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Orchestra Festival to host 70 West Coast school groups
The Advocate
The MHCC Performing Arts Department will host the 38th Annual Northwest Orchestra Festival today and Saturday.
Marshall Tuttle, the orchestra director at MHCC, has been running the festival since he arrived at MHCC in 2004.
There are 70 groups participating, said Tuttle, with most of the groups coming from Canada, Washington, Idaho, California and Oregon. Trophies will be awarded in six divisions that include grades 6 through 12.
The MHCC orchestra students will help “in administering it [the competition]: guiding groups, preparing materials, seeing to the needs of judges, etc.,” Tuttle said.
Tuttle said, “With 2,000 musicians running through the school in one day, it is a very intense experience.” There isn’t “much time to get anything into short-term memory.”
The purpose of the festival, as stated on the festival’s informational application form, is not only to “provide an opportunity for middle school, junior high school and high school orchestras to participate in a festival similar to those presently afforded symphonic bands and vocal jazz ensembles,” but also strives to “stimulate and foster greater interest in orchestras and string programs.”
Tuttle’s “favorite part is taking the MHCC orchestra survivors of the event out for pizza after it is over.”
Tuttle added, “There are some outstanding performances. The college community and the public is welcome to attend and listen.”
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