The Beatles, JAY-Z, Led Zeppelin, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák are all performers at the world famous concert venue: Carnegie Hall. With April upcoming, so is field trip season for clubs and classes at NVD. The music department specifically, is preparing for the opportunity to perform at the Hall in New York City.
Both the choir and band have put in tremendous effort including lunchtime and after school rehearsals to enhance their playing and musicality as a group. Both students and teachers have reflected on this opportunity and recounted how their time in band and choir has shaped their overall high school experiences. Band and orchestra director Danielle Wheeler and choir director Meghan Magnus explained that this was not simply an invitation, but a lengthy process of submitting clips and waiting for review.
“The teachers at Old Tappan introduced us to the opportunity, so we sent videos from our concerts for them to review,” Magnus said.
Wheeler continued to emphasize how long the performing arts department has been awaiting this opportunity.
“Going to Carnegie Hall is something we have been hoping to do for a long time,” Wheeler said. “You wait for the right group and the right year, and those things started to align last year.”
As Wheeler and Magnus described, this event is seen as more of a music festival than a competition.
“We’re not technically competing against each other, it’s just competition for the rubric,” Wheeler said. “We’re really competing against ourselves to try and have the best possible performance.”
Magnus reiterated that it’s really a competition against yourself, adding how the scoring works for the competition.
“They’re not rating you against other groups, every group could potentially earn a gold,” Magnus said. “There’s no first, second, or third place.”
She continued on to say that even though the competition isn’t against other schools, earning gold is no easy feat.
“You wouldn’t think gold is so hard to earn, but it really is. They are looking for great musicality and musicians who give their all to the performance by telling a story through their emotions,” Magnus said.
Aside from the main performance, students will be given an opportunity to practice and explore the city during the two day trip.
“Day one we’re gonna go into New York to a studio, and we’re gonna have a clinic with one of the adjudicators,” Magnus said. “This is so that we can take what we learned back here, maybe get a rehearsal in before the sound check the next day and implement some of what they were saying.”
Day one of the trip is really to rehearse and get some one on one attention from the clinicians. Essentially, the day will help prepare the students for the actual performance, because their sound check (pre-show prep where pieces are run through one last time before the official performance), is only 20 minutes long the next day.
“The next day we will come in the morning and the orchestra will kick things off,” Wheeler said. “We will all get into our respective places, do our sound checks, find our dressing rooms, and excitedly prepare for our performance.”
For day two the orchestra will perform at 2pm, while the choirs and band perform at 8pm. Magnus also said there will be “some time for lunch and city life beforehand.”
In terms of skill, Wheeler, Magnus, and Choir President Alex Aquino confirm that there is a lot left to work on in such a short time.
For Wheeler, the hardest part is that “[the band] don’t all meet in the same period, so while some are familiar with the music, some have to do extra legwork to catch up,” Wheeler said.
Similarly, an issue for Magnus has been differentiating the moods of the pieces.
“Our biggest hurdle is learning how to sing together and embrace the musicality since we are combining students from all three choir classes into one singular group,” Magnus said.
Across both the choir and wind ensemble, a main issue has also been an inadequate amount of players.
For the band, “fine tuning and balance is trickier because there isn’t perfect instrumentation in the ensemble because not everyone could attend the trip,” Wheeler said.
A perspective from someone in the choir is also helpful in determining how much work is left before the performance.
Aquino has addressed that, “[the choir] definitely are adjusting to learning the music with missing voice parts, and having to adapt to that learning process is huge.” However, she remains optimistic and acknowledges that there are, “weekly rehearsals and time blocks of when things need to be memorized, so I do feel like we’re good,” Aquino said.
Wheeler, Magnus, and Aquino have all reflected on how their experiences in choir and band have shaped their lives at work and school, and what this opportunity means to them.
“Musicians wait their whole lives to perform at Carnegie Hall, and I wish that as a student I had this opportunity,” Wheeler said. “It means the world to be able to perform in such a storied hall. It truly is like being a part of American music history.”
Magnus stresses the importance of the hall and the history embedded in it.
“You can feel the history and the vastness of the hall, it’s such a unique and memorable experience that I don’t think we can appreciate until we’re really in it,” Magnus said. “It means a lot to be able to share that experience with the students, the NVD auditorium is not quite the same.”
From the perspective of a student, one can also see the impact that being a part of a community such as choir or band can have on a person.
“A lot of people take choir as a fun class or a free class, but it’s so much more than that if you want it to be,” Aquino said. “Everyone loves music to a certain extent, but to be able to express and understand it in such a unique way with a chorale, it is so mind opening.”
Wheeler, Magnus and Aquno have all stressed the importance of these departments in building relationships, and stressed that they will never have this same group of people again.
“It’s been so cool to see how different every choir sound will be, it’s so special,” Aquino said. “Every sound is unique because you won’t have the same one again in a year, and it’s made me appreciate all the people that come together to do this.”
Performing at Carnegie Hall is truly one of the most prestigious opportunities for musicians. This world-renowned hall may seem daunting, but there is faith in the music department’s success.
“I’m hoping everyone will walk away with a memory of a lifetime, fulfilled by this experience,” Wheeler said. “I have a lot of confidence in the students, they are all very hard workers.”
This “performance of a lifetime” as Wheeler calls it is an amazing opportunity for both students and teachers in the performing arts department. They will be given an opportunity to perform in one of the most distinguished music halls, and gain experiences that will last them a lifetime in the process.
“I don’t think there’s any community in this school that has impacted me and stuck with me all four years as much as this one,” Aquino said. “We have so much raw talent, and I wish more people appreciated the arts because it’s a special thing.”
