Pattonville High School orchestras held their last concert of the year on May 10, 2018. A select number of band students played along as well to complete the full orchestra. With a theme of movies, combined concert, string, and band members performed pieces like Captain America March, the theme songs from Downton Abbey and House of Cards, the Forrest Gump intro theme, Jurassic Park, and Incredibles. Chamber and honors string orchestras then followed, playing the pieces An American Symphony, Band of Brothers Suite, “Lord of the Rings”, and music from “Gladiator.”

As a farewell and celebration of their last concert, all seniors performed a piece called 49th Parallel, setting a very somber and sad mood with the slow and emotional song.

Following the concert, many students were given awards for their participation in activities like Solo and Ensemble, the trip to Seattle, and Outstanding Orchestra awards, as well as the showing of a video made by senior Christie Jiang; the video consisted of videos and pictures of memories in class or on the annual trip, a tribute to the seniors including baby photos, and interviews from the seniors.

Sophomore Haley Swift was pretty happy with how the concert’s performance turned out, and was impressed that they stayed on track with the band.

“It went really well. It was kind of like the last BAM of the year,” Swift said. “We dropped our mics and left.”

Senior Christie Jiang was proud of her last performance with chamber and the seniors she has been playing with since 6th grade.

“Even though some things were off, [the performance] was still pretty epic,” Jiang said. “I think honors string did a good job keeping up and did a nice job blending in.”

She also said that the senior piece was “pretty good overall, but could have gone better” with minor details.

Jiang has been in chamber since her freshman year, and although she has had Mr. Michael Dunsmoor for three years, she is sad to be leaving the program.

“I can’t believe I’ll be leaving such amazing people behind and such an amazing teacher,” she said. “I wasn’t emotional while playing, but as soon as Dunsmoor started reading off what he had wrote about me for an award, I lost it.”

She recalled staying after school her freshman year, in the dark room, saying that she feels “like that’s representative of how I feel now: isolated and alone, but somewhat comfortable and nostalgic.”