Manhattan Concert Productions, OCTAVO SERIES (SATB), 2024 - New York, NY

Saint Mary's Chorale has been invited to has been invited to perform at CARNEGIE HALL (New York City)! Carnegie Hall is one of the most prestigious and well-known performing venues in the world. This is a “once in a lifetime” opportunity for our students, and we are proud of their commitment to their art. It was their singing talent, which I recorded and submitted, that earned them this opportunity.

The trip is optional and will take place March 9-12, 2024, with the culminating concert performance on March 11, 2024, at Carnegie Hall. Sponsored by Manhattan Concert Productions, the 2023-2024 Octavo Series brings together choral groups from across the globe to perform together in venues around the world. The Octavo New York experience offers an exciting opportunity for Saint Mary’s Chorale to join with other choirs to perform at Carnegie Hall – but it will not be all glitz and glamour! This is an educational experience that will involve members of the Chorale in workshops and rehearsals for approximately four hours each day. 

They will learn from Dr. Felicia Barber, Yale University’s Associate Professor of Choral Conducting and conductor of the Camerata, as they prepare for the culminating event – a huge, combined choir performance for a sold-out house in Carnegie Hall! Dr. Barber, whose research interests include effective teaching strategies, fostering classroom diversity and incorporating equity and justice initiatives in choral curricula, and the linguistic performance practice of African American spirituals, has contributed to such periodicals as the American Choral Directors Association’s Choral Journal and is the author of A New Perspective for the Use of Dialect in African American Spirituals: History, Context, and Linguistics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). Click to read more.

Families are welcome to join us on March 11 for the Chorale’s Carnegie Hall performance. There will be very little time to spend outside of activities, and we ask families to respect the need for the girls to fully participate in all aspects of Saint Mary’s School’s-sponsored activities while in New York.

As a school-sponsored trip, Saint Mary’s School will provide all chaperones. Students and chaperones will travel together to New York, by train or air depending on rehearsal schedules and costs of travel.