Candlelight Concert 2019: Staples High School’s 79th annual gift of the town.
The stage (Photo/Dan Woog)
The “Sing We Noel” processional (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
The choir (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
Choral director Luke Rosenberg (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
One view of the orchestra … (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
… and another (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
The production number (Photo/Lynn Untermeyer Miller)
The “Hallelujah Chorus” (Photo/Dan Woog)
👏👏👏👏🌈🏆💕
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This brings back a lot of memories. I sang in the 1964, 1965, and finally in the 1966 Candlelight Concert my senior year. It’s a long time ago, but I remember going down the aisle and singing “Sing We Noel” all those years ago. “79th annual gift to the town” is pretty amazing. It was John Ohanian who discovered that kind of obscure song, and I forget from where. I am sure not even he could have imagined the impact that song would have and the amount of years it has still been in the processional. Thank you for sharing this, Dan, even if it means that song has been going through my head for days now. 🙂
Thanks, Barbara. Here’s the back story to “Sing We Noel” — and how it came to Westport. Fascinating!
https://06880danwoog.com/2015/12/04/dost-thou-remember/
Thanks, Dan. I forgot about that story, but now I know it came from Massachusetts and was first sung in 1955 at Staples. That’s still a long time.
Even though I spent eleven years of my life at Staples, I left this year’s concert saying that I still can’t believe that what we had just witnessed came from a public school. The quality of sound and the pieces performed were beyond the abilities of most high school performance groups. Kudos to all the music teachers from elementary schools to high school for bringing these students to the level we heard Friday night.