Music Tradition
Joliet West has been known for its outstanding music programs, both instrumental and choral. Many alumni continue on in music as a career, including Charlie Adams, John Barrowman, Jimmy Chamberlin, Andy Dick, Doug Pinnick, Anthony Rapp, and Janina Gavankar. The Marching Tigers, Joliet West's marching band, is one of the few groups that held the Tiger name throughout the adoption and relinquishment of the Steelman mascot. There have been five band directors at Joliet West: Arthur D. Katterjohn, 1964–1968; Dean H. Sayles, 1968–1990; I. V. Foster, 1990–1992; Ted Lega, 1992–1993, and Kevin T. Carroll, 1993–present. The band program has consistently received high scores at competitions and has been invited to the Superstate band festival multiple times.
In April 2008, Joliet West High School was the first high school to perform a comic opera of Edwin Penhorwood entitled "Too Many Sopranos".
Recently, Joliet West High School's music program has come to note by being one of only a handful of high schools to have an "Opera Scenes" program, performing snippets from different operas translated into English. The Joliet West Vocal Music department has performed scenes ranging from "La Boheme" to "Die Fledermaus" to "Dialogues of the Carmelites". September 25, 2009's Scenes of Murder, featuring "Don Giovanni", "Hänsel and Gretel", "Dido and Aeneas", and the aforementioned "Dialogues of the Carmelites", surpassed the attendance of the 2008 spring play; 338 people attended the event. A 13-foot guillotine was built specifically for 2009's Opera Scenes.
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Famous quotes containing the words music and/or tradition:
“If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)