For the past two years, the fine arts organizations on campus worked together to put on a two-night holiday-themed show: the Winter Extravaganza. However, due to COVID-19, the Extravaganza has been cancelled, and in its place, the orchestra is taking the show online.

“The Winter Concert is virtual this year to help balance the need for safety yet still provide a performance opportunity for our students,” assistant orchestra director Victoria Lien said via email. “Our face to face students formed an ensemble within their own class period, and our virtual students had two options. If they felt safe enough to come to school, then they were put into small ensembles based on their level of comfort. If they or their parents felt better to stay at home, then they learned a solo. These ensemble and solo videos are then put together into a concert showcasing their work through the second nine weeks.”

The Winter Concert will not be broadcasted on a certain date and it’s not a live virtual event showcasing the recordings.

“There is no set date for the Winter Concert,” Lien said. “We do plan on sending out the private link to our families and showing it to our students sometime next week once the videos have been edited together.”

The downside to having a virtual concert is that it takes away the integral component of orchestra: playing with other musicians.

“I will really miss not being able to play Sleigh Ride with the full orchestra this year,” senior Nandika Chirala said. “Not being able to play with others in a regular concert and instead having the concert be separated into these different parts is really disappointing.”

However, the advantage of having the concert virtually is that there are chances to fix mistakes.

“A benefit of having the concert virtual is that we can record our performance as many times as we want to,” junior Sophie Lin said. “In real life, you only get one chance to get it perfect.”