STORY AND PHOTOS BY ALUE PERKINS
ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR
Community members of Clackamas
Com m unity College would not
expect the words “ Fleetwnod Mac”
and “ performance at CCG” in the
same sentence, but that all changed
on the night of April 20, when
Clackamas Community C ollege’ s
Contem porary Music Ensemble
- performed the famous band’ s hits,
and performed the music in a way
where the audience could connect
to them on a personal level.
The
M u sic P e r fo r m a n c e
Technology Festival was held in
the Osterman Theatre at the Oregon
City campus on April 26, featuring
artists from middle school to middle
age. The performers consisted of
the Contemporary Music Ensemble,
the three student winners from the
Garage Band Festival and a group
of special guests.
Inside the Osterm an Theatre
doors, students prepared their
instruments for the show; music
played in the background to hype
the crowd up for the performance.;
C C C ’ s Contem porary M usic
Ensemble started with Fleetwood
Mac, playing famous songs like
“ L a n d s lid e ” and “ D r e a m s .”
Each performance was raw and
extremely well performed, but the
performance that had the whole
audie'nce on the edge of their seats
was when they performed the song,
“ The C h ain .” The choir group and
lead singer had hyped the crowd up
with their energy. They finished
the Fleetwood Mac performance
o ff with a strong note to give a
strong welcome to the Garage Band
winners.
.. The Garage Band Festival, which
is a separate event leading into
the MPT festival, had high school
and middle school participants.
The Garage Band p articip an ts
were separated into three award
categories- singer/songwriters,
solo vo calists and band. They
bring original music to perform
for industry professionals that, in
turn, help and give the contestants
advice and directions. The top three
Clackamas Print --------- -------
winners from the Garage Band being here has really allowed us
Festival each got,10 hours of studio to grow as artists and come out
time at the college and the chance of our shells because we are-both
to perform at this year’ s Music really shy.”
p la n s x on
Performance Technology Festival. ; H o llin g s w o r t h
CCC Vocal Music Director Kathleen continuing the MPT Festival in the
Hollingsworth said, “ The Music future. “ I also created the degree,
Performance Technology Festival it’ s a two year degree, because we
gives our students the chance to have a recording studio here and
learn from successful artists as well we have a music tech certificate,
fike a one year certificate so when I
as showcase their own talents.”
The music instructor smiled as got here ! saw all these kids taking
she explained her music career. music classes and tech classes but
“ I’ve been singing as a kid, I ’ve they also played music, they played
been singing in church and in instrum ents, but they w eren’ t;
school since forever. Started to working on those skills and I just
go to college, started playing in saw a resource. I was like, ‘we need
bands, started writing music, I’ve to put this together to make a two
just been doing it my whole life .” year degree.’ The degree was built Raine Welterlen plays trumpet with
Students and bandmates Toria upon that and then I was like, ‘we college band The Act at the Music
Beck and Kandra Tolvstad explained need to build a festival’ and that’s Performance Technology Festival on
April 20.
their gratitude of'the MPT festival how it all came to b e.”
and the o p p o rtu n itie s th a t
Clackamas Community College had
given them.
“ For me personally, my brother
was doing music at the college,”
Beck said. “ I was kind of starting
a rock band with my best friend,
we didn’ t really know what we
were doing and we decided that
we wanted to start recording music,
and we were like ‘ oh god how do
we do th is!’ ”
“ We started at home and then
did a bunch of crappy recordings
and tried a bunch of stuff with
[program ] GarageBand w asn’ t Hayden Jones, left, and Toria Beck perform a cover of “Landslide” by
working so we were like okay, Fleetwood Mac.
there’ s a recording class at the
school so le t ’ s try that! So we
started taking the recording classes
and then I kinda got roped into the
rest of the program and I’ m super
glad I did,” Beck said.
Tolvstad explained how her
and B e ck ’ s u p com ing band,
“ Dreadlight” motivated the women
to join CCC’ s MPT program.
“ We just released an EP, released
a music video, and we are going to
perform at Pride Fest and perform
in Seattle this year/’ Tolvstad said.
“ We are also planning on releasing
two other EPs this year. I think us Contemporary Music Ensemble performs “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac.
t h e c la c k a m a s p r in t .c o m
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