“It’s not every day that a professional musician comes to Melody Oneschuk’s band room at Southern Delaware School of the Arts to assist her students, let alone four. A quartet of musicians” from the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra gave a master class on March 18 for the school’s “42-member seventh- and eighth-grade concert band,” writes Jon Bleiweis in Saturday’s (3/28) Daily Times (Salisbury, Maryland). “This was the orchestra’s first time at the school… MSO Percussionist Greg Herron gave pointers to the band’s eight percussionists on stick techniques and tips on how to play different instruments, such as the triangle and the bass drum. Clarinet player Edna Huang helped woodwind players produce bigger and richer sounds…. Flautist Elena Yakovleva taught the band’s nine flute players, and horn player Andrew Houde discussed how a brass section can take cues from one another while playing.… After about an hour, the students returned to the band room.… It may not have been a lot of time, but Oneschuk could notice the differences. ‘You sound much more smooth, much more connected and very, very pretty,’ she told her ensemble.… ‘The band sounds a lot better,’ said seventh-grade alto saxophone player Jaasiel Nunez.”
Posted April 1, 2015
