W.T. Clarke High School musicians play on Tilles stage

It wasn’t just like another school event, it was something more prestigious and had professional expectations.”

Gregory Krajci, Orchestra director, W.T. Clarke High School

Five W.T. Clarke High School students from the orchestra program got the experience of a lifetime after being chosen to play with a professional theater troupe at the Tilles Center for Performing Arts in Brookville.

Seniors Samantha Berrios and Ryan Giannitelli, juniors Hailey He and Bernard Kim, and sophomore Brayden Chan performed as part of “Meeting Mozart.” The show, produced by CDP Theatre in Sydney, Australia, featured two professional musician-actors as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Conor Neylon —and his wife, Constanza — Emily Taylor — who introduce the works of the renowned composer to young children.

The Tilles Center and the East Meadow School District have partnered for years. The school found out about this opportunity last April, and eagerly waited for the show ever since.

“We thought it would be a cool opportunity for the kids to play with a professional group,” Gregory Krajci, the school’s orchestra teacher, said. “They got to be featured on the Tilles Center’s main program.”

“Meeting Mozart” introduces kids to a range of Mozart’s music, from variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to his large-scale orchestral pieces. The production explored the instruments, scores and themes behind the music and the life of the musician who wrote them. It aims to instill a love and appreciation of classical music through a fun atmosphere that is participatory and inclusive. Audiences were introduced to all the instruments and the ensemble along the way and discovered some of Mozart’s best-known and most beloved music.

Making the show unique is that whatever city or location it’s in, it looks for local string artists to play the part of the quintet — two violinists, a violist, a cellist and a bassist. So for Long Island, the five string artists were plucked from Clarke.

The students were given an archival recording to match the varying needs of the show, attended one rehearsal with the music director and performed a total of three shows from March 17 through 18 as a part of the Tilles Center’s 2022-23 seasons. Kindergarten classes in all five elementary schools were treated to the March 17 performances.

“I thought it was really cool,” Berrios, the bassist, said. “I’ve done the high school musicals here, and it’s kind of different going into seeing how the professionals actually do it.”

These selected students, Krajci said, have been playing together for about two years so they were pretty familiar with each other’s skill and style. Practices started about a month ago. The quintet rehearsed about four times. They had to learn two larger pieces and three smaller add-on parts. A few modern-day kids TV show themes were thrown in as well.

“The music itself wasn’t too hard, we just rehearsed together to make sure we were together with the pianists and the singer and just within our group,” He, one of the violinists, said. “But it was different having to be professional with the singer on stage.”

Since the group received an archival recording, they used it to practice. The show is interactive with the audience, so the students had to learn which parts of the pieces they needed to play louder, or softer, faster or slower.

“(The musical director) did rehearse with them,” Krajci said. “But he even made a couple of comments that they came really well prepared, and that they knew exactly what they were supposed to do.”

East Meadow is a very musically active district, Krajci said, so the students have a lot of opportunities to fine tune their instrumental skills. But, this show added something more.

“It’s really nice that they were able to do this and not just play as like background music,” he said. “It wasn’t just like another school event, it was something more prestigious and had professional expectations, which these kids can handle.”

The students said that it was cool to see the kindergarteners from their district in the audience.

“It felt really good to see them in the audience,” He said. “I remember when I was in elementary school and I heard high school players playing in an orchestra, it was really mind blowing to me. It was nice to be, like, inspirational for the elementary schoolers.”