Years of Effort Culminate in Islander Middle School Orchestra Spokane Performance

Mercer Island, WA, February 25, 2025 - On February 15, Islander Middle School’s Strings Ensemble, a symphony of seventh and eighth graders, made a trek to Spokane to perform at the prestigious 2025 National Association for Music Education’s (NAfME) All-Northwest Conference. Across six states, IMS was one of two middle schools invited to perform at the conference. It was a big deal for the students, their families, and, especially, for IMS orchestra director Sarah Hart. 

The NAfME performance was only possible because of efforts from Hart and the broader Mercer Island School District community, which includes MIHS orchestra director Bryan Kolk, MISD orchestra assistant Caitlin Olive, IMS co-principal Mary Jo Budzius, and MISD learning services coordinator Weston Lucas. 

For the last two years, Hart has been working to make this a reality. Last year, she collected recordings from the symphony.

“I had them semi-professionally remastered and balanced, and then I sent them into a contest of sorts with the Washington Music Educators Association,” Hart said. 

They earned their slot.

“It's an honor to be selected as one of the exemplary groups in the country,” Hart said. “I'm really proud of how the kids play. We have really good support here at the middle school from our administrators and the families are awesome.”

Of course, with the honor of the concert invitation came a lot of preparatory work, both on the performance side of things and the logistics of getting 110 kids out to Spokane. 

For the program, Hart wanted to showcase IMS’s values. 

“I try to teach orchestra through a lens of social justice,” Hart said. 

Typically, she explained, performers attending these types of events showcase “the flashiest, most technically complicated and the most in-the-box-canonical pieces.” In other words, music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods made “mostly by dead people who were white men,” Hart said, is overly represented.

Hart tried to flip that on its head with IMS’s slate of performance pieces. 

“I worked really hard to program something that was 100% historically marginalized voices and highlighting the cultures and identities of our students and families here at Mercer Island,” she said. 

Beyond Tradition: Music We See Ourselves In - IMS NAfME Program

The symphony performed pieces such as “High Strung,” “Acharanga,” “La Muerte de Neftolio,” and even “Good Luck, Babe.”

“I've gotten a lot of really cool buy-in from families and students,” Hart said. 

One of seventh grader Emmerson Crespi’s favorite parts of the program was how unique the arrangement was. 

“Some of the pieces had instruments outside of the normal orchestra,” Crespi said. 

For one piece, “Chinese Folk Song Suite, II: The Flowing Stream,” Hart collaborated with one of her students, violist  Emerald Zhang, and her family. Outside of the symphony, Zhang plays the guzheng, the Chinese equivalent of a harp. Knowing this, Hart worked with Zhang and her guzheng teacher to have Zhang play the traditional instrument during the performance. 

One complication was that Zhang’s guzheng teacher didn’t speak English, Hart said. 

“Through gestures and through the medium of music, we developed a solo part for Emerald to play on the guzheng that's overlaid with the piece that we're playing by the composer,” Hart said. 

Hart was happy to highlight these different cultures to her students.

“I want them to be able to play, but I also want them to understand the significance of what we're getting to do and why it's important to highlight these voices and to feel represented in the arts,” Hart said. 

It all came together over President’s Day weekend. Grants awarded to the orchestra paid for the buses the students piled into. Others hitched rides with their parents or their friends. 

Meera Mishra, a seventh grade violinist, said she almost had a panic attack when the road trip impacted her instrument. 

“In Spokane, the bridge of my violin just popped off my violin,” she said. Luckily, with some help, she fixed it. 

Mishra felt nervous ahead of the performance because the crowd would be bigger and full of more people she hadn’t performed in front of before, she said. 

“It just felt like a new level of orchestra,” she said. 

The trip was a big deal for students. 

“It felt pretty cool to go over to some place and just play music,” Adrian Zapata, seventh grade viola player, said. He compared the feeling to what it’s like when he competes in swim meets. “It’s like showing your skills to a different audience,” he said. 

For Mishra, who had seen her older sister travel for orchestra all the time, the trip was like a coming of age moment. 

“Traveling for orchestra was what my standard was,” Mishra explained. “I really did feel more professional afterwards.”

Nathalie Graham is a freelance writer based in Seattle. She regularly works with the Seattle Times, GeekWire, and The Stranger. She is highlighting MISD students, schools, and staff during the 2024-2025 school year. You can read more of her writing here. Read Nathalie’s Lakeridge, Crest and West Mercer stories.