'Voyages' launches tech trip at AHS

As about 150 parents and students filed into the Lowe Auditorium on Thursday, Jan. 14, for Arlington High School's first music tech concert, "Sonic Voyages I," they were greeted with a stylish graphic of a never-ending street.

This display -- one of many, as reflected in the images with this story -- captured the very nature of the concert and gave audience members the sense of starting their journey in the first place.

'Arlington's entrance into the direction music is going.'

Once it was time for the show to start, Pat Tassone, interim head of performing arts, welcomed everyone. "This marks Arlington's entrance into the direction music is going," he said.

The concert was certainly unlike anything featured at AHS in recent memory. In addition to live performances, nearly all the pieces were prerecorded and made by students using computers in the music tech classes. "This is a totally different way of making music," Tassone said.

The program itself was divided into three suites. "Suite I: Music of the Spheres" explored a wide range of musical tones and styles, from heavily synthesized, spiritual tunes to eerie drumbeats drumbeats accompanied by a melancholy piano.

But the graphics truly set the mood for this first suite. These focused primarily on space and otherworldly images, from streams of pink energy to supernovas and back to flashes of white light. Viewers were also treated to the first images of our own planet, with views of rolling landscapes and the setting sun.

Following this impressive display was "Suite II: Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Tributes," made in honor of both civil right leaders. Here, photos and footage of both men, mainly King, were the focus of the graphics.

In this suite the voiceovers took charge of the music as lyrics; mainly King's words were used, such as "be true to what you said on paper," and words from his famed "I have a dream" address in 1963.

As displays of both urban and natural settings blended into the background of the graphics, the tone of the music during King's voiceover varied from hopeful, to downtrodden. The music played during Malcolm X's significantly shorter voiceover took an overall belligerent tone.

Finally, in "Suite III: Remixes and Diatonic Projects," the left projector displayed images of space and the right images of Earth nearly the entire time. The music here was definitely the most varied, featuring the first trumpet, xylophone, and acoustic guitar accompaniments of a night featuring mainly synthesizers and heavy drumbeats. Remixes included that of Jimi Hendrix, the "Requiem for a Dream" soundtrack and a tribute to hiphop artists Tupac, Nas, and Big L.

After nearly two hours of prerecorded pieces, John DiTomaso, the music tech teacher, wanted to end the show with a bang: a live performance by several students and him. The final live piece featured the same heavy synthesizers that were so prominent in the program overall as well as several electric guitars.

The show certainly lived up to DiTomaso's claim of being "nontraditional music." As more than 70 music tech students gathered in front of the stage to take a bow, DiTomaso thanked the audience for their support, adding that "we hope to see you at the next [concert]."

The writer and the photographer for this story is in the honors journalism class at Arlington High School.