While love was in the air this past Valentine’s Day, the musicians of Waynesburg University came together and lifted melodies to join swooning couples in celebration.

Waynesburg’s Symphonic Band performed the Mid-Winter Concert Feb. 14.

The band put together five pieces for their concert. While the performance was advertised as having a Valentine’s Day theme, none of the songs were picked to fit that theme. Ronda DePriest, director of the Music Program and conductor of the concert, said that the pieces they performed were chosen primarily for the Ninth Annual Conducting Symposium that took place Feb. 2 and 3.

“There are some nice, flowing melodies and things like that but we didn’t pick a love theme or anything,” said DePriest. “Just really good symphonic winds type of music.”

Multiple genres of pieces were featured in the concert. One of DePriest’s favorites was “Down a Country Lane” by Aaron Copland. The piece transported the listener to the calm, peaceful country side.

For Jakob Nyswaner, sophomore psychology major, music minor and alto saxophonist, his favorite piece is called, “Simple Song”. For Nyswayer, a challenge of performing the song was for the musicians to be in sync with each other to perform  without being guided by DePriest.

“The way [we] played it was with no conductor,” said Nyswaner, “the band just breathed together and all started playing at the same time, not having any direction.”

The Conducting Symposium was extremely helpful to the performers.

Col. Lowell Graham, director of orchestral activities and professor of conducting at The University of Texas at El Paso, came to the symposium to teach students not only how to conduct, but DePriest as well. Nyswaner felt that the symposium strengthened his, his bandmates’ and DePriest’s skills and aided in preparing for the Mid-Winter Concert.

“It actually resulted in her pulling one of our pieces last week that we were going to do,” said Nyswaner. “She yanked this piece out of the concert because she realized that she had more work to do on it then she thought she did.”

The band has had the music since the beginning of the semester. They met twice a week with four rehearsals and the symposium. While it’s only been a month since the musicians received their music sheets, DePriest said that the students were confident in their ability.

“I asked them yesterday at our rehearsal ‘how are you guys feeling about the concert?’” said DePriest, “and they all [felt good about it].”

While the performance went smoothly and performers walked away with triumphant grins, at least one wasn’t quite satisfied. For Nyswaner, perfection is an elusive goal that he keeps reaching for.

“There’s never an ideal performance; it never feels good enough,” said Nyswaner. “I guess the ideal performance would be walking out and not hearing a bad comment. Because if you don’t hear a bad comment, then you probably did well, even if it doesn’t feel like you did.”

The Symphonic Band will perform the Spring Concert in Roberts Chapel April 14 at 7:30 p.m.