“Students sing out”
Choir experiences provide for well-rounded education
By Megan Ma, Town Crier Staff Writer
February 7, 2007
In Silicon Valley, where technical achievement is the emphasis, the Renaissance-person mentality still percolates at local high schools, namely through the award-winning choir ensembles. Despite limited resources for funding music programs in the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, students are proving that a love for making music can have a more lasting effect than simply earning high grades - their passion for performing fosters social bonds and creates lifelong memories.
"Director leads Main Street Singers to vocal glory"
Alumni honor founder
from Town Crier Staff Writer
July
7, 2005
Main Street Singers director Mark Shaull founded the Main Street
Singers along with Virginia Hebel 20 years ago. The Main Street
Singers celebrated 20 years of making beautiful music together with
a reunion last month that brought 100 singing alumni back to Los
Altos High School to rehearse, perform, party and honor the pillars
that sustained the program through two successful decades: founder
and director Mark Shaull and organist extraordinaire Virginia Hebel.
Hebel accompanied the group through most of its history, even as
she quietly kept lung cancer at bay through a 10-year battle that
she lost on New Year's Day 2004. In gratitude for her dedication
and many kindnesses, Main Street alumni are raising money to buy
a high-quality portable organ for the Eagle Theater, which has no
keyboard. By the end of June, they had raised about half the estimated
$40,000 purchase price and hoped to have the organ in time for the
annual winter concert.
At the reunion banquet June 11, Hebel's husband, Chuck, presented
a plaque denoting the Virginia Hebel Memorial Organ to Shaull and
Debbie Yowell, Main Street's accompanist since the 2000-2001 school
year.
"Arts Groups Keep Afloat"
from Los Altos Town Crier
April
7, 2004
Main Street Singers
Los Altos High School's Main Street Singers have been in excellent
voice for 20 years now. Mark Andrew Shaull still directs the group
he formed in 1984. Shaull and his chorus are beyond busy, singing
100 or more concerts every year. They are well-traveled, too. Over
the years, generations of Main Street Singers have sung in 45 countries
and journeyed to every continent but Antarctica. The students' repertoire
spans 20 languages and ranges from Renaissance to contemporary music.
Shaull has received many honors, including recognition as Educator
of the Year by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1989. A baritone,
he performs as a soloist, and directs music at First United Methodist
Church in Palo Alto.
All musical arts organizations, from big-city opera companies to
small-town parade bands, have been struggling financially in the
past few years. Local music groups may have more gold onstage than
in the bank, but they certainly keep good company.
Los
Altos High alumni return home to perform in chamber music benefit
By Aliza Zaidi
Published on 08/21/2002 in Los Altos Town Crier
Two former Los Altos High School musicians will return to campus Saturday, to perform in the first community concert to be held at the school's newly constructed Eagle Theater. The classical music concert will benefit the performing arts department.
Los Altos High graduate Bonnie Wagner, who helped organize the event and rallied three musical friends to join her, will perform on the piano. She is no stranger to performing at the school, having done so annually during her four years at Los Altos High.
Wagner said she wanted to give something back to the department and help provide the support it needs to maintain a quality program.
"The high school has put in a lot of work in this theater, and the department needs all it can get to keep the facilities in great condition," Wagner said.
Wagner was a member of the Cantabile Children's Chorus and Main Street Singers. She conducted performances at restaurants and gave a recital with a saxophonist in Los Altos Methodist Church.
After graduating in piano performance from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Wagner plans to begin her master's degree in piano accompanyment and chamber music from the same institution.
Greg Fair, Mark Andrew Shaull and Michelle Davis will join Wagner in the concert.
Fair, also an alumnus of Los Altos High and the Main Street Singers, will put his vocal cords to the test singing baritone.
"I began singing in my last year of college but did not pursue any private lessons or focus on solo performance until the very end of my undergraduate career," Fair said.
At the University of California at Berkeley, Fair switched from physics to a music major. He is now pursuing a master's degree in vocal performance at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
"I understand the costs of running a top-flight music program, and I know that the money can go to anything from new equipment, music and travel expenses to uniform/formal wear purchases," Fair said.
Shaull, director of the Main Street Singers and head of the performing arts department at Los Altos High School, will sing baritone alongside Fair.
The only stranger to Los Altos is violinist Davis, a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who will fly in for the concert.
Wagner said the tentative schedule for the program includes a sonata for violin and piano by Brahms, selections of Dichterliebe by Schumann, a contemporary song set by Frinzi and some arias.
Wagner's solo will be Chopin's first Ballade.
City
of Bendigo web site
Sister cities
The relationship between Bendigo and Los Altos commenced in 1987
and since then several delegations have visited involving cultural
exchanges and events. More recently Los Altos' own Main Street Singers
performed in Bendigo.
Students'
experience in art programs - one rich, one poor -- priceless
Nanette Asimov, Jesse Hamlin,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writers Monday, May 13, 2002
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