Felix Ma
On Feb. 22 at 6 p.m., Music From the Heart was held at the Congregational Church of San Mateo. It is an annual event hosted to raise money for the Aragon music program and an opportunity for Aragon music students to audition to showcase their ability in a solo or with a group of their choosing. The event has been hosted in the Multipurpose Room in recent years, but the change in venue this year accommodated additional services and returned the event to its original full scale before COVID.
The event organizers were expecting to sell food at the bigger venue, offering a better experience for the performers and the attendees. However, it also made set-up a tougher task.
“Because of COVID, [Music From the Heart] was moved into the MPR on a Friday [so] we would just go [there] and start setting up,” said senior Tri-M Historian Jonathan Wong. “The issue with this year is that we’re in a church, and the church always has activities going on throughout the week, so we actually can’t get into the church until later … We don’t really know where everything is [and] we have to bring a lot of things from [Aragon] to the church as well.”
The Congregational Church of San Mateo consists of different buildings joined by long hallways, and Music From the Heart took place in the Kloss Hall, featuring a small stage at the front, several long dining tables filling up the center area and a kitchen in the back with a pass-through window. Donation and raffle ticket booths were set up on the side along with a small wine station for adults. Tickets were available for purchase on the Aragon Music website, starting at $8 for student seating, but with additional charges for extras such as meals, drinks, raffle tickets and merchandise.
“[The food was] really good … for this many people, they did very well,” said audience member Naomi Newman. “And having the students serve [food] is pretty nice … [We came to this event] because our kids are performing, and we want to support the music department, [but] it’s getting a little long — we’re almost two hours in and we’re barely halfway through.”
By choosing their own groups or doing solos, performers were able to showcase their abilities more comfortably.
“[I did a] solo mainly because it takes less time to rehearse because it’s only my part,” said freshman Jaydon Li. “The risk of messing up is way less because I have control of everything … [The performance] was pretty smooth, I got used to the acoustics and environment pretty quickly, and overall, from what I heard, the audience feedback was pretty good.”
The next music concert at Aragon will be the Symphonic Pops Concert on March 27 and 28 in the theater.
