Credit: Mischa Lee

The annual Masquerade concert is here. This concert brings costumes and music together to create one fun performance.

As the lights begin to dim, you wait with anticipation to listen to some classical music and watch a classic orchestra concert. However, once the stage lights turn on, you realize that this concert is far from ordinary. You see that all the musicians are dressed up in different costumes. Whether they’re homemade or store bought, these students use their creativity to bring fun to the stage.

The Masquerade concert has been a tradition in Wayland for 22 years. This year, the spooky performance will take place at the high school on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 7 p.m.. Susan Memoli, the fine arts department head and the director of the orchestras at WHS, came up with the idea for the concert when she began teaching at Wayland.

“When we first started it 22 years ago, believe it or not, we performed on the middle school cafeteria stage,” Memoli said.

Since their first performance, the Masquerade concert has evolved into a huge performance in the auditorium at the high school. The concert begins with 6th graders and goes up to the high school’s honors sinfonia orchestra, ending with a combined finale. In both the string orchestra and honors sinfonia orchestra, there are elected orchestra officers who run the whole event.

“The officers orchestrate the little bits and pieces of the concert, like costume contests and a raffle, to kind of weave the performance together so that it feels like a community event and not just a performance,” Memoli said.

One job that the officers do for this event is collect donations to pay for the prizes of the raffle and the costume contests. The officers go out to the community and get donations from businesses like Johnson String Instrument, Russell’s Garden Center and The Villa. While the concert is free for anyone who wants to go and tune in, there’s a $5 price for a ticket if you want to participate in the raffle. All of the money earned from these fundraisers is donated to a charity.

“The students who win the costume contests receive rosin, cleaning cloth or whatever Johnson’s gives us,” Memoli said. “I feel like this just really brings a festive community atmosphere.”

This concert starts off the school year with a bang. When the orchestras start rehearsing in the very beginning of the fall, they have a clear goal to be fully ready to perform in late October. On top of that, the music played at the Masquerade concerti is unlike the type of music orchestras usually rehearse and perform.

“We’ve created a culture where students really appreciate classical music and the genres that are kind of just stereotypical for strings, but this is an opportunity to explore repertoire and composers that we might not otherwise do,” Memoli said.

In addition to the unique music, the magical part about this concert is the variety of costumes that the musicians show up in. Musicians get to show their artistic side not only by playing instruments, but also wearing a costume of their choosing.

“It’s awesome seeing so many people in an auditorium expressing a shared musical passion, but especially because every year there are a wide variety of costumes, and it’s pretty crazy how some people with the biggest costumes still manage to play their instrument,” senior Elliot Xu said.