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AHAA! AHS's Winter Fine Arts Festival By Susan DeRosia Ashland Daily Tidings Each year the Ashland High Arts Advocates, AHAA! raises money to help students studying the fine and performing arts. They provide students with scholarships to attend summer workshops or receive tutoring to develop their skills while they're still in high school. Last year the group raised over $7000, providing scholarships for students to take classes in digital imaging and to attend workshops in drama, dance, voice, band and orchestra. AHAA! is unique as a group supporting the arts because it brings all the arts - fine and performing - together. Theater students (clockwise from top left) Steffi Garrard, Samantha Tedaldi Kaela Gail, and Evelyn Dayton perform. Photo by Tiffany Raines The way Betsy Bishop tells it, it all started fourteen years ago when some AHS parents observed how actively the booster club supported the athletic program and the children who participated in sports. "We had a group of parents, and they thought because the booster club was so successful for the athletes, the arts needed the same kind of support. They said, 'We need to find a way to help kids go on field trips, or take lessons in their instrument, or help pay for some of these competition fees.' So they used the model of the booster club and parents got together their own group." They called it Ashland High Arts Advocates, AHAA! Later, AHAA! and the arts teachers decided to bring all the fine and performing arts students together to showcase all the arts in a single performance and art show. The first Winter Fine Arts Festival was held in 1994. "We had the SOU Recital Hall for one night only!" remembers Music Program Director Russ Otte. "There was no rehearsal, so we had 300 kids on stage and of course it was a logistical nightmare. But from the outset it was intended to be an opportunity for the community to see the full spectrum of the arts." The way Bishop remembers it, "It was packed! Even though it was pretty low-key, the performers were top notch. And the audience sat through three and half hours!" Since then, the show has moved to the new Mountain Avenue Theater and has been pared down to a precise two hours, but it still brings all the arts together with exhibits in the lobby and performances from each of the performing arts: drama, music and dance. Next week the Winter Fine Arts Festival will celebrate its tenth anniversary with another program showcasing the arts. While the two performances will demonstrate just a small part of what the students in each of the disciplines learn, it is a way for the parents, the community and the other students to see what the AHS students have been doing. It also provides recipients the chance to show what they've learned. Some of the performers in this year's performance took advantage of additional training last summer and made huge strides in their art this year. Choir Director Russ Otte is particularly proud of singer Katie Horn. Katie described her experience last year: "Over the summer I had the opportunity to participate in the Oregon Bach Festival, as part of the Youth Choral Academy. It was so thrilling to sing with 83 other students from high schools around the US who were so dedicated to music. We had wonderful instructors who pushed us to be the best we could be � I came home after this two week experience feeling more self-confident and with a new passion for music." Russ Otte takes up Katie's story. "After her experience at the Oregon Bach Festival Youth Academy in Eugene, Katie came back and produced an audition tape for the National Women's Honor Choir. In the category of women from 16 to 32, Katie was chosen as one of only 200 finalists nationwide." This year the Winter Fine Arts Festival celebrates its tenth anniversary with a program that will begin with an art exhibit and silent auction at 5 p.m, followed by performances at 7 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, January 29 and 30 in the Mountain Avenue Theater. The program will feature performances by the Concert and Chamber Orchestras, including the first movements of Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World," and Janacek's "Idyll". The Symphonic Band will play a variety of pieces including the "Sabre Dance" from Khachaturian's "Gayane," and part of Holst's "the Planets." For the Thursday night program, a sneak preview of the upcoming multi-department musical production, directed by John Stadelman -"The Sound of Music" - will be performed by three singers, Steffi Gerard, Galen Schloming and Gabe Minchow. Contributing their light-hearted improvisation to the show will be the theater students who will perform, "Barnstorming the Moon," a spoof replete with imaginary lunar themes. The dance department will present five pieces, choreographed by students and dance teacher Wendy Spurgeon-Couraud, whom many will remember from OSF's hit performance last year of "Idiot's Delight." The vocal music department will be represented by the Concert Choir, Treble Choir and both Men and Women's Chamber Choirs with music ranging from the Elizabethan composer William Byrd to Lennon and McCartney and even a medley from the movie, "Sister Act." The Wind Ensemble will play the dramatic "Voodoo," described by director Jann Jaseau as "�very unusual and dramatic. It's performed in total darkness so all the music is memorized and it features some interesting vocalizing and strange uses of instruments like blowing into mutes as if the mutes were flutes." The Jazz Combo will play some Thelonius Monk and "Guacamole" from the Combo Cats. The Jazz Band will wrap up the night, with Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing) and a piece called, "Uptown Stomp," by Larry Neeck. Tickets are $9 and available at the Ashland High School office, Paddington Station and Tree House Books. LINKS: REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. DAILY TIDINGS: Main | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -