Welcome!

Welcome to Porchella 2022! The night where we get to turn our campus into a music festival, enjoy the hard work and good music from our talented students, and continue to build our community through music. Thank you for joining us! The event tonight will feature students that are at various stages in their musical journey and will feature a wide variety of styles and genres as well as original music that the students have composed.

Throughout the night we hope that you stop by the various food vendors, enjoy the yard games built by our PHS students, and check out the artwork put together by our talented artists.

All in all we look forward to sharing this special night with you and our students as well as your roarus cheers as they put their skills and craft on display!

Guitar 1 - Blues

Our first performance tonight will be from the students in their first year of guitar at PHS that selected to play music that features rhythm guitar, melodic/lead guitar, and improvisation. The students have listened to artists and songs from the instrumental/blues/jazz genre and selected to be a part of this ensemble for tonight's show.

Inika Joshi will be joining us on bass guitar for these selections.

C Jam Blues

Featuring: Brasen Garcia, Liana Sadat, Felipe Gomez, Yura Sakamoto, Deko Hsiao, Ahmed Chaballout

Night Train

Featuring: Terry Jiang, Sehaj Sethi, Jay Goyal, Hemkesh Chenupati, Dana Bui, Sharim Khan

Cissy Strut

Featuring: Vincent Tran, Erik Anderson, Emerik Shieh, Aarnav Yedla, Hans Chen, and Caleb Borquez

-Good Riddance

-Island In The Sun

Seif Abaskhairon - Lead Guitar

Brock Smith - Solo Guitar

-I Want To Hold Your Hand

Guitar 1 - Contemporary

This group of students also chose the style of music to perform and focussed on how to recreate rock songs ranging from a variety of eras. Students were also encouraged to try out new instruments once they completed their guitar requirements to assist in filling out the sound.

Vocals:
-Siddhant Chaudhary
-Sara Haidar
-Siya Mishra
-Nolan Nicholson
-Abella Paniagua

-Mona Sarbaz
-Aaron Sato
Bass:
-Megan Brander
-Caleb Hogue
-Inika Joshi
Drums:
-Christina Taylor
Keyboard:
-Grant Luo

Enjoying the art?

We would like to thank Mia Zappala, a Portola Senior, for her assistance in creating the artwork for this year's concert. Posters and T-Shirts are available for purchase and are a great way to remember this magical night for you and your student. They can be purchased at the ticket table near the music rooms. All proceeds will go towards supporting our thriving arts programs at PHS!

Guitar 2

Over the course of this year the students in Guitar 2 have been tasked with taking on compositional and theory related topics, studied a variety of instrumental roles, and began working on understanding how the other instruments in contemporary bands work. Students have also been given the task of figuring out different ways in which songs can be played in order to set themselves up for a great run as they progress to Studio Music in the fall.

For the concert students have been grouped into smaller ensembles where the dissecting, rehearsing, and arranging was left up to them. They have been working on applying the skills they have gained throughout the year in order to put on a production that demonstrates not only their ability to play an instrument, but also flourish in a setting that takes them out of their comfort zone.

We hope you enjoy their first journey into playing in front of a crowd together as they put their work on display! Selections will be announced from the stage.

The Mighty, Mighty Penguins

Ali Agueel, Claire Chang, Sean Lee, Parsa Karimi, Eric Zhou, Daniel Kwon and Wharton Cheng

Epicenter

Jayden Chan, David Kim, Jahu Kandhipati, Garrett Gearhart, Summer Hsieh, Selina Syed, and Ethan Ng

Mistics

Braden Largent, Aarush Chintas, Harsh Dighekar, Yuvan Kuriseti, Justin Wu, and Yalie Amram

Nine-Eight (9/8)

Iliana Gaona, Dora Ung, Ishan Pandya, Natalie Wong, Luke Atienza, Emily Chen, and Victor Nguyen

Events like tonight would not be possible without the support and assistance of our parents and families. We would like to thank Lourdes Atienza, Erica Borquez, the Thornhills, the Gaonas, Mara Concepcion, Tran Traska, and the Koomars for helping make this night happen! If you are interested in joining our community and continuing to build our events ask Mr. Traska or Mr. Traska about how you can get involved! Meetings happen once a month on Zoom and we have positions of all levels.

Want to help keep us moving forward?

The materials we have to support our students come in no small part from our families generosity. Every cable, amp, stage piece, speaker, and instrument the students have access to is thanks to your support. In order to keep our program reaching out to more students and to keep providing our students with the best possible music making experience we have an Amazon Wish List that we would gladly accept gifts from. The list can be found HERE.

Studio Music

The students in this program have truly taken the task of making great music to the next level throughout the course of this year. They have composed, collaborated, rehearsed, and performed in a variety of settings that has set a new precedent for what being a contemporary music maker at the high school level can be. Each ensemble has worked since the beginning of the year to hone their craft in their own way while navigating the variety of obstacles that this endeavor can present with grace, kindness, and compassion. Their passion shines through their performance and is on constant display in the rehearsal spaces.

Tonight will feature our four ensembles and will showcase their renditions of famous songs, their favorite songs, and most importantly: songs that they have created on their own. It is with great pride that we present our 2022 Studio Music Bands.

Blue Jays

Annabelle Tirta, Yunseo Choi, and Jason Anh

Adrenaline Rush

Sushmitha Koomar, Val Arias, Jennifer Touch, and Ernest Wang

234 Angels

Paola Morales Concepcion, Hans Chen, Martin Pan, Justin Woo, and Isabella Lu

Wezer

Cassie Li, Eduardo Olvera Hernandez, Grant Kramer, Nick Romesburg, and Alianna Trias

Pop Performance Ensemble

Strawberry Fields

The last ensemble to perform tonight is the flagship contemporary band we have at Portola. These students have demonstrated their ability to not only perform music, but also to promote, refine, and own their craft. Throughout the year these students have taken performing to the next level while working together to create an image and a sound that is uniquely theirs. Their set is comprised of a variety of styles and moods that will get you singing along and enjoying every moment of it. It has been a joy observing how they have progressed throughout the year and set the bar high for this ensemble for years to come.

Tien Tran: Guitar/Vocals, Van Ho: Vocals, Natalie Wu: Bass/Vocals, Sky Jaan: Drums, Safa Nasimzada: Guitar, Gavin Thornhill: Keyboard

THANK YOU!

Without the support of you this concert, this music, and the effort behind it would not have the meaning it does. To have you here with us tonight means the world to our students and our staff and we could not thank you enough for spending your evening with us under the spring moonlight.

We would also like to thank Mr. John Pehrson, Jen Ochsner, Jeff Hernandez, and Amy Paulsen for their support throughout the year, Mr. Leo Diego and the facilities staff for keeping our spaces clean and facilitating the evening, Ms. Samantha Sanford and the tech students for their work and facility usage, Mr. Adrian Rangel-Sanchez for the undying support, Mr. Kearci Moir and Mia Zappala for assisting in the art for tonight, Gary Wampler and the International House of Music for their assistance over the last year, Jonathan Zuniga for his assistance in making the sound magical, and the PE Department for the usage of their excellently crafted games for tonight.

For more information about our upcoming events make sure to follow us on Instagram at @phs_instrumental_music and check back at our website, www.phsmusic.org to save the dates!