While many students will be spending their spring break traveling to exotic destinations or simply staying home, a group of student musicians will travel to New York City to play in one of the world’s most prestigious concert venues, Carnegie Hall.

Within the music department, students from Wind Symphony will participate in the trip. Wind  Symphony is the combination of Symphonic and Concert wind ensembles.

Overall, 150 students will attend with a few students overlapping to play with both the orchestra and the band from all grades represented.

Students and staff will depart early in the morning on Wednesday, Mar 28 and arrive back to New Trier late Monday, April 1. The group will be traveling on a total of four buses and will make a stop in Edison, New Jersey to play for the music department of J.P. Stevens High School before arriving in New York on Thursday.

Students will have clinics in New York with professional conductors and the opportunity to attend cultural events. They will view the Broadway play “Anastasia,” attend the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, and visit the Museum of Modern Art, before playing to a full house in Carnegie Hall on Sunday, Mar 31 at 1 PM.

The music department has a tradition of going on tour; in previous years, bands and orchestras have toured other countries to perform at similarly distinguished concert halls. Among these trips were the performance tour of Italy in 2016, the tour of Australia in 2011, and the tour of Japan and China in the summer of 2000.

Aside from a few seniors and juniors that traveled to Italy in 2016 as sophomores and freshmen, this will be the first and only major trip that this group of students will take to showcase their music.

Among all these impressive destinations, Carnegie Hall stands out for a variety of reasons.

As conductor of the symphony orchestra Peter Rosheger explained, “Carnegie Hall is probably one of the best places to perform in the world, the acoustics there are second to none. To play there is a unique opportunity that, for most students, they will never get to do again.”

Matthew Temple, who teaches the symphonic wind ensemble and will conduct three of the five band pieces for the performance, echoed these statements. “Performing a Carnegie Hall is definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said.

Senior Mason Rodriguez Rand  agreed and expressed his anticipation for the trip. “I’m most excited to spend time with the people I care about and enjoy a rare experience few people ever get to have,” said Rand.

While Sunday’s performance is definitely set to be the highlight of the trip, the chance to experience everything, from seeing an opera to visiting Ground Zero, has not been lost on the students and faculty.

“I’ve never been to New York and I’m really excited to see the Broadway show, visit the 9/11 memorial site, and, of course, play at Carnegie Hall,” said senior Emma Rohrer.

“Carnegie is the primary draw, but the cultural experience that New York provides is probably just as important,” added Temple.

Although students won’t be able to visit the Rose Museum, conductors were able to connect with an archivist of the museum to give the students a taste of Carnegie Hall before their trip. This week they participated in a Google Hand during which the archivist presented historical documents and other memorabilia to some of the students.

In addition to the virtual tour and hours of practice that have taken place in preparation for the trip, the bands have will perform a few other concerts before Carnegie Hall.

This past Tuesday, the Wind Ensembles held their Home Concert at the Cornog Auditorium at the Northfield Campus. They will also be performing at Northwestern University’s Band Festival.

All that’s left to do is continue practicing as they prepare for this once-in-a-lifetime performance. “We’ve been working on our pieces non-stop and we’re really starting to sound good,” said Rohrer