At 6:30 a.m. on April 7, 47 orchestra students and five adults piled into a charter bus to go to Nashville, TN for the annual orchestra trip. After three and a half days of playing their pieces in multiple venues, being exposed to a plethora of country music, and exploring the city, the bus pulled into West High at 3:30 a.m., with students just as sleepy as when they arrived.

“I went because you got to skip two days of school, first of all, and you got to be with friends for three and a half days. You also got to see how people acted when they’re up at 3 in the morning, which was interesting,” sophomore violinist Matyas Csiki-Fejer said.

The orchestra performed three shows, one of which was critiqued by several adjudicators in a WorldStrides Heritage Festival.

“The first performance we did was inside of the Gaylord Hotel, in which we played in an open area, and not many people watched. For the second performance, we were in front of the Grand Ole Opry. [The festival] was in a high school in the suburbs of Nashville,” freshman violinist Tommy Harper said.

Playing outdoors posed challenges that the orchestra does not face in their concerts nor rehearsals.

“When we were playing in front of the Grand Ole Opry, with no formal audience, there was a strong wind, so while the Symphonic Orchestra played, it was the Chamber Orchestra’s job to hold their music onto their stands, and while chamber played, it was symphonic’s job,” Csiki-Fejer said.

In addition to competing in the Heritage Festival, orchestra students also explored various parts of Nashville.

“We went sightseeing to a lot of famous areas of Nashville, it was a very fun place, and it was also cool to see how different it was compared to St. Louis. It was a mini vacation of sorts, we got to go to famous places like the Country Music Hall of Fame,” junior cellist Colin Conway said.

The awards ceremony for the Heritage Festival was held at Wildhorse Saloon, with 19 musical groups from 11 schools in attendance.

“[The Chamber Orchestra] got third place in the silver division in the competition, and the Symphonic Orchestra got first in the gold division, so we did pretty [sic.] good. Mr. Sandheinrich was very enthusiastic at the awards ceremony, to say the least, he was clearly having fun,” Harper said.

Most of the trip’s non-orchestral events focused on country music.

“Seeing all of the people in the streets singing and dancing just showed me that everyone there loves music. It’s almost like all of them have music in their blood, and it was amazing to see that in a city, since we don’t see that here,” Conway said.