By Grace Borchert

Students are getting excited for the end of the school year, but they have something else to look forward to before school lets out: the orchestra students from all eight schools in the district are preparing for the all-city orchestra concert on Thurs., April 9. This annual concert is a special event where audience members can hear everyone from the fifth grade beginners to the high school’s experienced philharmonic orchestra.

The extracurricular school orchestras also get a chance to shine with performances from Stringz @ RMS, the middle school’s before-school orchestra, and the high school’s chamber orchestra. The concert always has a theme that changes every year and each orchestra gets to pick a song that goes under that theme. All the orchestra get to play a song together.

With two new teachers this year some changes could be expected to happen to this orchestra tradition. Katelyn Truscello replaced Rita Feuerborn at the middle school and Nathan Sackschewsky took Mara Brown’s position as the high school orchestra teacher. The only teacher out of the three who has worked as an orchestra teacher in Batavia for more than a year is Rachel Uffelmann (formerly known as Rachel Pettee).

“I am so excited to be a part of my first All-City at BHS” Sackschewsky said.

The teachers have decided that there will still be a theme but instead of designing a new t-shirt every year for every new theme, there will just be one t-shirt for the all city orchestra concert musicians to wear for every all-city concert in the years to come.

“I do like the shirt design but I don’t really know if I like the fact that the shirt will be the same from now on,” said Cam Burggraaff, an orchestra student at Batavia High School. “We would always have a different shirt every year and I feel it should be kept that way.”

Having different shirts was always part of the fun but not having to purchase t-shirts year after year will definitely save orchestra members some money, said middle school orchestra student Jeremy Baumann.

“They are fine because it will save a lot of money for all of the family’s who have to buy the shirts, which is important considering how expensive instruments are,” Baumann said.

This year the concert will have the theme Americana but instead of red, white, and blue the orchestra students will be wearing gray with red letters stating “Batavia Orchestra All City.”