Concerts are back in person with audiences. An in-person orchestra concert happened in October with the PAC at half-capacity. The event was also live streamed for those who did not feel comfortable attending.

“Everyone was excited to be able to have a performance like that, because it’s been a really long time since we’ve had an audience and [been] able to practice in person,” Julia Kraus, sophomore said.

This was the first concert with an audience since the spring of 2020 for the orchestra and their first opportunity this year to share the pieces they had been working on.

“[My favorite part of concerts is] showing off what we’ve been working on because we work on a piece for a couple months, so it’s nice to show people what we’ve been doing,” Raduan Moustafhim, senior, said.

Last year the orchestra recorded their concerts in socially-distanced sessions and distributed them online for families and friends to watch.

“It was difficult because there was no audience, so you didn’t know how much to project your sound and you weren’t able to convey those emotions as well because you weren’t playing for anyone,” Kraus said.

Last year, on top of not being able to have live performances, the students couldn’t all get together to practice. Freya Freimark, senior, says that this and other restrictions due to the pandemic affected the quality of the orchestra’s music.

“The quality of the music was way less because a lot of people weren’t practicing as much because of quarantine, whether it was they didn’t want to or didn’t mentally have the capacity to actually get out their instrument and practice.I feel like it was way lower quality and it was just kind of odd,” Freimark said.

Concerts are an opportunity for musicians to share their work with their friends and families and without the challenges of recording online, or not getting to meet as an ensemble, the students could perform much better, and the orchestra students were excited to have a concert with an audience again, Kraus said.

“It’s the final time you’re going to [play these pieces]. So you put your heart into the music and what comes out is usually just beautiful. Like I spend a lot of time listening to other sections as I perform and I’m like ‘Wow, this music sounds amazing.’ I just put all my emotion into it,” Freimark said.

More in-person concerts will be occuring in the near future with a band concert on December 7 and a choir concert on December 9.