Around 50 students from The Villages High School showed up at the inaugural Music Fair held in the VHS band room on April 22. Participants discussed and displayed their passion for music in the day-long artistical bonanza.
Students created projects based on research and innovations that connect music to other non-fine arts subjects. On those lines, they displayed amazing concepts with projects and were not limited in their scope or creativity.
The show turned out to be a success, courtesy of Hannah Warner, the band director of VHS.
“Everyone’s personalities came out,” said Warner.
Ninth-grader Nicholas Saucier collaborated with 11th-grader Michael O’ Alessandro and 10th-grader LeAnn Myers on their project “Colorful Chords.”
“In band, you always have these thoughts of how music connects with our other interests, but we never really had a way of exploring it,” Nicholas said. “Having music fair this year inspired us to explore these ideas. It was a really great experience.”
Many other fascinating concepts included building an instrument out of PVC pipe, a ukulele out of Legos, how short-term memory can be affected by music and designing song-based animations.
“They took ideas and ran with them,” said Warner. “They blew my expectations completely out of the water.”
It was a bit difficult to finalize the winners since all the ideas were unique and exemplary.
After a thoughtful discussion, first-place was awarded to a two-person team of Kimberly Hersh and Wesley Keny, who created a classical reconstruction of opera cakes. They had to do an extensive study on how the cakes were made, recipes and their connection to opera.
A three-person team of Nole Liu, Jonathan Estrella and Kayla Verzaal earned the second spot for choreographing a dance complemented with music.
Collin Nixon, who created a military history project on how instruments have changed throughout time and their role in warfare, stood at third place. His presentation included items from his personal collection.
The VHS band performed their last concert of the year on May 17 at the VHS gymnasium.
All proceeds from the event was utilized for a Washington, D.C. trip for students, where the VHS band will perform at the National Parade of Heroes this year.
The parade will include playing at the Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial and Air Force Memorial.
Warner already is planning a bigger version of this fair to be hosted in a different venue with possible access to the community when pandemic restrictions lower.
She also is accepting donations to help the band reach this national stage, with expenses totaling nearly $500 per student.
For any additional queries or support, she can be reached by email at hannah.warner@tvca.org
– Attributed Source, The Villages Daily Sun