Olivia Flaherty-Lovy, Reporter
@ofl_courant
Every year, a class graduates. And every year, the seniors walk out to a procession song. For the past 10 years, however, the song playing while the seniors make their way down Dunning one last time has been a piece created by one to two of the graduating seniors. These students, members of the Advanced Music Technology class, are chosen each year to create the song by Advanced Music Technology teacher, Ms. Anna Moody. This year, seniors Grant Morse and Erik Cohen were selected for the honor.
“I was excited when I found out I would be able to make it, because it’s a huge project and a really cool way to display my work,” Grant said. “It’s awesome to do something creative and have the whole school see it.”
Creating the song for graduation is a huge undertaking, which is why the students chosen have to be highly dedicated, passionate, and competent in music composition. “I knew I wanted Grant to make the song because he’s highly motivated, and Erik is extremely knowledgeable about orchestration and composition,” Ms. Moody said. “This project requires a lot of revision and a lot of patience, and I knew from the start that they would work well together.”
The process certainly is a huge task- some years, the students are chosen as early as November, and often, Ms. Moody says, an entire period is spent working on a single measure. Once chosen, the first step for the students is to familiarize themselves with past examples of graduation music for inspiration. Then, they create a simple eight bar melody, and the next few months are dedicated to writing and orchestrating the piece. Once written, it is given to another student- this year, junior Ryan Kurtzman- to be mixed a final time.
Since the Music Tech program spans four levels, many of the past graduation song writers had taken the class from their freshman to senior years. However, because of schedule constraints, Grant and Erik followed less traditional paths: Grant started Music Tech in the first semester of his junior year and continued through an independent study for the second semester, while Erik has been involved in orchestra and jazz band, and thus was not able to take the class at all until his senior year. “This year, I was splitting my period 5 between Orchestra, Music Tech, and sometimes Jazz Band,” Erik said. “This made it difficult because it meant we couldn’t work on the piece every day, but we were still able to get it done.”
Though Ms.Moody is definitely looking forward to seeing Principal Egan recognize Grant and Erik be recognized at graduation for creating the song, to her, the most rewarding part of the process was watching Grant and Erik grow as composers. “I loved the enthusiasm that they showed when writing and collaborating in class,” she said. “I could tell they were really learning something about music, and I can’t wait for the rest of the school to hear the piece.”
