Beginning in August, the Symphony orchestra began preparing for the first concert of the year on Oct. 2, with the Philharmonic and Concert orchestras beginning their preparation when the school year started.

“The two pieces we played required extreme and contrasting elements, so it definitely wasn’t easy to put it all together,” Min Kim ‘17 said.

One of the main attractions of the concert was Sophie Mathieu ‘16, who arranged a piece for the Philharmonic and an original piece for the Symphony. She plans to enter both pieces for the PTA Reflections Competition.

“Writing this piece came easier than most pieces I’ve written before, because it’s actually at the most basic level, a combination of a few ideas I’ve had for a while,” Mathieu said. “When I found a way to combine them, they went together really nicely and became the piece that they are right now.”

Because of the difficulty of the chosen music, the orchestra members were required to practice diligently during class and lengthy after-school rehearsals. The many hours spent rehearsing were required in order to achieve performance standards.

“The directors are very detailed in what they ask for in a piece, which requires us to pay attention and work hard,” Macklyn Hutchison ‘17 said. “The amount of intensity and perfection required of each player is very high, and we had to make sure that is achieved at every rehearsal so we could improve.”

The orchestra members had to learn to work together in order to create the proper musical and emotional effect of their music pieces.

“The pieces required completely different dynamic qualities,” Kim said. “We had to learn to balance the sound across the orchestra; it took some time to get used to it.”

The concert was not only enjoyable for the attendants, but also very rewarding for the orchestra members.

“My favorite part of the concert was probably having everything fit together,” Kim said. “It was an amazing feeling to see all our hard work culminate in a great performance.”