From April second to fifth, Green Hope’s orchestra and several band members went on a trip to New York City to perform in a music festival at its renowned Carnegie Hall. The National Band and Orchestra Festival at Carnegie Hall is a three-day event where student ensembles perform for a panel of judges and are given detailed feedback on their performances. Afterwards, the students toured various parts of New York City to watch musicals and visit famous sights.
In order to be accepted into the festival, the group had to submit a preliminary video audition. The students included members from the Green Hope Symphony and Chamber ensembles, Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band, and had been preparing for this event since February, practicing twice a week after school over the course of seven weeks.
The selection of music, along with soloist sections, included:
Symphonie espagnole by Édouard Lalo
Soloist: Sarasi Shah (‘26)
Louis Spohr’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1
Soloist: Angela Wang (‘27)
Water Reflections by Yukiko Nishimura
The soloist for Louis Spohr’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 was Angela Wang (‘27), a member of GH Marching Band and Wind Ensemble, and a highly accomplished clarinetist who performed with the prestigious Honor Band of America in March of 2026 and was 1st chair at the All-State Orchestra.
Wang stated, “The performance at Carnegie Hall was incredibly special to me, as it was my first time playing a concerto accompanied by a live orchestra at a grand hall. Rehearsing in a band room and playing into a wall is very different from actually performing on the Carnegie Hall stage because the acoustics are designed to enhance sound with brilliance and clarity.”
She had begun practicing the concerto around three months prior to the event, building up with fundamentals by practicing etudes in the same key with similar musical patterns to prepare for the challenging repertoire. She was touched that a number of her friends from other states had come to see the performance, and shared that music is, without a doubt, her greatest passion.
Aside from the performance, Wang enjoyed “walking around New York City, hanging out with friends, and getting milk tea and ice cream.”
The violin soloist for Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole was Sarasi Shah (‘26), concertmaster of Green Hope’s Symphony Orchestra. She had begun practicing the concerto in August of 2025 for her college auditions and had picked it back up in February for the performance.
Coming out of the concert, she had felt that the performance had not been ideal, but after listening to the recording, she felt that it had gone better than she had initially thought. She noted the projection of the sound of her violin and the echo of the hall, and said that it gave her instrument “a sort of reverb,” adding musical depth.
Aside from the performance, she enjoyed visiting Times Square, and the experience of going on a trip with her friends to wrap up the year.
New York: Tours and experiences
Afterwards, the students had the chance to visit famous tourist spots in New York. They visited the top of the Rockefeller Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (also known as the MET), Central Park and the Broadway musical show “Hadestown.”
This excursion was a memorable experience for the students, who practiced musical skills and explored a variety of art while enjoying time with friends. An inside look into the trip can be seen through Mrs. Lewis, the Orchestra director and organizer of the trip, who stated that the students “had a lot of fun… I think just being together, getting to know each other better, getting lost (in the middle of New York), having fun and then getting lost again.”
