A lifelong career in music led musical clinician Sergio Espinosa to campus Tuesday when he helped the orchestra perfect some its pieces for their UIL contest the week of Feb. 27

“I started playing violin young, my beginning was violin, and I worked in professional orchestras in Europe, and I worked there, and stayed there.” Espinosa said. ”I started into conducting, and came to the United States to do a masters in conducting and a doctoral degree in conducting, so that’s when I switched to conducting.”

From there, Espinosa found his way to helping others.

“It’s interesting, because we clinicians sometimes say the same thing that directors say but when you arrive new, you get the attention of the students and you say the same things with different words,” Espinosa said. “Sometimes with some students, it’s just a click, they say ‘Oh now I understand what my teacher has been saying for three months.” That’s the benefit I can bring to this orchestra.”

Working with the top orchestra in third period, Espinosa wanted to help students see the bigger picture.

“They have been working very hard, on details in passages, in small sections,” Espinosa said. “What i think I was able to do was give more sense of the big picture, the architecture of the piece, not the small sections, but how the section is relevant to the section you will find five minutes later or three minutes later.”

Junior violinist Andrea Montiel believes Tuesday’s session was a valuable lesson and is excited for her class to implement it in their music.  

“Like he was explaining, in pieces we have individual parts, where we have excelled and where we have to really work in through it,” she said. “But as a whole we haven’t pieced it all together, so putting it all together is another task that we have to take on.”

For orchestra director Julie Blackstock, a session with Espinosa helps the program fine tune its performance.

“I hope he fixes everything that’s wrong,” Blackstock said. “He always brings an emotional impact when he comes, he helps us clean up things and finesse tempos and musical aspects. This is the third year to have him, and we absolutely love it.”