As strings vibrated, the winds blew the audience away when the Diamond Bar High School’s orchestra kicked off its first concert of the school year on Oct. 29 to a packed school auditorium. The concert, featuring the String, Concert, and Symphony Orchestras, was directed by Marie Sato and Steve Acciani.

“The first concert is always the most difficult because we only have less than two months to learn and make every piece concert-ready. There’s certainly a bit more importance in the first concert because it’s our first impression to the audience and sets the bar for how we will perform in the future,” Symphony Orchestra president Grace Chin said.

Students from the orchestra had rehearsed since the start of the school year for the event, which contained 16 different songs performed over a two-hour period. The String Orchestra opened up the concert with “Badinerie” by J.S. Bach and then played six other pieces before ending with “Farandole” by George Bizet. The majority of works were conducted by Sato during the String Orchestra’s performance.

Afterwards, the Concert Orchestra took the stage and performed three songs before ending its segment of the concert with Symphony “No. 1 Opening 21 in C Major” by Ludwig Beethoven. Sato also conducted all of the works performed by the Concert Orchestra, and said the final piece was one of the most challenging pieces she has conducted in her career.

“The final song was a very difficult piece. [It was a] very exciting way to end,” Sato said in reference to the Concert Orchestra.

The last orchestra to perform was the Symphony Orchestra, which ended the night with four different works. Sato directed the first piece called “Piano Concerto No. 2” by Sergei Rachmaninoff, which featured sophomore Eden Chen on the piano alongside the orchestra. Nazeeh Hobbs, a student teacher from Azusa Pacific University, conducted the third work of its performance, “Two Guitars” by Linda Wood. Accompanying the orchestra on that piece was senior harp player Shirley Guo. The Symphony Orchestra concluded the concert with “Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor No. 17” by Aleksandr Borodin, which was directed by Acciani.

“We are very pleased that [this concert] was played this well at the beginning of the year,” Acciani said.