Featured Musician: Dante Stokes

He’s just another kid in the crowd. Just another busy student trying to get inside the building. He makes his way across the fleet of midsize sedans and follows the other freshman up the sidewalk towards his class.

They wander down the hall and prepare themselves for their upcoming class. Each one turns into their classroom and sits down at their desk, ready for another day of taking notes. But Dante doesn’t. He finds his first hour and gets ready for class. Orchestra.

It’s no easy feat playing in Top Orchestra. Especially when it’s only your first year in high school. But the other orchestra students are familiar with this room and they seem to know how everything works. For freshman Dante Stokes everything seems new. This is Stokes’ first year in high school and he is reaching his second year playing the string bass. He’s just now getting comfortable being a part of the orchestra at East.

As a freshman in Top Orchestra, he has to work hard to keep up, but he believes in himself and his ability. It was only seventh grade when Stokes first tried playing the string bass.

“Mr. Lane showed us how to do some of the scales and what you could do on [the bass],” Stokes said. “Viola was getting boring for me, so I figured learning something new would be fun.”

As soon as he started playing, he knew that the five-foot string instrument was what he loved. The bass was a completely different class of instrument. Unlike the viola, where you can play four or five notes per string, the string bass offers only two notes. The player can then move their fingers down the neck into a higher position, which allows a range of deep sounding notes to be played on the instrument.

The string bass is not an easy instrument to play, and Stokes knows that practice makes perfect. He practices for about 30 minutes at home in addition to taking orchestra class at school. Practicing at home can be just as important as in class, especially when learning a new piece. It was the East orchestra auditions that really taught Stokes this lesson. He began practicing more than ever before in order to prepare.

“That’s where the time commitment comes in, because I started having to practice 3 hours a night to be able to keep up and learn it,” said Stokes

Unlike the other students, who had almost a month to prepare for the auditions, Stokes was only asked to try out a week before the auditions. Few musicians get the opportunity to audition their freshman year, but Mr. Lane, the East orchestra teacher, saw that Stokes had potential.

“Mr. Lane asked him to audition when normally freshman don’t and the bottom line is that he did better than the other bass players.” senior Bryan Bailey said.

Bailey is another student playing in the Top Orchestra. He also plays the string bass, and often shares stands with Stokes. Like Mr. Lane, Bailey sees Stokes’ potential and recognizes that he is a talented player. Stokes is currently one of the top bass players in the orchestra, and is showing Mr. Lane that he deserved his audition.