<< More Newsletter Articles
PRACTICE, HARVEST, PRACTICE
 | | National High School Choral Festival |
David Hinck lives in Rexburg, Idaho, where for two weeks every October, school lets out, and the potato harvest begins. “The students are hired to do the picking, which means taking the clods and the stones and the rocks off the potatoes as they come out of the storage sheds. The students drive the trucks too, working from early morning until late at night. It pays them well, but they work very hard,” Hinck explains.
And last October, there was a new goal driving the students to clean potatoes: to raise money so that they could fly to New York City to make their Carnegie Hall debut.
Hinck is the choral director at Rexburg’s Madison High School, one of four schools selected to participate in The Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival presented by The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. Unlike similarly promoted events, this is the only high school choral concert actually presented by Carnegie Hall, which does not charge a fee. But the event is more than just a single concert. Choruses that make it through the rigorous audition process, which last year included 42 applicants, gain admission to a program that includes special training and preparation throughout the year—all without charge.
Nevertheless, with the costs of transportation, food, and lodging, the students are saving up. And the spud harvest is not all they’re banking on to get to Carnegie Hall from their town of 17,000 in rural Idaho, most often described in terms of its proximity to other destinations, such as Yellowstone (one-and-a-half hours away) or the Grand Tetons (about an hour). One of Hinck’s students is selling his favorite horse. Other fundraisers have included a pledge-based carwash and a benefit concert from pianist John Schmidt, a friend of Hinck’s.
Making their mark on a stage where some of the greatest in music have gone before them excites this Idaho chorus perhaps the most.
“Not that we’re so great, but to be a part of that is so exciting to us,” Hinck says.
“I’ve never really been interested in paying a festival company to come and sing there,” the choral director says. “But when I read about everything that Carnegie Hall’s program offers, it was hard to resist just trying to see where we ended up.”
So his chorus at Madison High auditioned for the 2005–06 season’s Choral Festival, but the group was not selected. Not one to give up easily, he applied again the following year and gained admission.
“It was pandemonium when I told the kids,” Hinck explains. “They’re so excited to see a place they’ve always heard about but have never had a chance to experience.”
In addition to providing the opportunity for choruses to meet their choral peers from around the country, Carnegie Hall provides one additional benefit that is particularly glamorous in this stronghold of the Church of Latter-Day Saints: coaching by Dr. Craig Jessop, conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
“He’s an icon in our musical circles here,” says Hinck.
When, as part of the program, Jessop visited the students at Madison for a day of rehearsal, Hinck took up the baton for a brief performance in front of Dr. Jessop. It wasn’t easy. Though it lasted only 20 minutes, Hinck admits that conducting under an icon’s gaze can be “a little, well, intimidating.” When Dr. Jessop took over for the remainder of the long rehearsal day, Hinck relished the role reversal.
“[Dr. Jessop] brought things out of the students that were incredible,” Hinck says. “And he gave me things to look at in my own teaching.” He notes in particular Dr. Jessop’s ability to criticize constructively and to make his students—some of whom have only been in the choral program for a single year—understand the challenging works they will be performing, pieces by Stravinsky and Poulenc.
“The pieces are initially pretty heavy, especially for the kids.” But not only for the kids. “As I’ve worked, I’ve learned more about why the composers wrote what they wrote,” Hinck says. And Dr. Jessop played a key role in that discovery, taking a piece and extracting the “why” buried between the staff lines, with exhilarating results. “It brought the music alive.”
What’s more, beyond the specific goal of helping students prepare the pieces that they will perform in concert, the festival offers an even greater, if less tangible, result: “While gaining an appreciation for these wonderful works,” says Hinck, “there has also been a maturation process that we’re all going through together.”
On March 19 at Carnegie Hall, David Hinck and Madison High School’s Bel Canto Choir will be joined by Dr. Craig Jessop and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with soprano Nicole Cabell—as well as fellow high school choristers from Bentonville, Arkansas; Chandler, Arizona; and Gilbert, Arizona—as they perform Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Poulenc’s Gloria, and choral selections of their own choosing.
|
|
Learn More
|
Sound Insights Podcasts
Hear exclusive interviews with artists speaking about their work and their lives, commentaries from people in the know, and much more. Click here to listen.
|
|
|
|