Music can be a tool for sparking change, dialogue and spreading ideas.  Through the Niles West orchestra and choir program’s collaboration with Courageous Conversation, an organization working to engage, sustain and deepen interracial dialogue effectively, students created a piece doing just that. On Oct. 7, orchestra and choir classes performed for over 1,000 people at the National Summit for Courageous Conversation at Hilton Chicago.  The director of Orchestra Natalie Frakes led the nearly year-long collaboration, and the trip was chaperoned by Frakes and choir director Justin De La Cruz.

The orchestra program performed a Collective Composition, where students created their own music with the mentorship of professionals.  Through this process, the orchestra program composed a 12-minute-long commission titled A Peace of Unity.  Both orchestra and choir spent a significant amount of time and effort preparing and perfecting their performances at the summit.

“It took an intensive one and a half weeks of rehearsing and a long four-hour Sunday rehearsal the day before our performance to put it together,” Frakes said.

The orchestra played a piece titled All the Flowers in the World and the choir sang a song called Joy.

Prior to the performance, junior and violist, Michelle Adefala, introduced the orchestra and choir’s joint performance to the crowd.

“We are here today to perform a piece to you about freedom.  In the process of composing this piece, we went in groups and just spewed out a bunch of ideas to put together to compose this and the adults up here helped us.  The bulk of it was created and composed by students.  The entire process of this was really hard and took a lot of time and patience but I think that we all believe the product that we have come here to show you today is well worth all that hard effort.  This is a piece of unity and this is what freedom means to us,” Adefala said.

Junior and first violinist, Anida Mehmedovic, enjoyed the overall experience and the chance to perform.

“It was pretty fun.  It was honestly an interesting experience to see.  I was really nervous at first, but it was really cool to see all the people that were there gathered.  We had a bunch of great applause and support after we performed so that was really fun to see,” Mehmedovic said.

At the end of the performance, Frakes explained its importance to orchestra and choir students.

“We came up with all of those ideas.  Every single student contributed something equally and this was them; that was them so I’m very, very proud of our young people.  They spoke up for what they believed in.  They pushed for what they believed in.  They fought for what they believed in and that was what freedom meant to them,” Frakes said.

Orchestra was interviewed by Courageous Conversation and featured on their Instagram @ccaboutrace.