The music departments at Oak Park and River Forest High School are working together to bounce off each other to create a magical concert experience for the upcoming “Prisms of Winter” concert.
The concert has been a tradition and a collaboration between the music departments at OPRF for the past 12 years. What began as a way to bring more people to the concerts has grown into a yearly winter tradition adored by many Oak Park residents and OPRF families. This year, “Prisms of Winter” attempts to encapsulate the magic of prisms with the winter season.
The concert moves away from a traditional experience, said Anthony Svjeda, OPRF’s band director. He said he brought the idea with him from his previous music program, but the concept had been around for years, dating back to a music school in New York. Svjeda said the first concert was a collaboration between the band and orchestra department, adding the choir department the following year and more music programs at OPRF to get to where they are now.
The plan worked and within a few years, additional concert dates needed to be added as the program would sell out, quickly becoming a favorite and one of the most looked forward to events of the year.
What sets this concert apart from the rest are the seamless transitions from one performance to another, as the music groups are scattered throughout the auditorium, mimicking how a prism bounces light.
“To have something that is seamless, it doesn’t just appear on stage,” Svejda said. “It could be next to you, behind you, to the right of you but it is from spot to another, to another. to another, nonstop.”
That seamlessness would not be possible without the cooperation and participation of all of the other music departments, including the jazz program and student-led ensembles.
“Everyone has to be onboard, if someone is not on board it does not work,” Svedja said.
Preparation for the concert begins in late October, with each director working with their individual departments and coming together the day before the concert to work on the grand finale, which many consider the highlight of the show. The final, Svjeda said, builds up from group to group until everyone is playing at the same time and changes from year to year. Calling the days leading up to the concert “organized chaos,” Meredith McGuire, choir director, said she can easily more than double the steps on her Fitbit on those days.
Adding a variety of music is also a key component of the concert.
“We want to stay away from it being a Christmas concert, it is not a Christmas concert,” said Patrick Pearson, orchestra director.
This can include big band jazz, holiday music, and others as well to create a mixture of different sounds, not solely one holiday genre.
The students who will be participating in the concert are looking forward to putting on a great show for their families and the rest of the community that comes out to see them, said Svedja.
“Nothing replaces the energy at the end of the show when the finale finishes and the energy of 400,500 kids performing all at once,” McGuire said. “The piece ends and there is this moment of silence that is buzzing and then the audience loses it. It is so hard not to be moved by that because it is so special and that is where the energy truly is.”
The Prisms of Winter Concert will be held Dec. 7 and Dec. 8 at the auditorium. The show begins at 7 p.m. and will run for an hour and a half. General admission tickets are $10 and can be purchased online.