PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend High School Orchestra earned a top rating in a competition in California that rounded out a five-day bus trip.
“It was great for the kids to work together to achieve a vision, a group goal,” said their teacher, Daniel Ferland.
“We taught the kids that if you work really hard you will be rewarded if you do the right thing.”
In Santa Clara, the orchestra participated in a competition sponsored by Music in the Parks.
The group earned the highest rating, one out of five.
Second violinist Maria Morrison, 16, said the orchestra is usually underestimated because members arrive in unspectacular transportation and lack fancy uniforms.
“These trips give us confidence,” she said.
“We arrive in our tiny little school bus wearing these gnarly white button-down shirts, but once we play people are surprised.”
Forty students and seven adults left Port Townsend on April 21 in a chartered bus, stopping first at the University of Oregon for a music clinic conducted by the university’s school of music’s associate conductor and two members of the string faculty.
The students traveled to San Francisco, a trip which included a stop at the Golden Gate Bridge, sightseeing around the city and a special tour of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
They concluded their time in the city by attending a performance by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at Davies Symphony Hall, with their tickets sponsored by the Port Townsend Community Orchestra, before traveling to Santa Clara for the competition.
The students also visited the Great America Theme Park before riding home, returning last Monday.
“The trip was super packed,” Morrison said. “A lot of times you arrive at a destination and wait. We were always moving.”
Morrison said the orchestra members “got real close on the trip and are better friends than we were before.”
The students conducted a fundraising campaign, raising about $11,000, most of the money needed for the $17,000 trip, Ferland said.
The orchestra members divided the remaining costs among themselves, although students unable to pay went anyway.
“We are a public school,” Ferland said. “We aren’t going to tell anyone they can’t go.”
Cellist Mahina Gelderloos, 17, said the orchestra members push themselves to get better and function as a team although the orchestra “uses different muscles” than in sports.
“It’s a real physical workout,” she said. “We get rewards and get to really big things.”
Neither Morrison nor Gelderloos plan to pursue music as a career but both plan to play their instruments for the rest of their lives.
The orchestra will next perform at its annual Spring Concert at 7 p.m. June 2 at the high school auditorium, 1500 Van Ness St.
The concert will feature solo performances by the orchestra’s seven graduating seniors.
Ferland said the orchestra would plan a similar trip during the next school year.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
