A Celebration of Musical Excellence: Choral and Instrumental Students Advance to Regionals

The excellence of Hamden Hall’s Music department carries on as a combined 27 instrumental and choral students advanced to compete in the Southern Region High School Music Festival sponsored by the Connecticut Music Educators’ Association.

The qualified choral student representatives include seniors Vaani Chopra, Cooper DeGirolomo, Justinian Ding, Analiese Driscoll, Caleb Geary, Frances Gustafson, Grace Wan, Peter Wang, and Candice Yang; juniors Casey Armstrong, Annabel Beatty, Leonard Mao, and Monte Meng; sophomores Daniella Li and Jacob Schonberger; and freshmen Flynn Carney, Mae McDonnell, Lan Liu, Alex Pu, Jason Xie and Jiali Yang.

 

“The culmination of hard work and dedication has prepared the students for this competition,” said Upper School Music Director Matthew Harrison. “I am especially proud of our collective reading abilities, earning eight of the 20 perfect sight reading scores in the entire region, which consisted of 35 schools.”

 

The instrumental student representatives include junior Maria Gregory on cello for Orchestra; junior Levi Johnson on tenor sax for Jazz Ensemble; junior Sally Temuer on violin for Orchestra; sophomore Sissi Zhang on violin for Orchestra; freshman Grace Yang on clarinet for Band; and freshman Andrew Yang on violin for Orchestra.

“I’m very happy for our students who were accepted into the Southern Region Festival’s Orchestra, Band, and Jazz Ensemble this year,” said Instrumental Music Director Melissa Hudson. “They are dedicated musicians who took on the additional challenge of preparing advanced solo pieces for their particular instruments. I’m proud of all of the students who auditioned and worked very hard outside of school to learn their audition music. Participating in the Regional Festival is a wonderful opportunity for our students to meet and perform with other talented students from Southern Connecticut in these outstanding ensembles.”

The Southern Region High School Music Festival will take place on January 14 and January 15 at Maloney High School in Meriden. With their acceptance to the regional competition, all students are eligible to audition for the Connecticut All-State Festival, which will be held in the spring.