MEDFORD, Ore. – An upcoming Rogue Valley Symphonic Band concert is featuring some middle school kids from the Rogue Valley.
Eighth grader Marco Arcadia said,
“Crazy, ‘because like there’s a bunch of people who are like so good at their instruments, it’s just crazy because you’re like ‘wow.'”
The Rogue Valley Symphonic Band aims for four concerts a year and for the first time this weekend, they’re being joined by middle school students. These eighth graders were hand selected by their music teachers, from schools like McLoughlin, Talent, Oakdale and more. Marco Arcadia continued,
“[My music teacher] asked me if I wanted to participate in this group thing and then he showed me the music for it. It was really cool, like extremely intimidating, but you know that’s alright.”
It was an idea rallied by Andrew Donahue, who is the Mcloughlin Middle School Band director and the Principal Horn of the Rogue Valley Symphonic Band. He said it’s important to instill the love of music in students,
“There’s so many ways to interact with music and so we want to encourage these students to say, ‘hey, music’s cool I want to continue to do this after high school, maybe I want to do this in college, I maybe want to do this as an adult.'”
The Rogue Valley Symphonic Band Music Director, Juan Gallastegui, also echoed this idea of cultivating lifelong musicians,
“Leave them with the experience that there is something else after school that they can join and keep the mind open to any opportunity that they be presented with like this one.”
The concert will feature a solo from bassoonist, James Dyson. He’s a senior at Ashland High School and battled lymphoma for a year but he will be studying music at Princeton University. He said his triumph over cancer reminds him to not be afraid to dream big and encourages other musicians to feel the same way,
“If you are looking at a soloist and you’re like, ‘how are they doing that? I’m never going to up there.’ Like, you never know. Because they were beginners once too. Like, all you have to do is just try it, for all you know you might end up loving it and doing that with your life which is what I did.”
The concert is this Saturday (3/11/2024) in Ashland and Sunday in Medford, both at 3 p.m. For more information on the concert, click here.
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