EDMOND—About 150 friends and family members gathered at Armstrong Auditorium on December 17 to watch 37 Imperial Academy musicians perform in the school’s fall semester recital. The two-hour, 20-minute performance featured the Armstrong Youth String Orchestra and the beginning orchestra program, plus 35 selections from the private music students of 15 different teachers.

Senior pianist Alexa Turgeon and the string orchestra started the night with the third movement of Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor. Music director Ryan Malone conducted Turgeon; seven violinists, three violists, and three cellists through the rapid, nearly 10-minute piece.

“I enjoyed the first part and the last part,” said one of the fifth-graders. “It’s fast. I like using my abilities in violin.”

Next was a showcase of the Imperial Academy beginning orchestra program. Herbert W. Armstrong College senior Elyssia Lancaster’s three third-grade recorder students played “Simple Gifts” on their brightly colored instruments.

Staff member Emily Burns’s four fourth-grade beginning strings pupils performed an arrangement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.

One of the fourth-graders said the hardest part of performing alongside her classmates was “staying on the same beat every single note.”

College junior Emma Smithies’s fourth- and fifth-grade beginning winds protégés—a horn player, a trumpeter, two trombonists and a bassoonist—presented “Eagle Summit March.”

A fifth-grader commenced the elementary-age private student section of the recital with “Passing By” and “Midnight Stars,” strummed on a black-and-gold harp twice her size.

A young violinist played Beethoven’s Minuet in G after 14 straight piano performances.

The secondary-school private students finished off the night.

Senior guitarist Michael Davis played a piece arranged by his teacher, pcg editorial department staff member Jeremiah Jacques, before a 10th-grader played a flashy Haydn cello concerto for the finale.

One of the sixth-graders summed up the evening with a loquacious description: “I hereby say that it was great, spectacular, tremendous, superb, magnificent, fun, fantastic and godly.”