That’s one big middle-school orchestra – more than 200 musicians joining together at Madison Middle School on Thursday as Madison hosted Seattle Public Schools‘ districtwide Middle School Orchestra Festival. Madison music teacher Clark Bathum, who invited us to stop by and check it out, explained it’s a chance for the young musicians from middle-school students all around the city to “participate in a joint rehearsal, clinic, and recording session.” Guest clinician was Kim Roy from Seattle Rock Orchestra and the West Seattle Community Orchestras:

The students rehearsed and performed two songs that were huge hits more than 40 years apart – The Beatles‘ “All You Need Is Love” and Adele‘s “Rolling in the Deep.”

Immediately above is our video of one of their runthroughs of the Beatles song; for the Adele song, we have an audio recording – listen to it here. Perhaps in honor of the occasion, a Beatles lunchbox was sighted on the sidelines – we were there right after lunch break:

Final count of musicians in attendance, Bathum told us, was 226.