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- [Valentina] Students in the Miami Dade College Symphony Orchestra prepare this
spring for their performance of a lifetime, playing at Carnegie Hall.
- [Janielle] It's just amazing that you can actually sit there and say, "Hey,
I'm going to Carnegie Hall next week and I'm going to be playing there."
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- The Orchestra performed side by side with the South Florida Youth Symphony
as part of the 2018 National Instrumental Music Festival at Carnegie Hall
this February.
- [Alexa] It's a world-renowned place and it's not a place that many people get
to perform in.
- [Shaloem] I'm, like, still in shock because, like,
Tchaikovsky's been there. Like everyone has been
performing there and it's like a dream.
- [Alberto] Well if you think about it, it's kind of crazy if you just think about
all of the people that have performed in Carnegie Hall. Everyone from Tchaikovsky
to Dvořák, Toscanini, John Coltrane, everything from jazz to classical to pop.
I mean Frank Sinatra. Everyone that is anyone in this industry
has performed in Carnegie Hall, and now Miami Dade College is going to be
performing at Carnegie Hall.
- MDC's Symphony Orchestra, directed by Maestro Alberto Bade,
is comprised of students from several MDC campuses as well as the New World School
of the Arts. The Orchestra also includes dual enrollment students as young as
13 years old.
- [Dante] Playing with a college level orchestra is certainly pushing
my boundaries. It's helping me with my sight reading. It's helping me
with learning to play with other people because it's a bigger orchestra.
- [Shaloem] Well it's a lot more than a regular freshman. It's, like,
a lot of determination but I do it because I love music and I want to be in Miami
Dade College.
- The Carnegie Hall performance included a selection of classical music,
everything from Mozart to Beethoven, as well as a new piece written by guest
soloist and MDC professor, Brian Neal.
- [Brian] I wrote this piece and transcribed it for this ensemble,
specifically for this ensemble, knowing the strengths of the group,
and we rehearsed every Sunday for a month. The students worked very hard and being
able to share this experience with my students on stage at Carnegie Hall made it
that much more memorable and important, and hearing our sounds in the room,
filling the room with sound, it's just amazing.
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- MDC Symphony Orchestra keeps busy with performances every month,
including performing alongside musical greats like Federico Britos.
Along with MDC's television station, MDC TV, the Orchestra has also won two
consecutive Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards for their video game concerts.
- [Alexa] It's really exciting. It's something that not a lot of college
students can really say that they've been able to achieve.
- You're like, "Oh, okay, you know, an Emmy. Oh, okay." And then, you know,
a couple hours pass and you're like, "Wait a minute. An Emmy."
And that's something that I think speaks volumes of the things that we're doing
here in Miami Dade College.
- Professor Bade, an MDC alum, understands the importance of providing
these opportunities to students. He went on to study at the University
of Miami and the renowned Juilliard School before coming full circle to lead MDC's
student orchestra. He says the opportunities he had at MDC,
like those he now offers to his own students, helped him achieve success
at Juilliard and beyond.
- Those shows that were, like, real gigs for me when I was a student
later on, when I graduated, gave me confidence and a sense of being
able to do this, you know, perform in this business called music
because I had done it while I was a student at Miami Dade.
I believe that that's the same thing that these students are getting
from these opportunities. Later on, they're going to look back
at these days and remember these, you know, opportunities and it's going
to give them a sense of confidence that they can do this. They can achieve great
things because they've done it before.
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- For MDC in Focus, I'm Valentina Gonzalez.