NEW YORK CITY — Today, 160 Port Angeles High School orchestra students are scheduled to take the stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Orchestra teacher Ron Jones has so many students performing that he split the group in two — a first since he began taking students to the Big Apple in 1989.
The 60-member Concert Orchestra, composed of freshmen, and the 100-member Symphonic Orchestra, made up of sophomores, juniors and seniors, are set to perform where Tchaikovsky conducted in 1891 and the Beatles performed in 1964.
“It’s a great experience for the kids and an opportunity to play in one of the premier concert halls in the world,” Jones said.
Port Angeles High School has played Carnegie Hall every four years since 1989 as part of MidAmerica’s Ensemble Spotlight Series. The concert will be at 7 p.m. EDT in New York City.
When the orchestras performed in 2013, all 110 string students shared the stage at the same time.
“That was just about capacity,” Jones said.
During the trip, students get the chance to take in Times Square, go on a party cruise, visit the United Nations, go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the American Museum of Natural History and see a Broadway show of their choice.
The group has been preparing for the trip over the past four years but has been working on the music off and on for the past year and a half, Jones said.
They would perform in Port Angeles parts of what would later be the Carnegie Hall performance as they learned them, he said.
There’s one piece left to be performed in Port Angeles during the May concert, he said.
While getting to NYC wasn’t as smooth as Jones or the students would have liked, everyone eventually made it, he said.
“We’ve had our share of trials and tribulations,” he said.
The first group had to leave Port Angeles at 1 a.m. to catch a 6:15 a.m. flight out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport due to work on the Hood Canal Bridge, he said.
The third group landed in Charlotte, N.C., and the connecting flight was canceled because of tornadoes in the area.
The airline put them up in hotels and they made it to New York City on Tuesday, after the first scheduled rehearsal.
“Today [Wednesday], we’re back on schedule,” Jones said. “There are kids out all over the place. I ran into folks out on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Throughout the years, Jones said he has worked to make it into as educational of an experience as he possibly can for the students — so that they aren’t traveling for the sake of traveling.
“It’s just an incredible experience that these kids will have for the rest of their lives,” he said. “When they talk about the United Nations, they’ll know where it is. They’ll have seen it.”
For many, just going to a big city or flying for the first time is a learning experience, he said.
Flying and taking the subway is part of the experience, Jones said.
What adds to the adventure is that students pick what they are going to do while they are there.
The only two things that every student does with others is play the concert and go on a party cruise following the concert.
It’s an experience some of the chaperones on the trip have had before.
Jones said there are some parents who had gone on the trip when they were his students years ago.
“It’s come full circle,” he said.
All of the Port Angeles School District’s string teachers are in New York helping with the trip.
Jones and teachers James Ray and Sabrina Scruggs are each set to conduct tonight.
String teacher Traci Winters — who played during the first Carnegie Hall trip in 1993 — is coaching students, Jones said.
He credited Ray, Scruggs and Winters for the growth the program has seen recently.
“The kids in the elementary schools are just flocking to string classes,” he said. “The program, it’s just growing like a weed.”
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Reporter Jesse Major can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56250, or at jmajor@peninsuladailynews.com.
Violinists Skylar Tomason, left, and Charles Krause practice prior to today’s Carnegie Hall performance.
