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One activity that I missed out on in ninth grade was participating in Odyssey of the Mind (then still called “Olympics of the Mind”, before the International Olympic Committee brought their legal trademark hammer down). I remember going to the information meeting about it, and I don’t quite remember why I passed it up. I have a vague idea that I was concerned I wouldn’t have time for it with school, although that seems an unlikely concern. More likely there were some Saturday meetings involved, and I was already busy on Saturdays with the New Hampshire Youth Orchestra.
I joined the NHYO when I was in eighth grade; my violin teacher let a few of her students know about it, and at least two of us auditioned for it, myself and my friend Scott. Scott was a year behind me in school, but I already knew him from string ensemble. Being in the NHYO together let us develop a close friendship that’s lasted to this day. There were a few other kids from Nashua in the orchestra, and the following year my younger sister Andrea joined, playing flute; being together in the orchestra also helped us bond. At least one other member needs to be mentioned, a cellist by the name of Eldy who moved to Nashua a couple years later; he befriended Scott, joined the NHYO too, and became another close friend.
The NHYO held rehearsals on Saturday mornings in the little town of Hopkinton, which was about as central as you could get for NH. We’d do a half-dozen or so concerts during the school year. Two of those concerts were basically for family-and-friends, as they each concluded one of the Music Weekend events, which were loads of fun. The orchestra would stay at some kind of hotel or inn for the weekend and do a lot of focused rehearsing to get that season’s repertoire in shape, but also spend time having fun hanging out. For my first few years, the fall music weekend was held at the Loon Mountain Ski Resort, as it was the off-season and the owner of the resort was a supporter of the orchestra, and I remember it fondly. Also for my first few years, the final concert of our season was held at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, which was a very cool place and was directly responsible for my decision to apply to Dartmouth in senior year. (It also, randomly, was the first place I discovered raw chocolate-chip cookie dough on sale as a dessert item.)
I enjoyed the NHYO so much that, as the October after I graduated high school rolled around, I found myself seriously longing to attend the fall music weekend one more time. The orchestra had let some kids stay on an extra year or two before, even when I was a younger member, so I got in touch and they were happy to let me return for one more year.
I didn’t get around to mentioning in topic 8, Violin Lessons, that after a few years the school system discontinued support for stringed-instrument lessons. As a result, there was no orchestra program in the schools and no place for strings. I continued taking lessons privately with my same teacher. However, there was one school-related event involving strings, the All-State Music Festival. Students from around the state would audition in the fall to be part of the orchestra, band, or chorus, and those selected would then spend the next few months practicing their parts (ostensibly in school). The festival would be hosted in the spring by one of the high schools, where the students would gather for two days of intense rehearsals followed by a concert. I did well enough to pass audition all four years in high school, although the orchestra demanded a lot of violins so the competition wasn’t as fierce as for other instruments. It was a funny thing to attend these festivals as a member of my school, with the band and chorus kids I didn’t know so well because I wasn’t in music classes; some of them I only really knew from attending All-State.
Although I passed audition all four years, I actually missed the festival in ninth grade for a funny reason: my baby brother brought home the chicken pox from daycare, and my sisters and I all came down with strong cases that kept us in bed, agonizingly itchy, for a week. We all thought we’d had the chicken pox when we were little, but apparently if so it hadn’t ever been a strong enough case to give us immunity. I believe I still have some faint scars from the pox. I also think I might still have the sheet music for that year’s All-State, since I wasn’t there to return it…
The other years I did go and they were fun events. It was interesting to contrast the schools: Nashua Senior High had the second-largest student population in New England, at around 3,000 students. In my sophomore year, All-State was held at the Fall Mountain Regional High School in the small town of Langdon in western NH; it probably had a tenth as many students at most. In junior year, All-State was at Salem, which was closer to Nashua High in size and had a television studio, which Nashua did not. I’ve forgotten where it was held my senior year, though I seem to recall it was also out toward eastern NH. I might still have the concert programs tucked away in my box o’ memories or my sheet-music folders, I’ll have to check.
I’m pretty much out of time and space, but I do want to mention that my violin playing didn’t entirely let up for the summer: I also participated in the Greater Manchester Youth Symphony Orchestra’s summer program for at least two, and I think three, summers. That was a two-week summer day camp for orchestra, again mainly focused around prepping a few pieces for a concert but with some fun time outside orchestra too. Now that I think of it, there were at least a couple other random one-time concert events I ended up playing in. It really wasn’t that unreasonable that I passed on participating in Odyssey of the Mind, because between school, orchestra, and Scouts—and a paper route as well—I was pretty busy already. I do have a little regret for missing out on OotM, because I think it would’ve helped me feel fully part of my social group in my grade, whereas instead I always felt a bit outside the group (through no fault of theirs) right through high school. But I’m glad that I stayed involved in orchestra and developed friendships I otherwise might never have had.
