ARTS
A New Teacher Leads to New Beginnings
By Emilie Smith and Hunter Yarboro
Providence Day’s US Strings class kicked off the new school year by gaining a new teacher, Mrs. Sarah Russell. She has 13 years of experience and is a great addition to making this year a great year for US Strings.
The US Strings class will perform 4 times on campus and 2 times off campus ] scheduled this year. Their first performance will be on Thursday, November 12, during US lunch. The other two performances during the first semester will be the US Winter concert and an off campus concert at the Atrium uptown.
US Strings consists of variety of students in all grade levels. Mrs. Russell describes the group of students as being “a facet of student life” because each of them have different personalities and interests. Despite their different interests, the students share their dedication to Strings in and out of school. Many students audition and perform outside of school for youth orchestras or special programs. Some students have even performed with Mrs. Russell outside of school already this year.
Mrs. Russell highlighted some facts that the common student may not know about the Strings. "A lot of people don't realize the demands of playing a stringed instrument, it's actually quite difficult" Mrs. Russell said. She then recommended that for every performance they do, there should be an Extreme Makeover: Strings Edition. An Extreme Makeover would be where they show how well the Strings group could perform the piece when they started practicing, and then when they were close to the performance.
Mrs. Russell showed us that the choosing of their pieces has much to do with the audience. "Pop music is a big choice. I think it is very audience friendly...it appeals to a wider range of audiences...I think anything that the audience knows, they’re a little bit more open to that and they can connect with that more." Today, many people enjoy listening to pop music, especially those in the younger generations, therefore the common crowd favorite is the genre of pop. When the Strings group is preparing for a performance, their song choices are heavily related to the taste they predict the crowd will have.
If you observed the strings as a whole 50 or 100 years ago when the concept of pop was either not invented or not even close to being thought of for a song on a strings group. There has clearly been a total revolution in the taste of genre's in general and the common opinion of the younger generations has become more significant in the past century.
"A lot of people don't realize the demands of playing a stringed instrument, it's actually quite difficult"– Sarah Russell
Under the new leadership of Mrs. Sarah Russell, US Strings has experienced a musical renaissance. This small but balanced group will put a modern twist in their music selections this upcoming school year.