by Kathleen Teel
On the morning of April 7th the members of World View, Park View’s public performing
(Top Left) Riley Soos (11), Dr. Miroslav Loncar, Christian Henriquez-Otero (11), Hector Garcia (12), Eliijah Gingras (11); (Bottom) Cooper Reiley (10), and Henry Sierra (10)
band class, departed from Sterling to tour colleges around Virginia and Maryland and perform music.
This tour is something World View does annually, “We go tour each spring to give students the opportunity to gain experience performing outside of our community. Going on tour is also a great bonding tool for everyone to get to know each other better. We’re all close.” said World View Instructor, Dr. Loncar.
The venues World View played at included but not limited to Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia and Radford University in Radford, Virginia. In addition to colleges, World View also performed at the Grand Caverns in Grottos VA, the first cave in America opened to the public. “It was just a fun detour,” said Junior Riley Soos, one of World View’s bassists.
The set playlist featured pieces such as, Is This Love, Ring of Fire, and Don’t Fear the Reaper, and was chosen mostly by the World View students themselves along with some guidance from Dr. Loncar. “The pieces are selected by both me and the students. I like for everybody to have an input on what we’re going to play. That’s why the repertoire of the group changes every year depending on what the students in the group like.” said Dr. Loncar. One of the students, Hector Garcia, involved in the selection process explained why some of these pieces were chosen. “We’ve had a set list of songs we’ve been developing for a year and picked from there,” said Garcia.
World View is a class that was created in 2008 by Dr. Loncar to create a class that expanded outside of guitar and has its focus on performing in public. Overtime more instruments were added, keyboard, bass, and a vocalist. “The reason I created this class was because in my guitar classes I had a couple of students interested in playing Folk Music,” said Dr. Loncar. It was also to expose students to performing publically and more frequently outside of a traditional high school choir or band.
Originally the class consisted of two guitar students and Dr. Loncar and they gradually added more instruments over time. Most people here at Park View think World View is a club, and that was almost the case. “There was a talk if we should have this as an afterschool activity but that would not give us enough time to prepare or be a good group that World View is so we needed to have a class dedicated to that,” said Dr. Loncar.
Overall according to Garcia, “It’s been pretty interesting, especially since they(their audiences) were mostly college students. It’s just been a good experience.”
