I served as Director of Choral Activities at NHS between 1972 and 1975. I left to earn my doctorate at the University of Illinois. I then spent two years at the Eastman School of Music (1977-79) in Rochester, NY, directing the Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs. Between those two years, I received a Fulbright Award for choral research in London. In 1980 I assumed the position as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where I retired in 2018 after 38 years of service. I also conducted the San Antonio Symphony Mastersingers for 38 years, retiring in 2022. I’ve come to love San Antonio, but not Texas. I still proudly hold on to a bit of my R.I. accent.

My years at NHS, early in my career, were incredibly meaningful and powerful for me. I remember my very first performance with the NHS Concert Choir in the fall of 1972. It was for an all-school assembly in the gym. We sang the spiritual “Elijah Rock” and totally rocked it. The student body gave an immediate standing ovation, and the choir experienced a magical moment. It was the first of many.

During my time directing the choirs at NHS, I was always recruiting for guys. We always needed tenors and basses. Wrestling was NHS championship sport in those days. So I attended all the Saturday wrestling matches, knowing little about the sport at first. I would also stay after school each day to stop by the wrestling practice room. It was just around the corner from the choir room and smelled like a barnyard. But I studiously watched the wrestlers work with two excellent coaches. Their whistles and shouting were frightening yet caring, and the students each worked with a personal passion. I thought, “That’s how the choir will work.”

I’ve had many musical highs since my NHS days--conducting at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Vatican, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Granada International Festival of Music and Dance, the National Cemetery at Normandy, CD recordings in Moscow, and others. The musical magic I first experienced in the NHS gym with the Concert Choir remains as meaningful for me as the highs I’ve felt conducting in major world concert venues.

With much gratitude, I would like to recognize the huge musical role that the NHS students played in igniting the fire and passion that I’ve carried with me throughout my conducting career. They served as the foundation for the next fifty years of my work. Thank you, NHS Concert Choir members.

And, by the way, I’m still looking for the students who put my navy-blue Porsche in the Band Hall.