North Shore Country Day School - Mirror Yearbook (Winnetka, IL)

Page 26 text:

ORCHESTRA Any Thursday afternoon that you feel like digging into a little jive, just jitterbug over to Walling Hall and sit in on a session of orchestra rehearsal. When the musicians arrive, they begin to tune their various in- struments. After the two pianists have waged a mild battle over the good piano and the loser has seated herself at the small one, they start to play Chopsticks. They are rudely interrupted by one of the cellists ask- ing them to bang him an A. Each of the violinists is playing a scale in a different key, while the flutists are struggling to drown out the clarinets. A certain musician is slap- ping out The Darktown Strutters ' Ball on his cello, and one girl is assembling a large, complicated instrument which turns out to be a bassoon. The trumpeters are getting in a few hot licks, as a gentleman well known to everyone, enters carrying his bass fiddle. At last, when each instrument seems to be in tune, Mr. Duff raises his baton, and the or- chestra is ready for some solid work. This year the orchestra was increased by taking on another violin, another flute, and a second piano. Also an oboe, a bassoon, and a percussion section have proved valuable additions. Besides playing at the Thanksgiving Morning Ex., the orchestra gave its tradi- tional concert in January, repeated its former success at the Francis Parker school, and worked hard on the opera. Playing for the opera was a tough job, because a great deal of the music for both Xingabru and Trial by Jury was played almost at sight. Then too, playing for the opera takes a lot of strict attention to the conductor, plus a certain amount of what you might call intuition. For instance, if one of the actors has a lapse of memory during a performance and skips a few measures, the whole orchestra must skip the same measures too. It deserves a lot of credit for turning in a professional per- formance and for being an all-important part of a successful opera. 22

Page 25 text:

PURP The picture you see above, labeled Purp is a picture of the entire high school, because, theoretically, every student has a hand in the running of the Purp, rather than just the so-called Purp staff. This year we recei ved generally fair cooperation from the students, and we hope to top this next year, and in the years following. This year ' s staff, taken as a whole, was outstanding in a great many ways. The business staff was particularly efficient. One of their many jobs was to handle all the mailing out of Purps. This is a job that requires a lot of hard, steady effort, and they handled it with the greatest dexterity. The advertising staff was excellent, as they kept up, and even surpassed the last year ' s quota of ads. There were some innovations introduced this year which we believe went to make a better Purp, and which will probably be continued. Anion? these were the sending of every issue to the parents and alumni who were interested. The column, Dot ' n Dash, added a touch of color, and will probably be continued. The readers of the Purp were delighted with the photographs that appeared in almost every issue. Articles such as the biographies of the teachers, were assigned to the repor- ters instead of letting them write more or less on their own. We have even greater plans for next year. We intend to install an Alumni column, to let everyone know what out more recent graduates are doing, worthy of mention (and printable.) We would like to have some of the friends of the school, in military service, write us letters to be published. Whether this could be accomplished or not, we don ' t know, but if it could we feel it would be of the most intense interest to everyone. 21

Page 27 text:

0.0 A