Thirty-five music students will travel to New York City in November for a four-day residency with a Grammy award-winning composer, culminating in a performance at Carnegie Hall.
Select members of AACC’s Concert Choir and Chamber Singers will join student and professional groups from across the country to learn from and perform with conductor Eric Whitacre.
AACC music professor Doug Byerly said the opportunity is on the level of Mozart inviting the students “to come to Austria for four days and sing with him.”
“[It’s] a once-in-a-lifetime including a number of male students, signed up. Approximately 15 women showed up to the team’s first meeting a week later.
The singers will perform a musical setting of “Goodnight Moon,” the famous children’s book by Margaret Wise Brown, and a Christmas opera called “Gift of the Magi,” based on the eponymous short story by O. Henry. Whitaker composed both pieces and will conduct the students for the Carnegie Hall performance on Nov. 26.
In addition to learning from Whitacre, Byerly said, the students will “have time for professional development and going to Broadway shows, operas, museums and things like that.”
This isn’t the first time AACC music students have traveled for performances and artistic residencies, Byerly said. They have performed in Spain, Austria and Germany.
“Our students have had opportunities to perform in amazing spaces, but this is really, like, at the top of the heap,” Byerly said.
Byerly said AACC got this opportunity after Whitacre gave a talk at AACC over Zoom, and it “sparked that relationship.”
“One of our students here is actually a personal friend of Eric Whitacre’s, which is the connection,” Byerly added. “Then we had to send in an audition tape to sing at Carnegie Hall.”
Second-year music education student Justin Walter, who will perform in the November show, said he’s “a little nervous, but mostly excited.”
“I’m a little nervous to be, like, on the Carnegie Hall stage, but I’ll be with all my … friends and everything,” Walter said. “It’s a great opportunity.”
