NORWICH – After spending a year preparing and fundraising for a trip to the musical mecca of Prague and its annual Choral Festival, a group of eight Norwich High School students and members of the Madrigals Singers and Choir have returned home.
The approximately 10,000-mile round trip was a huge success, according to NHS Music Director Mary Mayo, who said her students – as well as she, herself – have been forever changed by the experience.
“It’s hard to put into words,” said Mayo. “As an educator, this two week experience was extremely valuable. As a human being, the energy I gathered from those two weeks is going to stay with me for a lifetime. Music touches you in a place that you can’t always explain in words; it takes you to a place that no other activity can take you. It was electrifying, just electrifying.”
The group of students – which included Amanda Caulfield, Josh Mahannah, Megan Reynolds, Sean Sheldon, Tambria Schroeder, Dillon Smith, Joshua Seeley and Brooke Bonney – spent two weeks in the “City of a Hundred Spires,” performing side-by-side with professional choirs from Siberia, Russia and the Czech Republic, as well as American high school, college and community choirs. All told, there were 280 vocalists – hailing from seven different countries from across the globe – involved in the choir, reported Mayo.
Participating in a number of clinics, musical workshops and concerts, the assembled group’s first week in the Czech Republic culminated with a performance in the Smetana Hall, located in Prague’s famed Municipal House. The concert easily sold out, said Mayo, and extra seating had to be arranged for the over 1,500 people who attended for renditions of Mozart’s “Requiem” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms.” The performance itself went extremely well, she added, and the ensemble received standing ovations throughout the evening.
Working with some of the world’s finest choral conductors, Dr. André Thomas, Dr. Anton Armstrong and Dr. Raymond Wise, said Mayo, was a priceless, once in a lifetime opportunity for her students. And where language barriers and cultural differences may have otherwise posed a problem, soon-to-be NHS sophomore Brooke Bonney said that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Music is a universal language and I think it really brought everyone together,” she added. “We were definitely unified as a group. It was joyful and the energy level was high.”
While the students’ first week in Prague focused more on the classical side, musically speaking, week two’s focus shifted to the genre of gospel. Considering the fact that – over the last ten years – there’s only been five gospel choirs in existence in the Czech Republic, said Mayo, made that performance stand out on its own.
