Music is a beautiful, magical way of communicating and expressing one’s thoughts and feelings, offering the world a language everyone can understand. The Chamber Music Festival on Feb. 10 showcased the Orchestra and their musical talents through a selection of melodic uplifting songs over an hour-long Zoom format.

The orchestra communicated a wide variety of emotions throughout the concert. By including songs from diverse movies of different genres, it created a complex and inspiring mix of well-known and more classical songs.

The concert had a wide variety of types and genres, however, “The Clapping Music” by Steve Reich stood out from all the rest. While you would expect the songs to be played by flutes and violins, this one exceptional song was played purely by hand clapping, adding a great touch of surprise to the concert.

This virtual show consisted of different videos of the student musicians to substitute an in person performance. When two separate videos are edited together to form a complete song, matching the beat and rhythm poses challenges, but this song specifically, and the concert as a whole, adjusted to this change well.

The festival also featured some well-known movie songs such as “Merry Go Round of Life” from “Howl’s Moving Castle.” This personal favorite was executed with a very calm and magical tone to it as the instruments played their harmonized melodies well. The musicians were able to bring the movie alive with this sound.

The show ended with the song “My Heart Will Go On” from the movie “Titanic.” The song, which most people know by heart, offered a dramatic and noteworthy way to end the festival. As it reminds us of Jack and Rose’s love, it connects well back to the theme of support and love.

TikTok, a popular social media platform, has provided many people with a diverse arrangement of music throughout the past months, and many of these songs were present in the festival. Songs like “Break My Stride” by Matthew Wilder, “Blinding Lights” by the Weekend, and the Nintendo Wii theme all became popular through the app TikTok as people posted different dance and fun videos with these songs playing in the background. These songs added a playful spice to the whole festival.

The musicians clearly put in a lot of effort to make this an enjoyable experience. There were colorful slide shows as the music was playing to bring out the full experience, with different pictures that each connected in their own way to the song playing at the moment.

Despite challenges in comparison to other years, students did an amazing job providing this experience. The concert really emphasized the significance of love and support during these challenging times.