CRANBERRY TWP — Fifth and sixth grade students a Haine Middle School rocked out with the rock band Cello Fury on Friday in a program for students to make connections to fine arts education and science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM).

Cello Fury features three cellists, Simon Cummings, Ben Munoz and Nicole Myers, and drummer David Throckmorton.

Assistant Principal Cassandra Doggrell said the group is a cello rock band that plays a fusion of rock and classical music. The Pittsburgh-based musicians perform worldwide.

One of the reasons Doggrell brought Cello Fury to Haine during Red Ribbon Week was to focus on keeping the body and mind healthy.

“Music is one way to keep your mind active and allows you a way to be creative, express yourself, collaborate with others and enjoy yourself as a person,” Doggrell said.

The other motivation was the school’s strings program, Doggrell said.

“I want those in strings to be thinking about how you could be a performer or checking out our program,” she said.

A third reason was because of the upcoming career day. Doggrell wanted to highlight a career that focuses on the arts.

“I want you to be thinking about how music connects to math, engineering, technology and science,” she said.

“I want you to have that thought in your mind about how STEAM and bringing arts and music into our school helps strengthen those skills for you and your peers.”

Cello Fury members talked about how to make the cello sound like a rock instrument.

Cummings said in a traditional rock band there are guitars, a bass guitar, drums, singers and sometimes a keyboard.

“What we are trying to do on the cellos is create that full rock band sound without using any of those instruments, except the drums,” Cummings said. “If we play different ways on the cello, we can re-create what a guitar might sound like or a bass.”

The group opened up with a few rock songs and then performed a classical piece.

Myers said the group wanted to play one classical piece because that is where all three of the cellists got their training. In college, they all focused on classical music.

“That gave us the ability to branch out and try to play rock music and kind of figure out how to do that on the cello,” Myers said.

She asked the students about the age of the oldest cello. Some of the answers were 100 years old and 2 million years old.

Myers said the first cello was made about 1550, which is about 465 years ago.

“The cello is a super old instrument, and the drum kit like we know it is not that old actually. It is from the early 1990s,” Myers said. “The drum kit is a little bit more modern so putting the cellos and drums together could only happen with the use of technology.”

The group also gave examples of how to sound more like a rock instrument through what they called extended techniques.

Since it was the day before Halloween, the group showed how to do some Halloween sound effects, like harmonics, to create a ghostly sound and a skeleton sound if they were to tap the back of the bow on the strings.

“You string players out there can go home tonight and try to scare your parents and play some creepy sounds on your stringed instrument,” Myers said.

The final piece Cello Fury played was a cover of three songs by Taylor Swift, “Blank Space,” “Shake It Off,” and “Bad Blood.” The group asked the students to sing along.