It’s the holiday season! No matter what holiday you celebrate, it’s a very eventful month here at OM. One major event each holiday season at OM is the WBAL concert! WBAL is a huge event put together by all of OM performing art students to raise money for the WBAL Kids Campaign. This event includes students from many of our fine arts classes, including band, orchestra, guitar, choir, piano, theater, and dance! 

Over time, this concert has raised over $105,000 and each year it continues to grow. The WBAL concert is always the first week of December, and this year it was on December 2nd. The impact it had on the community was huge, but let’s look at what some performing arts students had to say about WBAL.

Sophomore Grey McGillivray-Stubbs, who plays violin in the school chamber orchestra, commented that “my favorite part of WBAL is the interactions between music departments. I love playing in a full orchestra and wish we got to do it more often.” Ashlynn Ramrattan, a senior who plays clarinet, added, “The music is hard at first but after you learn it, it’s really fun to play! The concert makes all the work we do feel worth it!” 

Aside from the performing art students, the teachers who put this concert on every year say it’s a lot of work but it’s worth it. When Dr. Fink opened up the concert, he commented on how it started all the way back in 2007. He remembers sitting in the auditorium where there was a small crowd and not a lot of performers. Now, here in 2023, the concert is bigger than ever, and for the past two years, it has been 100% Oakland Mills’ students performing! 

From the community, there were endless compliments to all the ensembles about how well they performed. Sophomore Zachary Antonille said, “The best part of WBAL is seeing all the performing art programs in our school collaborating as one; it isn’t something you often see happening and I think it is really amazing.” Adding on to that, Aaron Feagin, a sophomore who went to the concert, said, “My favorite part was when ‘Sarajevo’ was played, it was cool to see all the music programs work together for one song!” One of the performers, Junior Tobi Ajayi who plays saxophone in the wind ensemble, said, “Performing the songs was really fun, and I love the impact on the community we give, seeing the smile on everyone’s faces make all the work we have done for this concert feel worth it! It makes me happy to be able to affect people like this.”

From all the performers who performed, teachers, and people who attended the concert, it is safe to assume that WBAL was a success again this year!