The sounds of the season are returning to Wilson High for family and friends alike as the Bruins music program presents its holiday concert this week.
More than 200 Wilson students from intermediate orchestra, string orchestra, saxophone ensemble, guitar ensemble, symphonic winds, symphony strings, symphony orchestra and choirs will perform more than a dozen holiday songs in a two-hour show on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the auditorium.
What makes this almost 100-year-old tradition at Wilson extra special is that, on Friday, the musicians truncate their show to 45 minutes and play it for the Wilson students and faculty in a pair of assemblies.
“I personally love it and I think everyone else does because we have our typical concerts that the students usually don’t come to or know about,” Wilson senior violinist Kate Johnson said. “Making it part of the school day is really exciting because we want to show all of our classmates and friends what we do and what we’ve been working on.”
“The students and teachers love it, and I don’t know of any other schools that do anything like this,” Wilson instrumental music director Michelle Ellis added. “You think, ‘Are high schoolers going to want to see an orchestra, band and choir concert?’ But they’re quiet, they’re listening and the group sounds so good. We get a great reception from it. … It’s a really neat experience for them to see and hear that, some of them for the first time.”
Wilson’s musicians have been preparing challenging pieces for this concert since the beginning of November. The show will include Christmas carols, sacred songs, Hanukkah songs, selections from “The Nutcracker,” “Charlie Brown Christmas” and more before finishing with the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s “Messiah.”
“It’s been a tradition for the last 12 years to finish with that Hallelujah chorus with our full symphony and choir, so about 200 kids, performing a 300-year-old song,” Ellis said. “It’s amazing.”
Ellis is a Long Beach native who attended local schools Fremont, Jefferson, Wilson, Long Beach City College and Cal State Long Beach before returning to Wilson to teach in 2010. She played the violin but never thought about teaching until taking a music theory class at LBCC.
“I realized music had science and math and art combined,” Ellis said. “I began teaching students as a side job and liked sharing that with young students and getting them excited about it.”
Ellis, choir director Curtis Heard, guitar ensemble teacher Lou Ward and marching band director Eric Messerschmidt all have talented leaders in all of their sections, and one of them is Kate Johnson. The senior violinist is section leader and concertmaster after four years in the program. She’s also one of the soloists for the Holiday Concert.
“She’s mature, kind and provides great leadership,” Ellis said of Johnson. “She’s very talented, but she’s also a very hard worker.”
Johnson said that she took a violin class in elementary school just for fun, and then, “It just turned into my favorite thing.”
“I love how you can be completely free to play what you want to play,” Johnson said. “It takes your mind off the rest of the things happening in life.”
Johnson plans on studying music in college and is interested in schools like San Diego State, Colorado and TCU. But first, she has to lead her classmates in some of the most challenging pieces of music they’ll play in high school.
“I’m really focusing on bringing the violin section together, that’s just part of my responsibility,” Johnson said. “It’s my job to make sure everyone is on the same page and working together.”
the concert is also a fundraiser for the music program that’s sending its symphony orchestra to Palo Alto and Stanford for a clinic and competition next year.
You can purchase tickets to Wilson’s holiday concert here.
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