Music Moves Her to Tears

“This summer I was part of the Honors Orchestra Program at the Pine Mountain Music Festival. Twenty five kids from around the country auditioned and were asked to be a part of the Pine Mountain Music Festival Symphony Orchestra. For every part, there was one professional musician and one high school student.

Just to give you an idea for how amazing some of the players were, the Clarinetist was from the Chicago Lyric Opera. The high schoolers practiced by themselves for about six days. We practiced for at least nine hours a day. Those consisted of sectional work, individual practice, chamber practice and of course orchestral practice.

One day, we practiced for 13 hours–needless to say, it was an intense camp. I was in a quintet, which included a bassoon, a clarinet, a flute, a french horn and an oboe (me). We played Trois Pieces for Woodwind Quintet by Jacques Ibert and performed on the last day of the camp. The Symphony Orchestra performed the Overture to Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss, Romanze in C by Jean Sibelius (which only the stings played) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (a choir made up of over 100 voices joined us for Beethoven’s piece). Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony alone was over an hour, so the concert was extremely tiring.

As tiring as the concert was, it was equally rewarding. During the middle of the first concert, I started crying. Not the pretty crying like you see in the movies, it was more of the ugly, uncontrollable sobbing.

What can I say? Music moves me!

We had to drive three plus hours to get to our recital halls, so we played Mafia for hours and watched (and sang along to) Mama Mia and Into the Woods. Because some of our concerts were at 7:30 and our concert lasted around 2.5 hours, that meant that we were on the road until late at night. We stopped at McDonalds at 11 one night and ordered dozens of McNuggets. My friends and I had morning yoga classes and did yoga in between rehearsals.

We went to Lake Superior, a park and an ice cream shop. We played card games and frisbee. We explored Michigan Tech’s campus and our recital halls. We spent every moment together. I still keep in touch with many of my friends there: Stella and Natalie (my roommates), Tamara, Nate, Frederick and Isaac. I was only with 25 people for eight days, but we were able to orchestrate (pun intended) beautiful things: spectacular concerts and lifelong friendships.” (Katie McCarthy, sophomore)