On October 8th, hundreds of students, friends, families, and other community members filled the auditorium for the Fall Showcase concert. The concert featured around 200 students in the middle and high school bands, orchestra, and choruses, performing everything from “Blackbeard,” punctuated by the middle school orchestra screaming “Yo-Ho-Ho-Ho” and “ARGH,” to the fast and rhythmic “Swamp Thang” by the high school orchestra.

The Fall Showcase concert is an annual event that takes place at the beginning of the school year, designed for families and students, especially seventh graders, to “get to know and…[see] what the options are,” according to band and chorus director Jacqueline Vinette. “In fact,” she added, “before Mr. O’Connell and I came in, they actually called it the ‘Getting Acquainted Concert.’” The Fall Showcase distinguishes itself due to its size: it is the only concert where all of the ensembles, with the exception of the jazz band, perform in one location!

This format, however, places limits on the concert. The narrow time period means that each ensemble is only able to play two or three pieces, instead of five or six. But, according to Vinette, this is also an upside: “Since we have such limited time at the beginning of the year, it’s hard to do a full concert.” With only a month since the start of school, there just isn’t the time to prepare the number of pieces that the ensembles will play this winter and spring.

For people who have gone to multiple years of Mount Greylock concerts, or to anyone who tried to find a seat at the Fall Showcase, this event stood out in numbers. Involving around 200 musicians, the music program has grown significantly. While, according to Vinette, these increased numbers might make it “chaotic, especially trying to navigate everybody going on stage and off stage,” they have truly enhanced the performances.

Orchestra director Patrick O’Connell’s experience conducting was especially enriched by the large numbers. O’Connell “[loves] the big sound that [the orchestra’s] getting,” and practicing for the concert has also been made easier with more people. “Sectionals,” where the ensemble splits up into groups of the same instrument for specialized practice time, are seeing improvement as well.

But music at Greylock is by no means done for the year. Soon, ensembles will perform  in winter concerts on January 13th and 20th, and on March 11th, everyone will play in the Prism concert, which is themed “Unstoppable.”