It's got a piano, a chair and a tiny safe. The Maestro's Suite, as it's known, is where conductors prepare to perform in the center of the musical universe.
“Everybody I've ever idolized as a musician has played that stage,” said Reep, the first-year director of Big Sky High School's band program. “The walls have autographed pictures of all the great conductors.”
“I was so nervous about playing there,” said junior Michelle Davis, who plays clarinet. “We're just this small band from Missoula. But then we played our first note, and it just rang and echoed.”
Coming from the “cafetorium” where Big Sky musicians regularly play, the acoustics of Carnegie were miraculous. Junior bassoon player Sara Feilzer said she felt like the only person on stage, surrounded by sound. Elizabeth Gates, a sophomore flute player, said she could hold a long note and then “let it go, and it would just drift off.”
“We sounded very good in there,” sophomore clarinet player Kallie Tuxbury said. “We realized we were in one of the greatest halls you can play in, so we were really passionate.”
They first played the slow, elegant “Elegy” by John Barnes Chance, filled with tension and dissonance. Then they gave Polson composer Christopher Stark a Carnegie Hall premiere of his new “Dynamism of a Speeding Horse,” which is acoustically titled.
The contrast of styles was a challenge few of the other five invited high school ensembles attempted. It paid off, earning Big Sky a gold medal from the panel of three New York judges. Only two other ensembles took home gold at the festival.
Each Big Sky student had to raise $1,800 to make the trip. They flew from Missoula last Saturday, played an open-air concert in Central Park on Sunday, caught a Broadway show and an evening river cruise, and squeezed in some clinical work with a team of university professors before their big performance on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they packed their instruments and returned to Missoula.
“People spend their entire lives trying to get there,” junior trombone player Justin McCollum said of Carnegie Hall. “There are original scores by Mozart hanging on the wall. It's probably changed my life.”
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.
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