One of the band performing during the Spring Concert (copyrighted by Sarah A. K.)

On Thursday May 4th of 2017, a crowd of people swarmed into a theater of Seoul Foreign School (SFS). People of mixed ages, race, and culture were in one place to enjoy the show, except for the SFS middle school students. It was their night to perform to welcome the spring. At 5:30pm, the loud theater slowly became quiet, as the principal grabbed a microphone and went to the stage. All lights and eyes gazed at him as he gave a brief introduction about the concert. Meanwhile, the performers were behind the stage casually talking to each other, trying to ease the anxiety. The noisy and nerve wrecking ambience floated in the atmosphere of the performers’ room. Finally, there was a silence that signaled their time for the stage.

The concert held a theme of welcoming the spring. Like chirping birds, the choir started to chant. One of the songs they sang was called “Whisper” by Greg Gilpin. The song started with a low tone, whispering to the audience that spring was on its way, and then their song got louder and louder as if it were announcing the world that spring was already here. It matched the ambience of one warm night of late spring in May. The singers then flew off the stage while the crickets holding their violins hopped in with their instruments ready. With their violins, the crickets performed the lower tones of cello and the double bass both beautifully and wildly. After the crickets quietly hopped out of the stage, the wind instruments blew a song from “The Muppet Show Theme” by Sam Pottle. The tubas sang low, the flutes sang high. The trumpets, saxophones, trombones, and the clarinets jazzed up the warm air of the theatre celebrating the arrival of the spring.

With the spirit of the spring, a time to start something anew, SFS was bold to take part in an unconventional movement of school recital. Unlike the traditional spring performance of classical music, students from “Bach to rock,” a class where students learn how conduct and create music with various medium of sounds, were invited to perform. When the theater darkened, a huge screen crawled down. The audience was confused, and so were the performers lurking in the backstage. Suddenly, a familiar cartoon clip started to play without the sound. Then, an original piece created by the students started to play as a background piece for the cartoon; first just the sound effects then, a more progressive electronic tune. After that clip was over, a video film of the students was played to show the product of visual/musical projects, which was a student made documentary of what they learned in the class. In the documentary, one student slipped his hand on an instrument, creating a strange electronic music. Another student demonstrated the same visual can show us a completely different mood by changing the background music. This new form of art was a great success.

Finally, as clock hit 8:30pm, the performers reunited with their family members and happily walked out of the building, heading to their car. Some looked up at the clear sky. It seemed as if the sky was pleased with their performance, and so was the moon guiding the families to their cars safely.  The soft voice of the wind and the smell of the spring filled the air of the night, and everyone knew that spring has come and that the students of SFS were ready to embark on another journey in 2017.
 









Sarah Angelina Kim      
7th Grade
Seoul Foreign School (SFS)

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