Earlier this month, Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada paid his first visit to the new campus of Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, just a few blocks from Jones Hall in downtown Houston.
“The energy that was in the room was so huge,” said Kinder HSPVA senior Nicholas Wesley, who plays viola. “His energy transferred onto us.”
In an hour-and-a-half-long rehearsal, Andrés led the Kinder HSPVA orchestra in Felix Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides, a 10-minute overture inspired by the power and beauty of a Scottish cave. He walked the students through passages before a final run-through that would prepare them for a school concert later in December.
“To have Andrés in our auditorium on our campus was really something special,” said Dr. Brad Smith, director of orchestral studies and music department chair at Kinder HSPVA. “He brings such life and energy to the podium, so the students immediately just jumped right in and were ready to go. The room just lit up as soon as he started.”
The students agreed on the impact. “I loved how he chose specific melodies and showed us what we had to listen to,” said Eleena Sherman, first violin. “Today, he helped us showcase the different parts of the orchestra and different ways we can mature our sound throughout the piece.”
Now a senior at HSPVA, Eleena has been playing violin since age 5. She described an “aha moment” from the rehearsal with Andrés: “We were working on a part in the violins, and he told us that you have to feel it, you have to put a story to the actual music,” Eleena said. “Usually I think of music as playing for someone else, and I want them to figure out their story. But when he said to associate it with something you know, it was eye-opening.”
Nicholas agreed, noting Andrés’s inspiring commitment to the music. “After today, I’m going to try to keep working on the nuance and the interpretation of the piece,” said the violist. “We have to play the music as a story that will make you feel something.”
While the rehearsal was the music director’s first visit to Kinder HSPVA, the school’s orchestra often works with Houston Symphony musicians as chamber music coaches and during “side-by-sides,” where Symphony musicians sit in with the students during rehearsals to offer chamber music and sectional instruction.
“We love our partnership with the Symphony,” said Dr. Smith. “It’s a huge part of what we do, and being downtown now has only made that even stronger.”
—Kerry Ingram
