Word: hro
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This is the first time at Harvard I’ve felt truly invested in a musical group. Freshman and sophomore years I played in and managed THUD, The Harvard University Drummers, but I was never as attached to that group as I feel to HRO. Perhaps this is a function of the fact that, to me, a symphony is inherently more stirring than a percussion quintet. Emotion runs higher and deeper with a group this large and with works of greater scope...
...other night I called my high school music teacher for, of all things, castanet recommendations. He’s the one who encouraged me to switch to percussion in eighth grade when the flute got boring, and I was proud to tell him about HRO. “So you’re playing in the orchestra now?” he asked, knowing I had not been very serious about musical involvement in college. I told him yes, and that I was loving it, happy to note that we are the oldest continually performing symphony orchestra in the country...
...Indeed, HRO is a group full of amazing talent, peppered with players who will go professional, with players who could have gone to Julliard, players who spend hours upon hours in practice rooms. Music is past, present and future for these Harvard students, people who are wholly occupied with their playing, but wanting more than the conservatory experience...
...Here in HRO, I know that I fall into neither category of musician I mentioned above. In the future, this will not be my career. In the past, I never made it to All-State, let alone All-National Orchestra. And I never spent time at a serious summer music institute, except after my freshman year at Harvard when I worked in a dining hall at Tanglewood, actually serving some of the musicians I now play with...
...don’t think it’s really that I’m out of practice, though; I never was at their level. HRO humbles me. I am constantly envious of the people who can identify the obscure tune someone else is whistling. I have knowledge envy...