Oxford School District orchestra holds end-of-year concert May 14

    The Oxford School District held its end-of-year orchestra concert May 14 at Nutt Auditorium on the Ole Miss campus. I thought they gave a fine performance.
    For the past several years I tried to record some of my daughter's orchestra concerts. Obviously there are a lot more children involved than just my daughter.
    I didn't take my video camera to the Christmas 2013 concert, which featured some choral music as well as orchestra tunes. I was simply blown away by five kids performing "Mary Did You Know" in a street-singing style. I called my friend Ed Meek and asked him to have someone from HottyToddy.com film these kids, and he did; and so I was able to include it on my blog.
    In past years I've recorded snippets of songs. Last year I made a separate video for each song. One of the things that I find interesting is the obvious improvement that takes place as these children get older.
    This year I decided to just record the entire performance of each group in full, without any editing. I did miss the first song performed by the high school, Furiant, by Elliot Del Borgo, as they started player before I got the "record" button pressed. I zoomed in once on each group to try to get video of each performer; however, many were in the back and out of the view of my camera. Oh well!
    Most people won't want to watch all of these videos in their entirety. But here it is for those who might have friends or family members in the orchestra. For the general public, I strongly urge you to listen to a few snippets, anyway. Oxford is lucky to have a quality orchestra program in its schools.
    The Oxford School District Orchestra is under the instruction of Tyler Kuntz. Kuntz said the high school orchestra had to cancel its plans earlier this year to participate in a rating competition earlier this year due to inclement weather, but that the middle school participated and received outstanding marks, with almost no negative comments.
    Kuntz said he would announce in the fall the fact that he had registered the orchestra to participate in a four-day competition in St. Louis next year. The trip will include a visit to Six Flags, of course. Readers of this blog won't have to wait for the announcement.
    And now for the videos: