The Gala is one of the biggest musical events of the year, featuring the LHS Band, Choir, and Orchestra.
This fundraising event raises money for the music programs to travel and operate, and it has been held since 2007. Due to the prestige of this event, preparation this year was particularly difficult at times for music students, especially when having to contend with other events.
“We had district [auditions] before the Gala and I was practicing for that all the time,” sophomore music student Greg Paasch said. “I was spending hours at my house practicing for district [auditions] and not being able to practice for the concert.”
Senior choir member Cici Phillippe agrees that preparation was challenging.
“We don’t have time to practice as a whole,” Phillippe said. “Typically we only have one practice and it’s set at the beginning of the year that everyone is required to come and practice our songs for about an hour.”
Despite this difficulty, the songs played this year were well liked by all music departments.
“We played Glow, which is from the Disney Light Show, and Festival Gloria was a big loud exciting piece,” sophomore Josie Segraves, a symphonic orchestra player said.
Along with the orchestra, the choir also enjoyed the pieces.
“I love Gaudente,” Phillipe said. “I think it’s such a fun song to do. It’s harder rhythmically, because you have people on the beat and off the beat. It’s really hard to stay on track but I think it was wonderful to do.”
Just as in previous years, the Symphonic Orchestra played alongside the choir.
“It was really fun this year working on pieces with the choir because it was really different from anything we’ve done before,” Segraves said. “I think we did good playing with the choir. It was definitely an adjustment playing quiet.”
However, this collaboration posed some unique challenges for the choir.
“The orchestra has this barrier of sound that we have to go through or get over,” Phillippe said. “It’s incredibly hard to do that sometimes.”
All music departments agreed that practice was key for the Gala.
“I was practicing almost every day for an extra hour,” Paasch said. “We got a new piece when the concert was in a week so we had to just nail it out.”
Segraves agreed with this sentiment.
“We had a really hard key for one of our pieces,” Segraves said. “A lot of practice and rehearsing as a full group helped, and putting in a lot of practice outside of school.”
Overall, many are happy with this year’s Gala.
“Watching all the other groups and watching the band was really fun when they play outside,” Segraves said. “Seeing all the music departments play in one night is always really fun.”
