Old Saybrook High School hosted the eleventh annual Major Works Festival on Wednesday, February 5. The festival is a performance featuring era-specific songs sung by the select ensembles, Chamber Singers, Treble Choir, and Basso Choir, with the main feature being the under and upperclassmen choirs combining to sing seven movements (individual portions of a longer musical piece) of a “major work”, a famous, typically older, choral arrangement, alongside an orchestra of professional musicians. The piece chosen for this year’s festival was Carmina Burana, a cantata (a vocal composition with instrumental accompaniment) composed in 1935 by Carl Orff, and audience feedback largely deemed it to be a huge success, with the performance ending in a standing ovation that lasted several minutes.
This yearly production, a concert which is not done anywhere else on the shoreline, is the work of choral director, Dr. Jeremy Milton, who started the tradition in the spring of 2013. His intention with teaching such a difficult piece to high school choirs every year is to expose his students to the experience of a professional choir singer. “Part of the reason we do it is because it is not done anywhere else, and we want to create an authentic experience for you all, that also simulates what it will be like if you choose to sing in choirs beyond Old Saybrook High School,” Milton explained to his students. Such unique and valuable experiences are actually the foundation of all education at OSHS, as authentic experience and materials, and moving away from traditional methods of education, is a large part of the strategic plan.
But, such an undertaking comes with its set of challenges, especially with students who look at such a complex piece and believe they can’t do it. Milton shares the most difficult thing he encounters each year is “convincing people who haven’t done it before that it is really worth the work that goes into it, getting them to stop complaining and just do it. Every year since we started in 2013 it has never failed.” Singing pieces of this magnitude can be incredibly daunting for students, but the value in the experience is so much greater, and the performances have truly never been anything short of a resounding success- and with a doctorate in music education, Dr. Milton would know. As for what he hopes students can take away from this challenging but rewarding experience, Milton says, “My hope is that you’ll come away with an understanding of the importance of perseverance, and the knowledge that hard work can pay off in such amazing ways will stay with you in other areas of your life.”
