The Dallas College Orchestra and Chamber Concert brought musicians from four of the campuses together for a performance at Brookhaven Campus, where the music carried the audience through a variety of emotions and tempos throughout the night. The North Lake orchestra collaborated with ensembles from Eastfield, Richland and Brookhaven campuses for the Nov, 21 performances directed by Dr. Lucas Scalamogna and Dr. Abel Rodriguez.
The concert began with a piece by Clara Schumann, and the emotion of the violin and the cello beautifully combined with the steady flow of the piano.
Together, the Brookhaven and Richland groups performed “The Sleigh Ride” by Leopold Mozart, the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Compared to the more well-known song with a similar name, this piece held the delicate nature of the 18th century. There were titles for different parts of the piece that seemed to tell a story, leading from the sleigh ride arrival to the end of the ball. This helped bring the personality of the piece to life.
The Eastfield ensemble joined the previous two campuses for “Fantasia on Greensleeves.” The beautiful performance incorporated the additional lovely sounds of the harp and flute.
The three campuses also performed “Spring” by Antonio Vivaldi, one of the four concerti that make up “The Four Seasons.” This year marks the 300th anniversary of the popular work. Three violinists took turns performing solo parts, each conveying different emotions during the spectacular performance.
“I always try to look for pieces that are related [to an important date], and Dr. Rodriguez does the same,” said Scalamogna, a professor of strings at the Brookhaven and North Lake. “You notice that in the program, three pieces were connected, like the fact that they were related to the holidays. We usually try to celebrate pieces that have an important anniversary.”
Near the end of the concert, all four ensembles came together to perform the final piece, a contemporary tango by Astor Piazzolla entitled “Libertango.” The piece began with a sort of mysterious feel that combined with the rich notes of the accordion played by Svetlana Ivanchenko.
“When I came to Dallas College, one of the first things I asked about [were] opportunities to collaborate between campuses and between ensembles,” said Scalamogna, “As you know, Dallas College is relatively new. Before that, it used to be separate colleges, and each had their own programs. But now that we’re one, we want to do more of these collaborations.”
This concert helped bring that dream into realization as each campus rehearsed and prepared for the performance.
“This was a collaboration that we started at the beginning of the semester with Dr. Abel Rodriguez at the Richland Campus,” Scalamogna said. “We’ve been working separately, each in our own campus with the students.” They met the week of the concert with all the musicians for a final rehearsal.
Scalamogna pointed out that several campuses have worked towards collaborations for some time now. “Last semester, I did a collaboration with the choir at North Lake, for example, and this year we already had different collaborations between bands, between choirs of multiple campuses,” he said.
They’re also planning on doing two performances in the spring semester at the Mountain View and North Lake campuses.