the crowd packed into the gym to watch them.

The annual Prism concert started last year and will likely continue for many years to come. It showcases “all the different facets of the music program,” orchestra director Patrick O’Connell said.

As a part of this, the program brings the elementary school students up for their dress rehearsal. O’Connell believes this “shows [the elementary schoolers] what they’re aiming towards,” and inspire them to join Greylock’s music program when they come to Mount Greylock. 

Senior Ryan Keating, a member of the Mount Greylock orchestra, said, “The Prism Concert was my first experience hearing Mount Greylock’s entire music program come together on one project,…something that me and my family had always wanted to hear.”

He added that his “favorite moments from the concert were watching the audience interact with the music, especially the elementary students.”

During the concert, Keating played a solo in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio Espagnol,” a lively piece who’s own writer described it as, “vividly brilliant.” Keating said he enjoyed the solo. “It was really fun to play, not for melodic harmony, but for suspense and scratchiness.”

Local music teacher and community member James Bergin, affectionately known to his students as “Jimmy,” believes the Prism concert provides a great opportunity for Mount Greylock students. “There was no downtime,” he said. 

This lack of downtime was valuable to both the orchestra and the audience, whose thought process Bergin described as, “Oh boom, we hear the orchestra! Boom! Now we’re hearing the band! Oh boom now the chorus…” The quick turnovers also allowed the songs to fit into a single hour.

In many ways, the concert reminds one of its crystal namesake: it casts many different kinds of light to the people it’s presented to, showing off its many brilliant facets in a variety of ways.