I joined the NHYO when I was in eighth grade; my violin teacher let a few of her students know about it, and at least two of us auditioned for it, myself and my friend Scott. Scott was a year behind me in school, but I already knew him from string ensemble. Being in the NHYO together let us develop a close friendship that’s lasted to this day. There were a few other kids from Nashua in the orchestra, and the following year my younger sister Andrea joined, playing flute; being together in the orchestra also helped us bond. At least one other member needs to be mentioned, a cellist by the name of Eldy who moved to Nashua a couple years later; he befriended Scott, joined the NHYO too, and became another close friend.
The NHYO held rehearsals on Saturday mornings in the little town of Hopkinton, which was about as central as you could get for NH. We’d do a half-dozen or so concerts during the school year. Two of those concerts were basically for family-and-friends, as they each concluded one of the Music Weekend events, which were loads of fun. The orchestra would stay at some kind of hotel or inn for the weekend and do a lot of focused rehearsing to get that season’s repertoire in shape, but also spend time having fun hanging out. For my first few years, the fall music weekend was held at the Loon Mountain Ski Resort, as it was the off-season and the owner of the resort was a supporter of the orchestra, and I remember it fondly. Also for my first few years, the final concert of our season was held at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, which was a very cool place and was directly responsible for my decision to apply to Dartmouth in senior year. (It also, randomly, was the first place I discovered raw chocolate-chip cookie dough on sale as a dessert item.)
I enjoyed the NHYO so much that, as the October after I graduated high school rolled around, I found myself seriously longing to attend the fall music weekend one more time. The orchestra had let some kids stay on an extra year or two before, even when I was a younger member, so I got in touch and they were happy to let me return for one more year.
I didn’t get around to mentioning in topic 8, Violin Lessons, that after a few years the school system discontinued support for stringed-instrument lessons. As a result, there was no orchestra program in the schools and no place for strings. I continued taking lessons privately with my same teacher. However, there was one school-related event involving strings, the All-State Music Festival. Students from around the state would audition in the fall to be part of the orchestra, band, or chorus, and those selected would then spend the next few months practicing their parts (ostensibly in school). The festival would be hosted in the spring by one of the high schools, where the students would gather for two days of intense rehearsals followed by a concert. I did well enough to pass audition all four years in high school, although the orchestra demanded a lot of violins so the competition wasn’t as fierce as for other instruments. It was a funny thing to attend these festivals as a member of my school, with the band and chorus kids I didn’t know so well because I wasn’t in music classes; some of them I only really knew from attending All-State.
Although I passed audition all four years, I actually missed the festival in ninth grade for a funny reason: my baby brother brought home the chicken pox from daycare, and my sisters and I all came down with strong cases that kept us in bed, agonizingly itchy, for a week. We all thought we’d had the chicken pox when we were little, but apparently if so it hadn’t ever been a strong enough case to give us immunity. I believe I still have some faint scars from the pox. I also think I might still have the sheet music for that year’s All-State, since I wasn’t there to return it…
The other years I did go and they were fun events. It was interesting to contrast the schools: Nashua Senior High had the second-largest student population in New England, at around 3,000 students. In my sophomore year, All-State was held at the Fall Mountain Regional High School in the small town of Langdon in western NH; it probably had a tenth as many students at most. In junior year, All-State was at Salem, which was closer to Nashua High in size and had a television studio, which Nashua did not. I’ve forgotten where it was held my senior year, though I seem to recall it was also out toward eastern NH. I might still have the concert programs tucked away in my box o’ memories or my sheet-music folders, I’ll have to check.
I’m pretty much out of time and space, but I do want to mention that my violin playing didn’t entirely let up for the summer: I also participated in the Greater Manchester Youth Symphony Orchestra’s summer program for at least two, and I think three, summers. That was a two-week summer day camp for orchestra, again mainly focused around prepping a few pieces for a concert but with some fun time outside orchestra too. Now that I think of it, there were at least a couple other random one-time concert events I ended up playing in. It really wasn’t that unreasonable that I passed on participating in Odyssey of the Mind, because between school, orchestra, and Scouts—and a paper route as well—I was pretty busy already. I do have a little regret for missing out on OotM, because I think it would’ve helped me feel fully part of my social group in my grade, whereas instead I always felt a bit outside the group (through no fault of theirs) right through high school. But I’m glad that I stayed involved in orchestra and developed friendships I otherwise might never have had.
