Music
Students are encouraged to pursue music during their years at EMHS. A majority of students pursue work in one of the various performing arts groups. Elmont has had an outstanding Music program progressing for the past 13 years, and have an impressive marching band. Credit is also given for students in these groups. Performing Arts groups include (note that there are separate groups at each school level):
- Orchestra (at the High School or Junior High School level)
- Concert Band (at the High School, 9th Grade, and Junior High School levels)
- Concert Choir (at the High School and Junior High School levels)
- Jazz Band
- Jazz Choir
- String Ensemble
- Marching Band
Students perform each year during the Winter and Spring Concerts, local events, and music competitions. Exceptional students are routinely sent on to participate in their respective musical groups at the All-District, All-County, Long Island Invitational, and All-State levels. Exceptional students are also selected to participate in the Tri-M Music Honor Society. Students may also pursue coursework in Music Theory. Each year the Music Department puts on two theatre productions: a drama (no singing required), and a musical (strong vocals for leads). Musicals in the past include Dreamgirls, Les Misérables, The Wiz, and Once On This Island, Aida, most recently in March 2009 Guys and Dolls was performed.
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Famous quotes containing the word music:
“I defied the machinery to make me its slave. Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance—Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for instance, is always greater than its performance—whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being performed.”
—André Previn (b. 1929)
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)