Ba da ba bummmmmmmm.
The notes wrapped themselves around Shecardo Williams, offering to take him with them at every footfall.
Ba da ba bummmmmmmm.
He was catching on to the deep, dizzying pattern, grasping tightly at his trombone.
Ba da da dummm da dummm.
Beethoven’s fifth wasn’t going to get the best of him. Not this time, at least.
Williams, a fifth grader at Bishop Woods School, is part of a burgeoning educational initiative between the New Haven Chamber Orchestra (NHCO) and New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) to promote civic vitality and encourage intergenerational, hands-on learning through music.
In just two years, it has grown to almost 20 students, three of them playing concerti while others hone their nascent skills during Ludwig Van Beethoven’s powerful fifth symphony. Those skills will be on display this Saturday afternoon, at the organization’s annual spring concert and book giveaway at Fair Haven School. For more details, check out the NHCO’s website.
“It is so exciting to see how our goal of having this intergenerational group of musicians is coming true,” said NHCO Board President Jessica Sack after the rehearsal. “I’ve been saying to people that this year is kind of the year of youth, or the year of the young musician, because every concert this year has been dedicated in some way to young people, and the music that we make together.”
Shecardo Williams: Ready to take on Beethoven.
For young students like Williams who are just starting out, it’s a chance to test the orchestral waters. Six months ago, he picked up the trombone for the first time because “it looked fun, and it felt right.” Learning the basics under Fair Haven School music teacher Dan Kinsman, he caught on relatively quickly, practicing the instrument up to three hours a night. When Kinsman told students there was a chance to play Beethoven — one of the composers students were learning about in band — he jumped at the opportunity.
At first, he said, several measures in the music had left him completely stumped. But practicing helped him get to where he wanted to be — the rehearsal stage Tuesday night, in preparation for a performance Saturday. Zipping up his trombone case in Kinsman’s classroom after rehearsal, he recalled practicing the short section of Beethoven’s fifth symphony where students join in, a slow build that the audience knows to expect and gets surprised by anyway. He’d still been having trouble with the final few measures, he said, but thought they’d be ironed out by Saturday afternoon.
J.P. Rodriguez, Prastik Mohanraj, Cristofer Zunun and an NHCO member.
As he packed up to leave — younger students don’t have to stay for the whole rehearsal, although some of them do — those still on stage launched into Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, also known as his “New World Symphony.” The last item on Saturday’s program, it’s the kind of piece where you can see a horse race materializing before your eyes as the music builds. A sinister, unraveling one where a lot of dust gets kicked up, and animals are ridden hard until their legs give beneath them. Which is to say, as it builds (and it is rarely not building), it takes on an epic character, of something barreling irrevocably toward you, ready to take you with it. Or, as Co-Op Student and violinist Cristofer Zunun said at the suggestion that it was an overwhelmingly masculine piece, “Yup, that’s Dvorak.”
Riding high on that Dvorakian propulsion, the orchestra is also using the concert to debut three high school-aged artists who are studying in both Yale’s Music in the Schools initiative and Music Haven.
Pulling listeners straight into Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s “Arrangement & Cadenza,” J.P. Rodriguez coasted over the orchestra with a triumphant trumpet, brassy and full as it sailed over the other instruments, announcing its presence. ESUMS junior and flutist Prastik Mohanraj dove in with a flurry of sweet, airy notes, conjuring an image of a woman hopping from foot to foot on a pile of burning embers. And Zunun, fully recovered from the Dvorak, hopped on at full steam, stopping only when he had finished a first run, and wanted to test out a second.
“Do you hear the difference?” Conductor Heejung Park asked.
“Yes!” Zunun said. “It’s huge.”
The New Haven Chamber Orchestra’s spring concert is this Saturday, May 13, at 2 p.m. in the Fair Haven School auditorium. For more information, visit the NHCO’s website.