Monica LaSalle, Nederland.   It’s that time of year again, when our children don Santa hats on top of what otherwise would be considered fancy dress, get up on stage with their instrument of choice and do their best to belt out what their teachers have taught them, up to that point, in the form of Christmas songs. Stage lights reflect off instruments, chairs and music stands are adjusted and shuffled between numbers, and the focused attention of dozens of students all combine to make a holiday tradition for most school districts across the country. With songs like Tchaikovsky’s Theme from Nutcracker, and the traditional Merrily We Roll Along, they aim to invoke the true spirit of the holiday season.

Fifth graders join sixth graders for the first part of the night in orchestra, filling the stage where normally there would be middle level and high school combined with them. This year, there are so many members of the orchestra that only the sixth graders could collaborate with them to play Bells and Buccaneers, by Deborah Baker Monday, with over 40 performers on stage. The sixth grade broke off to perform Mystic Caravan, a desert mirage evoking song by Soon Hee Newbold that reminds one of lands with warmer, less windy holiday seasons.

When the band hit the stage, they all combined with the fifth graders and played Wenceslas Variants, a bouncy, lively song by Douglas E. Wagner that set a more rocking tone for the second part of the evening. This was followed by the fifth graders alone covering Merrily We Roll Along and the sixth graders performing Rockers Four by Dale Lauder, providing opportunities for solos from alto sax players Jaden Abookire, Mateo Beauvineau, Dean Howell and Gary Schlosser.

Both halves of the night were wrapped up by the more mature performances of Nederland Middle and High School students combined with songs such as the orchestral, A Boomwacker Christmas by Richard Meyer, and On the Trail by Frede Grofe. All in all, the night was a success with beaming parents shining with pride and happy, rascally children relieved to have had all their hard work realized that evening in song.

(Originally published in the December 20, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)