North Andover High School Chorus - 2011 Carnegie Hall Trip (All info)
(Photo from the 2010 Spring Concert)
The
NAHS chorus has been invited to sing at Carnegie Hall as part of the 2011
National Youth Choir on April 3, 2011. This invitation was extended to NAHS
chorus because of their high scoring performance at the April 2010 music
competition in Philadelphia; any
group who scored a gold medal rating was invited to perform at Carnegie. There
will be a public performance, families and community members can make
arrangements to attend.
The senior chorus members of 2010 are invited to join in on this trip. They are
invited to come back to NAHS during winter break and practice the assigned music
and then can join the group at Carnegie.
The trip will run Friday – Monday. Students will sing in an East Coast
Honors Chorus, will participate in workshops, and will work with world-famous
conductors. Preliminary plans are that the trip will include a Broadway show,
tour of Ellis Island, tour of the city, and students will stay in hotel in
Midtown, NY. More details will be posted as they become available.
More details can be found at Heritage
Festivals website
April Philadelphia Trip results
Scarlet & Black Singers, Silver rating, 1st place
Concert choir, Gold rating, 1st place
For Gold rating – concert choir invited to perform in the National Youth Choir
Festival at Carnegie Hall next spring
Outstanding Choral Group – Concert Choir
Choral Sweepstakes Award – highest scoring choral department
Band, Silver rating
Wind Ensemble, Silver rating, 3rd place
Festival Sweepstakes Award, highest scoring school
Maestro (individual) awards to Ben McGuire, tenor; Sally Jeffery, flute; Emily
Ingram, alto
From the North Andover Citizen - Link
After Choral Director Sara Durkin was hired last year, she hit the ground
running to get the large North Andover High School chorus in shape, initiating
after school and night rehearsals for the first time.
“We did a lot of work focused on vocal technique,” says Durkin, a 2006 Music
Education graduate of Providence College. “We set high but attainable goals
and stayed focused on doing whatever we could to make sure we qualified for the
Heritage Festivals Music Competition in Philadelphia.”
The work paid off big time this year, as North Andover was the top scoring
school Music Department at the national festival on April 17. The chorus will
perform at the National Youth Choir Festival at Carnegie Hall next spring.
The school competed at the national festival last year, and Durkin says this
experience paid off.
“This year I knew more of what to expect,” says Durkin. “It’s good to be
nervous because it means you care. Even though I was a little nervous I knew we
would do well because we had prepared for it well.”
The ratings at the festival are strict, based on tonal quality, balance, blend,
stage presence, expression, rhythmic accuracy, diction, and the quality and
level of the music. It is not easy to be rated gold by the discerning festival
judges. The large NAHS Concert Choir was rated gold and took First Place.
“We were the only school at the competition that got a gold medal,” says
Durkin.
Orchestral groups and soloists from the school also excelled at the festival,
leading to North Andover emerging as the top scoring school Music Department,
winning the 2010 Festival Sweepstakes Award.
The NAHS Scarlet and Black Singers took First Place in the Silver Category. The
Concert Choir took first place in the Gold Category, winning the Outstanding
Choir award and the Choral Sweepstakes Award as the highest scoring choir.
The North Andover Wind Ensemble took third place in the silver category and the
Symphonic Band won a silver rating. Maestro Awards for Outstanding Soloists went
to Sally Jeffery on flute, NAHS Chorus President Emily Ingram for her alto solo,
and Ben McGuire for his tenor solo.
You can hear these winning voices this weekend, since the entire Concert Choir
is performing in Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” this weekend. Emily Ingram,
who plays Sally in the show and gets to sing a duet on “I Get a Kick Out of
You,” with Mallory Curtin as Reno, is happy to round out her last year in high
school with a national festival win.
“We worked really, really hard for this,” says Ingram. “We’d always
dreamed of having one of those gold trophies, and when they finally announced
the awards, we were excited beyond belief. It was a great way to end my senior
year.”
Tenor Ben McGuire says it’s the first award he has ever won.
“I was extremely excited because I’ve never been singled out for an award
before,” says McGuire, who sings in “Anything Goes” as Johnny No Shoes, a
gangster in hiding, disguised as a monk. “I was ecstatic. It was an amazing
feeling. I had a great experience with it.”
Durkin says she is blessed to have such a talented bunch of students to work
with.
“North Andover is a great town,” says Durkin. “They’re really great
kids, and that makes it exciting to go to work every day.”
NAHS Principal Carla Scuzzarella says she is really proud of this Music
Department.
“This festival was the culmination of two years of hard work by our chorus
under Sara Durkin and the band under Aaron Goldberg,” says Scuzzarella. “It
reflects the way these students carry themselves as young adults representing
North Andover. It’s nice to have this kind of recognition to validate their
hard work.”
Durkin says the next hard work is going to be raising enough money to send the
chorus to New York City next spring to sing in Carnegie Hall.
“This trip will be expensive, and we’ll need donations from businesses and
individuals to help fund our trip,” says Durkin. “Donations in any amount
will be welcome.”
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