the Orchestra

The Sande Strings orchestra has been performing concerts all over Southern California since 2003.

Initially started as an afterschool program. We’ve become a mix of both school kids a whole lot of homeschoolers.

Over the years, we’ve had a lot of kids participate and become alumni. Traditionally, we perform numerous concerts between Thanksgiving, and the Christmas holiday each year. We’ve played at tree lighting ceremonies, Farmer’s Markets, Retirement homes, numerous book stores, retirement communities, malls (including playing inside Best Buy one year) and many years we’ve been a featured player at Universal’s City Walk.

Orchestra students become very proficient with both Christmas and Hanukkah songs, and have many variations in our repertoire. From standard Christmas carols, the Nutcraker, Church masterpieces, Hanukkah staples and more contempory holiday tunes, we have quite a large song list.

This year we are working hard on a REMIX of songs, played without music, that these pictures of students show. Addtionally our CELLISTS are learning how to walk around using a BLOCK STRAP created by cellist Mike Block. This should make our concerts this year have a lot more movement!

In spring, we generally tackle a few classics. In the past we’ve covered the Bach Double, Brandenburg Concerto Number 3, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and both of Bach’s G-Minor Fugues.

Summer camp sessions are generally devoted to alternatives like jazz, fiddle song, folk songs, movie theme songs and sometimes a combination of the above.

It is really important that students work to improve their parts individually, so many hours of practice make their orchestra experience richer, and like many other programs we require that students be concurrently enrolled in private lessons.  Click here to find out the next session.