2024 Orchestra Festival

The Festival board is proud to have Joni Swenson and Héctor Agüero as clinicians for the April 18-21, 2024 Festival.  Please see our Clinicians page for more info! The guest university performing Friday night 4/19 is the Willamette University Orchestra. High school orchestras participating in the 4-day April 2024 Festival are from Astoria, Brookings-Harbor, Newberg, North Medford, North Salem, and Summit (Bend-LaPine).

Click here for a sample Festival schedule

Click here for general information on the Festival including previous participants and videos

Willamette University Chamber Orchestra

Our guest university performing as the finale at the Friday evening performance is Willamette University. The performance will be held at the Newport Middle School gymnasium Friday 4/19 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Program:

1. Haydn Horn Concerto No.1 in D-Major – 1st mvmt

2. Intermezzo from Puccini’s Opera Suor Angelica”

3. Beethoven Symphony No.5 – 1st mvmt

The Willamette University Chamber Orchestra offers students of any major an opportunity to participate in an orchestral performance ensemble. Through the musical preparation of repertoire for performance, students explore the cultural, historical, and musical backgrounds of the composers whose music is being performed.

The University Chamber Orchestra presents one full concert each semester, at the annual Family Weekend concert and special holiday performances. One or two soloists, chosen from the yearly Willamette University Concerto Competition, perform with the orchestra in its spring concert. The orchestra also collaborates with choral ensembles and participates in yearly hybrid projects.

Though no competitive audition is required for participation, each person enrolled in the course will perform an informal playing and a piece of short sight-reading music for a demonstration before the first rehearsal. These demonstrations give the director awareness of individuals’ musical backgrounds and the overall performance potential of the orchestra.

The participating orchestras from high schools around Oregon are:

Astoria High School Orchestra

The Astoria High School Orchestra is the only strings program offered in Clatsop County, Oregon.  The Astoria School District supports a 6th-12th grade orchestra program, producing students who move on to become music educators, music therapists, and lifelong performers.  This program is made up of 27 talented young musicians who come together to make music, be part of an ensemble, and grow as humans.

Many of these young musicians support the community arts programs by playing with The Columbia River Symphony, in churches and other various ensembles. Among our current students, for example, is the newly founded Fiskare Quintet.  The word Fiskare comes from our region’s Scandinavian culture, and the word means fisherman in Swedish.  The great fisherman is our school mascot and another important component of coastal culture. The Astoria School District supports a 6th-12th grade music program, lifting those students to a new array of musical opportunities, even after high school. We in the Astoria School District music program strive to tap the latent potential of musical talent in all our students and bring a feeling of accomplishment to their hearts.

Brookings-Harbor High School Orchestra

The Brookings-Harbor High School Orchestra is a developing string orchestra with an enrollment of about 20-30 string players a year. Brookings-Harbor High School’s enrollment is about 450 students, with students in the orchestra ranging from 9th through 12th grade.

This group represents all of the string players in the high school- there are no chamber or auditioned groups. The musicians in the Brookings-Harbor High School Orchestra come from a wide diversity of experience. Their skill level ranges from first-time beginners to more advanced students who begin learning their instruments in 6th grade (and a few who began even earlier!). In order to keep numbers across all our ensembles adequate many orchestra students are also enrolled in band, choir, and/or jazz.

Many of our students also participate in a local community orchestra- the Wild Rivers Symphony- which is a full symphony orchestra that performs winter and spring concert cycles.

Newberg High School Chamber Orchestra

The Newberg High School Chamber Orchestra represents a vibrant performing arts department in the Newberg school district and the Newberg community.  Our Chamber Orchestra is one of nine performing groups at Newberg High School, and represents the pinnacle of our Orchestra program.  While this group has a tremendous music ability, they also represent a well rounded group of individuals with a strong academic record.  While we have students that are star athletes in multiple sports, leads in musicals, members of FFA or robotics teams, part of our pre-teach program or volunteer in elementary classrooms, this group was awarded the OSAA Academic Achievement Award for having the highest cumulative team GPA of any Orchestra in the state of Oregon.

Our Middle School programs are under the direction of the amazing Shae Skiles, a recent graduate of the University of Oregon, who is in her second year of teaching.  Our high school band and orchestra programs are under the direction of Joel Tanner, who studied at Pacific University and the University of Edinburgh and is currently finishing his 25th year of teaching.  Newberg has one of the longest running string programs in Oregon, but our teaching team has recently expanded to include the JOY program, a community funded strings outreach program that places the string instruments in the hands of primary school students starting in Kindergarten.  This program places string specialists in our elementary music classrooms who work in tandem with our elementary music teachers to promote the success of our strings students.

North Medford Chamber Orchestra

North Medford Chamber Orchestra is a selected ensemble offered to students who are interested in focusing on a higher level of string experience. Since most of our string students at North Medford so not study privately, its purpose is to further studies in right and left hand technique, musicality, as well as study and perform chamber orchestra literature of varying styles from the archives of standard repertoire. Performance activities, including special events, rehearsals, and concerts all during non-school hours, are an essential part of the course. NMHS Chamber Orchestra challenges students interested in the finest concert performance and we practice life-skills through preparation of our craft. The orchestra performs several concerts a year and participates in district and regional music festivals and all-state orchestra.  This year our NMHS Chamber Orchestra has 15 graduating seniors who will be very missed!

Summit High School Orchestra

Summit High School, in Bend, Oregon, overlooks the beautiful Cascade mountains and is one of four high schools in the Bend-Lapine School district. The orchestra program consists of two large ensembles under the direction of Stephanie Seed. The String orchestra is open to any student who wishes to learn a string instrument, have a few years of experience, or are looking for a more relaxed orchestra class. Chamber orchestra is an audition-only group and is dedicated to performance and excellence on their instrument. Both groups take part in at least three concerts each year, along with outside events such as Solo and Ensemble, District Festival, and our Vertical concert involving our two feeder middle schools. Individuals represent Summit in the local Central Oregon Youth Orchestra, Bend Pops Orchestra, District Honor Orchestra, musicals, and are also members of Summit’s jazz band, quartets, and smaller ensembles.

Mrs. Seed is in her 6th year at Summit, having taught both orchestra and band at the middle school level previously. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Willamette University and a Master in School Counseling from OSU Cascades. Along with directing the Summit orchestras, she teaches 6-8th grade orchestra at Cascade Middle School. A string bass player, she is a member of both the Cascade Winds Concert Band and the Central Oregon Symphony and has been involved in jazz bands, musicals, and various small ensembles in the Central Oregon area.

North Salem High School Chamber Orchestra

North Salem High School, home of the Vikings, is the oldest high school in the Salem-Keizer Public Schools, a district with a strong tradition of musical excellence. Students in SKPS begin playing stringed instruments in fourth grade, and have access to ability-based ensembles at the middle and high school levels. North Salem is home to three string orchestras and one symphony orchestra, under the direction of Mrs. Brigid Mayer. The Chamber Orchestra is North Salem’s varsity string orchestra, and is available to all 9th-12th students by audition.