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SAN DOMENICO ORCHESTRA WINS NATIONAL COMPETITION
 
SAN ANSELMO, MARCH 3 – San Domenico High School’s Orchestra da Camera, in San Anselmo, directed by George Thomson, took top honors at the 2008 National Orchestra Festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico on February 29, including the "Grand Champion" Award for most outstanding High School Orchestra nationwide.
 
The Festival was a featured event of the 2008 American String Teachers Association convention. Student musicians in 17 orchestras from twelve states participated, each selected by taped audition. Each selected orchestra performed 30 to 40 minutes of music for an audience that included three adjudicators, all experienced music educators, who rated the ensembles on Technique, Tone Quality, Intonation, Rhythm, and Interpretation.
 
San Domenico's performance of Mozart’s Divertimento in D Major and Béla Bartók’s Divertimento for String Orchestra earned them a “Superior” rating and First Place in the High School String Orchestra category.
 
The 25-member string ensemble from the 160-student, all-girls San Domenico Upper School also received the overall "Grand Champion" Award for Best Orchestra in the Nation. They performed a special Winners' Concert March 1 as the final event of the festival.
 
The Virtuoso Program at San Domenico School provides a unique opportunity for High School-aged string musicians to study a rigorous college preparatory academic curriculum combined with intensive Chamber Music and Orchestral training. Founded in 1977 by Faith France and now under the direction of alumna Robin Creighton Ravazzini '90, the Program has grown from a single string quartet to its present size, offering merit scholarships to enable talented students from throughout the Bay Area and beyond to enroll. The students perform public concerts and recitals several times a year in the beautiful new 300-seat Bettye Poetz Ferguson Hall on the San Domenico campus. A majority of the Program's alumnae  (including Hai-Ye Ni, Principal Cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Katie Kadarauch, Associate Principal Viola of the San Francisco Symphony) go on to study at prestigious universities and music conservatories.
 
Virtuoso Program Music Director George Thomson, a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, is also Music Director of the Marin Symphony Youth Orchestra.
 
The next Virtuoso Program performance is a solo recital on Thursday, April 24 at 7:00pm in Bettye Poetz Ferguson Hall on the San Domenico campus.
 
About San Domenico School:
 
Founded in 1850, San Domenico is the oldest independent Catholic school in California.  Situated on 512 acres in Marin County, the School is sponsored by the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael.  San Domenico is dedicated to providing values-based, Catholic education for students of all faiths and cultural backgrounds worldwide.  With 600 students in grades pre-K through 12, San Domenico offers a co-educational day school program through 8th grade, and a young women’s day and boarding school for grades 9-12.