Band Kicks off the Month With Holiday Cheer
Pioneer Jazz band’s holly jolly tunes hit downtown San Jose’s Christmas in the park with Holiday Spirit.
By Sharon kim
Pioneer Jazz band’s holly jolly tunes hit downtown San Jose’s Christmas in the park with Holiday Spirit.
By Sharon kim
On Nov. 30, the Jazz Band went to Downtown San Jose to perform and provide some holiday spirit at this year’s Christmas in the Park.
This isn’t Jazz Band’s first sleigh ride, though, as this will be the third time they perform there. This time, they’ve been invited to perform at Christmas in the Park from District 9 by Councilmember Pam Foley. Given the chance to show what Pioneer’s music program is all about, picking the songs for the song list was one of utmost importance. The song list consisted of “Mary Did You Know?” “Swinging Around the Menorah,” “Christmas Time is Here,” “Big Noise from the North Pole” and “Big Band Christmas Two.”
Director of instrumental music Lara Levy talks about their music choice for the concert.
“We have a 20 minute set so we picked songs that were interesting, stylistically different, fit the time slot and can be easily performed in an outdoor setting,” said Director of Instrumental Music Lara Levy.
The practice leading up to the performance was a little stressful for the students but also full of vigor as Chad Spence, 11, feels that a lot more motivation goes into practices when a concert comes closer.
“I think having public performances does encourage us to practice more, but really I think the desire to play everything correctly and enjoy sounding good as a group is the best motivator,” said Spence.
The band members were nervous, excited and even confident for the performance.
“We were kind of stressed, because we wanted to get everything done, but then as we got to the concert we became more confident because we knew everything we were doing and we were just cleaning it up,” said Sebastian Neff, 12.
Samuel Plante, 12, said the band worked hard to perfect their performance.
“At school, we would go over some songs, we would rehearse the songs we usually had the most trouble with and begin to fine tune them later,” said Plante. “On Thursdays, we would just do, usually, a whole run through and then doing that whole run, we can get an experience of how it feels to do a normal concert and fix any problem from there,” said Plante.
From the song list, one of the more liked songs to play was “Christmas Time is Here,” a song originally written for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” starring the Peanuts gang.
“I would say ‘Christmas Time is Here’ (was my favorite) mainly because I love Charlie Brown and I have a solo in it so I’m going to take advantage of any improv I can do in the meantime,” said Plante.
The choice was seconded by Neff who also had a part to play performing the song with his trombone.
"It has a nice trombone feature in it and I’m biased because I play trombone, and it just has a really nice piece where all the trombones come together and play the melody,” said Neff.
Levy feels that the Christmas in the Park performance went well without many problems.
“This one went pretty smoothly, there was no rain or lightning or blowing fuses and we didn’t forget anything, so pretty good,” said Levy. “I think everyone did a really good job, especially the soloists.”
This isn’t Jazz Band’s first sleigh ride, though, as this will be the third time they perform there. This time, they’ve been invited to perform at Christmas in the Park from District 9 by Councilmember Pam Foley. Given the chance to show what Pioneer’s music program is all about, picking the songs for the song list was one of utmost importance. The song list consisted of “Mary Did You Know?” “Swinging Around the Menorah,” “Christmas Time is Here,” “Big Noise from the North Pole” and “Big Band Christmas Two.”
Director of instrumental music Lara Levy talks about their music choice for the concert.
“We have a 20 minute set so we picked songs that were interesting, stylistically different, fit the time slot and can be easily performed in an outdoor setting,” said Director of Instrumental Music Lara Levy.
The practice leading up to the performance was a little stressful for the students but also full of vigor as Chad Spence, 11, feels that a lot more motivation goes into practices when a concert comes closer.
“I think having public performances does encourage us to practice more, but really I think the desire to play everything correctly and enjoy sounding good as a group is the best motivator,” said Spence.
The band members were nervous, excited and even confident for the performance.
“We were kind of stressed, because we wanted to get everything done, but then as we got to the concert we became more confident because we knew everything we were doing and we were just cleaning it up,” said Sebastian Neff, 12.
Samuel Plante, 12, said the band worked hard to perfect their performance.
“At school, we would go over some songs, we would rehearse the songs we usually had the most trouble with and begin to fine tune them later,” said Plante. “On Thursdays, we would just do, usually, a whole run through and then doing that whole run, we can get an experience of how it feels to do a normal concert and fix any problem from there,” said Plante.
From the song list, one of the more liked songs to play was “Christmas Time is Here,” a song originally written for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” starring the Peanuts gang.
“I would say ‘Christmas Time is Here’ (was my favorite) mainly because I love Charlie Brown and I have a solo in it so I’m going to take advantage of any improv I can do in the meantime,” said Plante.
The choice was seconded by Neff who also had a part to play performing the song with his trombone.
"It has a nice trombone feature in it and I’m biased because I play trombone, and it just has a really nice piece where all the trombones come together and play the melody,” said Neff.
Levy feels that the Christmas in the Park performance went well without many problems.
“This one went pretty smoothly, there was no rain or lightning or blowing fuses and we didn’t forget anything, so pretty good,” said Levy. “I think everyone did a really good job, especially the soloists.”