The Walpole High School auditorium buzzed with chatter on the warm spring evening of Wednesday, April 13th, as about 300 made their way into the room for the school’s Spring Concert.

The evening began with the Concert Band, which performed two percussive, emotive songs– with moving parts for every instrument. Placing the band first was therefore a clever choice, on conductor Mike Falker’s part, to energize the crowd. The Jazz Choir– a small, extracurricular choir– followed, with its rendition of The Beatles’ “Blackbird”, Chick Corea’s “Spain”, and “Cheek to Cheek”, from the musical “Top Hat”. The audience seemed to enjoy the familiarity of the tunes. Said junior Jenny Landon, “I liked that I knew a couple of the songs, since all the other songs are new to me.”

Following these familiar swing tunes were several unfamiliar modern jazz tunes from the Jazz Band, another extracurricular music group. The Jazz Band’s tunes were more sonicallly varied than the previous two groups in that they repeatedly transitioned from placid to energetic to keep the audience guessing. After the Jazz Band finished, the focus shifted back toward more classical music, with a performance of medieval-style madrigal tunes by the Concert Choir. And closing out the night was the Chamber Orchestra, a group of wind, string, and percussion students that is the largest music group in the school. The Orchestra performed Fyodor Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Marche Slave” and a selection from Engelbert Humperdinck’s seminal opera, “Hansel and Gretel”. These two songs closed out the evening in epic fashion and provided a cathartic end for the audience.