Successful Performance for All City String Festival

On a night in which stringed instrument proponents and benefactors Elizabeth Swaim and Ruth Montgomery were honored for inspiring a musical revival, violinists, viola players and cellists from Grade 1 through high school provided proof of the success of the program.

Program director Marco Gaylord hosted the evening and Attorney Jane McMillan, a benefactor of the program, and friend of late Montgomery, who died last year, spoke of Montgomery's love of music, and her passion for helping make real the vision of her late friend Swaim.

Gaylord noted that the Woodrow Wilson Middle School string ensemble will be heading to Hershey Pennsylvania this weekend to compete in a musical competition with other schools at the same educational level.

The evening ended when wind instruments, horns, piano and percussion players joined the high school level string players (all freshmen, who were the first students in the Swaim program), to demonstrate the beginning of an MHS orchestra as they played selections from Dvorak's New World Symphony.