By Laura Drinan
Hometown Weekly Reporter
The auditorium grew loud as families found their seats, chatting with one another and greeting fellow parents around them. The stage was empty, save for a piano, a drum set, and the risers, which spread across the length of the stage.
The lights soon dimmed, and dozens of students, dressed in white tops and black pants, walked single-file on to the risers. Some of the students peered out into the audience, searching for their families and offering a wide grin at wherever they may have been sitting.
Westwood’s Director of Performing Arts, Heather Cote, and Thurston Middle School’s chorus teacher, Diana Legere, joined the students on stage.
“This is such an exciting night for me to see all of these students up here,” said Dr. Cote. “I know for our sixth graders, this is their very first middle school concert, but I am excited to see all of these kids in high school when [they] come up and join the program at the high school.”
Legere conducted the sixth graders in commencing the concert with “Shake the Papaya Down,” which had three groups of students singing different parts. They moved away from the calypso vibes of the song with a more serious one about the Holocaust. A Jewish prisoner in a Cologne concentration camp originally wrote the lines as a poem, but the words later inspired the song, “Inscription of Hope.”
The children’s concert also impressed members of the audience as they took turns snapping, rubbing their hands together, stomping, and patting their thighs to create the sounds of a rainstorm. They then sang “Ribbons in the Sky,” a song about rainbows after a storm.
Accompanying the children on the piano throughout the concert was Thurston Middle School’s orchestra teacher, Alicia Winslow. Westwood High junior Eli Feldman also participated in the concert, volunteering to play the drums for a couple of songs, including the sixth graders’ performance of “This Is Me,” which featured several soloists.
The seventh and eighth grade chorus also performed together, singing “The Song of Purple Summer.” They also performed the upbeat “You’ll Be Back” from the Broadway musical “Hamilton.”
While these students may be young, the entirety of the concert showed the community that Westwood’s middle school students have wonderful musical talents.
