'Quality and excellence': Kennesaw Mountain HS orchestra to perform at state conference in Athens

Jan. 27—KENNESAW — David Starnes, director of orchestras at Kennesaw Mountain High School, did not expect such quick progress from his students in the school's chamber orchestra.

In 2020, Starnes returned to Kennesaw Mountain after serving as the founding band director at the school from 2000-2011 and then as director of athletic bands at Western Carolina University from 2011-2020. This is his first time as an orchestra director.

With COVID and the challenges the virus posed for group performances, Starnes gave himself a five-year window to get his students into a state, national or international convention.

It was a chance for him to get his footing, too: He had never before served as an orchestra director.

In just two years, he and 37 of his pupils reached that goal, earning a spot to perform at the Georgia Music Educators Association State Conference in Athens on Saturday.

Starnes saw how hard the group had worked, and how much they had improved by the end of last school year.

"It happened that last spring, I started feeling like they're meeting the criteria that I would expect them to be able to do to apply for a convention like that," he said. "I sent in the application, I thought, 'All they can say is no.'"

The judges said the opposite. The Kennesaw Mountain Chamber Orchestra will be one of five orchestras in Georgia to perform at the state conference, and the only orchestra from Cobb County selected to perform. It is the KMHS Orchestra's first appearance at a state conference in the school's 22-year history.

At the group's rehearsal Thursday, Starnes urged his students to trust their hard work and abilities.

"If I want it more than you, we've got a problem," Starnes said at one point during the rehearsal.

Kyle Paduraru, a KMHS junior, violinist and the orchestra's assistant concert master, said he and his peers were "a lot more reserved" at the start of the pandemic, when it was difficult, if not impossible, to practice as a group.

"We didn't know each other very well, and so it was awkward to get started, but last year, when the mask mandates kind of went away, we started to be able to associate with each other and to talk to each other, and we became more confident playing with each other as well," Paduraru said. "That really helped us grow."

Sophomore Sydni Demester, the principal viola in the chamber orchestra, noted she was the only freshman in the group when she joined, adding it was difficult not having many friends alongside her to start.

That changed as the group improved, got out of its COVID-induced funk and was accepted to perform at the GMEA conference.

"It's been easier for all of us to communicate to each other, and I think that's what brought us together and made us able to go to GMEA, is all the communication, just being able to work with each other," Demester said.

She also praised Starnes, calling her director "overqualified for this job.

"He's been able to bring us together with events, more personal conversations in class, and he's just been really helpful, helping us individually and bringing us together as a group," Demester said.

Senior Katherine Hager, a violinist, has seen two different orchestra directors in her time at Kennesaw Mountain High. When COVID hit, she said it was a time for her and her fellow musicians to consider their roles in the orchestra and decide to take it seriously, harkening back to Starnes's words of encouragement during rehearsal.

"He's taught us a lot in how to just become one, play as a family, practice as a family and stay consistent," Hager said.

The orchestra will play from five different compositions in an hour-long performance on Saturday in Athens. For Hager, the achievement of performing before the GMEA shows the hard work, diligence and persistence she and her peers have put in over the past year.

For Starnes, fears of the orchestra program backsliding because of COVID were quickly put to rest, both quantitatively — it has grown from 40 to 115 total students since he took over — and qualitatively, as demonstrated by this weekend's conference. Starnes credits his students for the success.

"They're very insistent on quality and excellence, and one of the first things I heard when I took the job from a student who's no longer here, she graduated, was, 'We just want to be noticed,'" Starnes said. "That instantly was like, OK, there's the goal right there: Get noticed around school, and start getting noticed state(wide), and nationally and internationally."