Tuesday, Dec, 25, 2007 • Music department showcases talent during concert
Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2007 edition of the Lassen County Times.
Students in Lassen High School’s music department showcased their musical talent during the department’s annual winter program.
The event, held on Tuesday, Dec. 18, featured performances by the choir and symphonic band and jazz band and included familiar Christmas songs, with a few not-so-Christmas songs mixed in between.
Students in the Lassen High School choir open the school’s annual winter program with the traditional American spiritual, ”Good News.” The concert was held on Tuesday, Dec. 18 in the LHS student center.The choir opened the event singing an eclectic group of songs including slower songs, such as the traditional American spiritual “Good News,” and “Miserere Nobis,” which is Latin for Have Mercy on Us. The group also performed “Mr. Grinch.” At the end of its performance, the audience joined the choir singing a Christmas medley of songs, including “Let It Snow,” “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Jingle Bell Rock.”
During its performance of “The 12 Days After Christmas,” the choir garnered some laughter from the audience with the lyrics, “The first day after Christmas my true love and I had a fight, and so I chopped the pear tree down and burnt it just for spite. Then with a single cartridge, I shot that blasted partridge …” and “On the third day after Christmas my mother caught the croup; I had to use the three French hens to make some chicken soup.”
Students in the jazz band open their performance with “Jazz Between Friends.”After the choir ended its performance, the symphonic band took the stage. The band’s concert began with LHS senior C.J. Hewitt conducting “Free and “Green.” Hewitt conducted the band as part of his senior project.
The band also entertained the crowd with a potpourri of Christmas and not-so-Christmas songs called “Deck the Halls with Old Composers,” featuring the Hallelujah Chorus, music from the Nutcracker and “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.”
Other songs during its performance included music from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “Great Songs of Christmas,” and “Carol of the Bells.”
The jazz band joined the symphonic band at the end of its performance to play “Stray Cat Strut.”
The jazz band ended the evening with loud upbeat music, opening with “Jazz Between Friends,” followed by “Frosty the Snowman.” Members of the band were able to get into the music, jumping up and down while jamming on the guitars or simply swaying to the music.
It ended its performance with a jazz version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Jericho,” featuring Sam Ochoa on the drums.
C.J. Hewitt, playing a tin flute, and Mike Bingham, playing the guitar, perform a duet during the Lassen High School music department’s concert.The concert also featured a duet by Hewitt on the tin whistle and Mike Bingham on the guitar. Hewitt and Bingham took musical pieces performed by the Finnish band Finntroll and gave them their own twist.
