Vladislav Blaha pays a visit to York’s music department for the second time
November 5, 2018
With York’s music department’s 2018-2019 school year filling up with exciting events, students are ecstatic to hear from world renowned czech guitarist Vladislav Blaha. During his tour, Blaha made a guest appearance at York, similar to his visit in 2014, to perform for his good friend, Ray Ostwald, and all of the students in the music department.
“This little old man came in, he sat in a chair and all of a sudden started speaking broken english, and just started playing music,” senior musician Sophia Trajcevski said. “It was kind of cool to have all of these kids [in the same room] who all play music, listening to someone play music. Even though there’s a language barrier, we still understood the same thing, which is music.”
Vladislav Blaha plays a few pieces, ranging in composers, for the many music students sitting eagerly in front of him.
All of the faculty and staff of York’s music department piled each ensemble, band, orchestra, and choir, into the orchestra room to listen to Blaha play the students a list of his most favorited performed pieces, allowing the students to all to share their passion of music with one another and radiate that feeling off of eachother.
“[Mr. Ostwald] was true to his word, [Vladislav Blaha] was insane,” Trajcevski said. “I was definitely moved to tears, I couldn’t believe it, even as a music student.”
After moving students to tears, traveling to 44 countries, and having music composed specially for him by 16 composers, it’s easy to forget how much work and how many grueling hours it takes to achieve what Blaha has.
“I had to wait for about seven hours to fly to New York. I got to New York around one o’clock at night, just to go on another flight to chicago,” Blaha said. “From Chicago I [went] to Milwaukee, arrived in the afternoon, in the evening I had a concert, and the next morning I had another concert in Madison.”
While his trip to York being fleeting, Blaha definitely made an impact on each student listening to his every note in the orchestra room this past monday.
“To see that [Blaha’s] traveled all over the world just doing what he loves, really I think, relates to anything, and just making sure that you’re true to yourself and following your passion,” senior singer Kate Caforio said.
A big thank you to York’s music department for bringing in Vladislav Blaha to play for and inspire all of the music students.