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| JESSICA KOLDITZ / Scroll |
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| Katy Leavitt, a sophomore from Caldwell, Idaho, practices for the upcoming orchestra concert in which she and two other students will be featured as soloists. The concert will take place Feb. 24 and 25 in the Barrus Concert Hall. |
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Have you ever been to Paris? If not, the BYU-Idaho Symphony Orchestra concert will make you feel like you are there.
Thirty student musicians from the Symphony Orchestra performed as a chamber orchestra this summer in Paris.
This is a unique concert said Kevin Call, BYU-I associate dean of music and the conductor. The added saxophones jazz up George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.”
“Usually you hear pure classical music. In this [concert] you hear the orchestra swing,” Call said.
The concert, which will take place Feb. 24-25 at 7:30 p.m. in the Barrus Concert Hall, will feature the three winners of the 2006 BYU-I Student Concerto Competition. Kera Elkington, a junior from Shelley, Idaho, will be accompanied in the jazz-influenced “Piano Concerto” by Maurice Ravel. Halsey Hoggard, a senior from Providence, Utah, will perform the third movement of the “Beethoven Violin Concerto”. And Katy Leavitt, a sophomore from Caldwell, Idaho, will perform the first movement of the “Sibelius Violin Concerto” with the orchestra.
“[I] love the challenge of the piano,” Elkington, who has played the piano for 16 years, said. Although she will play piano at the concert, she is actually a viola major.
Hoggard has played the violin for 11 years. She hasn’t loved playing the violin all of those 11 years though.
“I hated the violin for three years … my mother made me play,” Hoggard said. However, now with a love for the violin, Hoggard is majoring in music education.
“Music is an X factor … it’s like the Spirit … music can express things other mediums can’t,” Hoggard said.
The third soloist, Leavitt, was one of 30 student musicians who performed in Paris.
“It was a lot of fun,” Leavitt said. She has been playing the violin for 10 years. In high school she played in the Albertson College Orchestra, Treasure Valley Youth Symphony, All State and All Northwest. All this experience helped her win a spot as one of the three soloists.
“It’s a good opportunity, [but it’s] a lot different and harder playing with the orchestra,” Leavitt said.
