Bows to conquer a master

The brick walls in the music room at Hamilton High School were coated in lavender paint. Fliers announcing upcoming performances cluttered the bulletin board near the door. And musical instrument cases littered the carpet alongside scuffed amplifiers.

On this recent Monday afternoon, it was practice time at the music academy at Hamilton, a humanities magnet school on the Westside of Los Angeles. But this was no ordinary rehearsal for the group of about 80 student musicians.

At the centre of the room was a cluster of music stands, each holding worn sheets from the score of Mozart's operatic fairytale The Magic Flute. Some pages had pencilled notations along the edges; others had sections highlighted in hot pink or yellow.

As the conductor, Vance Miller, assumed his place in front of the orchestra, the muffled sound of students preparing their instruments could be heard. Then silence. Miller raised his hands.

It was time to perform.

A series of haunting chords drifted across the room.

As the melody progressed, the musical notes spiralled and looped, until they reached a crescendo against the emotional soprano of the Pamina character, who at this point in the story is contemplating suicide because the man she loves won't speak to her.

At this rehearsal and others, Hamilton's students were working hard to make their rendition of the opera sound as graceful as that of professional musicians.

That is at least partly because for two nights the group of teenage musicians will perform The Magic Flute with professional singers from the Los Angeles Opera chorus.

“It's super cool,'' said Jeffery Crawford, 17, who, in addition to attending the orchestra's four-day-a-week, 90-minute practices, has given up watching The Simpsons and other TV favourites to hone his violin skills before the big showcase.

“I've never seen all of us get so excited about something,'' he said. “It's not every day we get to work with professional talent.''

Maybe not. But it isn't the first time the school's symphony orchestra has partnered with LA Opera.

In 2007, the students joined with the opera's orchestra for a performance of Handel's Judas Maccabaeus.

And in 2006, the high school's entire string section joined the opera's orchestra for a performance of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde (Noah's Flood); the musicians are slated to return for the company's spring production.

“They know that high schoolers don't do this,'' Miller said. “They know this is special, an adult thing to do.''

But the partnership this time goes beyond those earlier ones. The pressure is on.

Still, the young musicians say they welcome the challenge.
“I told [Miller], ‘We have been here this long but we have never tackled a serious Mozart piece,''' said Daniel Alley, 17, who plays the violin. “It's hard. It's challenging. But it gives us something to work towards.''

And the very opera company they are partnering with also will be their competition. But that is hardly a problem, those involved said.

“If you had a Magic Flute going on every single day, it still wouldn't be enough,'' said Stacy Brightman, the opera company's director of education and community programmes. “We are thrilled the students are presenting their own rendition of it.

"They are an incredibly talented group of high-school students who are not settling for anything easy. They are challenging themselves. It is very impressive. We are happy they have invited us to be a part of it.''

The student production will span about two-and-a-half hours and will feature supertitles, or translated lyrics and dialogue projected on to a screen above the stage.

The setting at the school might not be as elaborate as that of a professional presentation but Karen Vuong, a soprano who plays the role of Pamina, says the student-produced opera will be just as exciting.

“With these students, you get a sense of excitement and awe at the idea of performing this grand opera,'' said Vuong, who graduated from Hamilton in 2002 and was part of LA Opera's Domingo-Thornton Young Artiste Programme. “They're not bored with the experience yet. It is not just another performance.''

As the recent practice wrapped up, the students loaded the instruments into their cases. But that didn't mean the music stopped.

Many of the young musicians hummed bits of the opera as they gathered their belongings and left the room; some even tapped out the beats against their notebooks. “There's no time to waste,'' Crawford said. “We have to be perfect.''