The joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall is so well known that the prestigious venue’s website even has a page devoted to it.
And to be sure, practice is a reason that the Hope College Orchestra is one of only three ensembles worldwide chosen to perform in Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, April 8, during the Evening Showcase Concert of the 19th annual New York International Music Festival.
At Hope, though, the hours of individual practice and collective rehearsal comprise just one of the layers foundational to the music that’s produced and the learning that results. Not incidentally, the process includes engaging the students in running the orchestra and thinking deeply about the “why” as well as the “how.”
“The orchestra students elect nine representatives to represent each instrument family, like woodwinds, brass, strings, percussion,” said faculty director Samuel Pang, who is an assistant professor of music instruction. “So that not only are we receiving music training, but out of that experience develop young leaders who, when they work in different corporations, when they are in different fields of expertise, can use whatever they learn from the orchestra and use it in their different fields.”
Senior Emma Schulz of Grafton, Wisconsin, who is student president of the orchestra this year, appreciates the lessons that she has been learning in addition to improving her proficiency as a flutist. She sees a direct connection between her experience and her future career as an elementary teacher.
“When I started at Hope in the education department, we were asked to create a metaphor for how our teaching would be,” said Schulz, who is minoring in music but plans to teach in a regular classroom. “And I compared my teaching philosophy to a conductor in an orchestra.
“The orchestra isn’t Professor Pang asking us to do things, with us like robots that just produce it,” she said. “We all have to work together, too. If I play what I play and I totally drown out what everyone else is doing, then I’m not part of the orchestra — I’m just me playing.
“So, in the same way, as a teacher I can only tell my students how to do things so much,” Schulz said. “It takes them actually learning and practicing, and applying it.”
The student leadership team’s collaboration includes working with Pang to select the pieces that the orchestra will practice across the school year and ultimately perform during events including the group’s two end-of-semester concerts and the annual all-department Musical Showcase concert. The program for the Carnegie Hall performance provides a case in point. Titled “The Symphonic Story of Hope,” it draws on the themes and selections of the orchestra’s spring 2024 and fall 2024 concerts at Hope, which were developed through not-always-linear brainstorming that considered multiple concepts and works.
“Our original thinking was movie music, because that’s a broad enough spectrum where we can use it to push our music-making level, but at the same time relatable for the general audience,” Pang recalled. “That’s not at all where we ended up. And no one would recognize that this was based on movie music.”
From a wide range of suggestions from an eclectic group of films that included Barbie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, How to Train Your Dragon* and Schindler’s List, among others, the team discerned the makings of a pattern that reflected the Christian faith that is foundational to Hope.
“It turned out to be much more philosophical,” Pang said. “As Christians, we obviously celebrate the gift of life, but we also must talk about sin and the darkness of the world, which seemed to be best represented by Schindler’s List and [from The Mission] ‘Gabriel’s Oboe.’”
The result was seven works arranged to reflect the journey from earthly concerns to salvation through Christ, the latter represented by the hymn “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” by Fanny Crosby, arranged for orchestra by Pang; and the majestic finale of the Symphony No. 3 (“Organ Symphony”), by Camille Saint-Saёns.
“We as humans want to progress and develop, but we also make a lot of mistakes,” Pang said. “As culture develops, sin also develops. But, as dark as things might be, there’s redemption and victory at the very end.”
The orchestra’s 85 members, all chosen through audition, include students who are majoring in music as well as students who are pursuing other majors. Both groups, Pang noted, benefit from the liberal arts education that Hope offers, as does the orchestra itself.
“They bring in expertise and knowledge that someone in a traditionally music conservatory sort of training might not be aware of,” he said.
Schulz values the variety, which she noted runs in tandem with genuine collegiality.
“My favorite part about orchestra is just the fact that no one has to be a music major or minor or even have to take lessons to join our group, and so that brings such a wide variety of people into the orchestra,” she said. “And I’ve learned so many interesting things about different majors or other groups on campus.”
“And just the fact that I can walk pretty much anywhere on campus, and I’m always going to see somebody from orchestra and I know I can say ‘Hi’ — it’s such a friendly group,” Schulz said. “It’s just been a blessing the past two years that I’ve been in it with Professor Pang.”
One way the educational dynamic manifests itself very directly for the audience is through research that the students conduct regarding the context of the pieces that are selected, which they then share with the other members to enrich their understanding as performers.
For example, the orchestra will open its Carnegie Hall concert with the fourth movement of Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, both as an homage (it premiered in the same auditorium on Dec. 16, 1893) and because of its thematic relevance. Known also as “From the New World,” the work was inspired by the American landscape and American folk music during the composer’s time in the U.S.
As part of the orchestra’s preparation, junior Nick Walker of Howell, Michigan, who’s interested in a career in law, applied his training as a history and classical studies major to explore what might have informed Dvořák’s composition, and how it might speak to the present as well.
“What did he see when he strolled through Central Park? What did he see on the Lower East Side of Manhattan?” said Walker, who serves as the orchestra’s student vice president.
“We were going through a very intense shift with the Second Industrial Revolution after the Civil War and into the 20th Century,” Walker said. “What is a way that we can embody 1890s America, but even more than that, how can we [convey] those same emotions, the same themes we feel today — the longing for equality, the longing for harmony with each other?”
Walker, who plays the horn, noted that he’s valued the deeper engagement that his experience at Hope has provided.
“Before, I was always just playing music: It was all centered on me putting air into the horn and then making a sound,” he said. “And it’s much more meaningful now. It feels like I’m producing art in a really significant way.”
“And even our audience reactions — the things that they send Professor Pang and he shares with us. It does seem like they are understanding the art that we are trying to produce, too. And it is even in the way that we play it,” Walker said.
*Although music from How to Train Your Dragon didn’t make the cut for the April 8 Carnegie Hall performance, the film’s main theme is at the top of the list for the informal, pops-style outdoor concert that the orchestra will have the opportunity to present in Central Park the previous day.