Most of the students had never heard it before: Gustav Holst? But by concert time last Thursday, the students in the High School Concert Bands insisted that they had to play "Jupiter," from Holst's "The Planets Suite."

Ensemble Director Jayson Newell was thrilled. The school had received a grant from the Cape Cod Symphony's One Cape, One Symphony program. The grant allows middle and high school vocal and instrumental ensembles to learn a piece being performed that season by the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra will provide the school with music, and tickets to see the piece performed by the Symphony. Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra Maestro Jung-Ho Pak will visit the school and instruct the students as they rehearse the piece, giving them pointers. But the students must perform an entire concert of classical music - something that Wareham had never done.

"They've played classical music before but never an entire concert," Wareham High School's Music teacher and Concert Band Director Jayson Newell said. "But the goal's to open the kids up to more than the rock-and-roll, the rap...I don't even know what the kids listen to today."

The One Cape, One Symphony piece was the Finale of Antonin Dvorak's "New World Symphony," a challenging summation of the famous Symphony's dramatic Native-American and African-American sounds and the pastoral Largo which the students played with gusto.

The students also performed a concert-band arrangement of the Adagio cantabile from Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique and an arrangement of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue which featured senior Eric Balboni as a piano soloist.

"It's tough to find concert band arrangements with a piano part," Newell said. "It took a little networking with my music teacher buddies."

Seven students attended the Cape Cod Symphony's performance and reported that they were brought up on stage after the concert.
"They got to see a real harp!" Newell said.