Page 23 - Fall 2024 Newsletter

Music Department -
News From The Music Room
By Kevin Mania,
HHS Music Faculty
Greetings from the Music Room!
With the summer gone and the leaves starting to
turn, we find ourselves back in school, making new
connections and meeting some new students in our
department. We are in full swing, as always, getting
ready for our October concerts and our Fall Musical.
We have also added a new but familiar face to our
Houlton Elementary and Houlton Southside schools’
music department. We would like to welcome Jennifer
(Beasley) Parlee ‘08 as our new general music teacher
in those schools. We are proud to have you be part of
our team. Having her in this position will be a terrific
addition to the progression of our young students.
We have seen a bump in how many students are
requesting music classes since the school year started.
We have been working hard to make connections
with students in new ways and get them interested in
joining our programs. We are excited to push through
this year with some new strategies.
We started the tradition a few years ago to motivate
the students and get them to learn music fast. We had
our first set of concerts in October. This year we had
two concerts planned. On October 24th, we had our
middle and high school band concert, and our middle
and high school chorus concert was held on October
29th. Each group had four to five songs prepared to
perform. After this concert, the bands moved on to
pep band music to get ready to support our basketball
and hockey teams. The chorus transitioned into
picking out music to go to the Madigan Estates to sing
for the holidays and start working on new skills for our
concert in the spring.
Our fall musical this year is “Shrek.” We have a cast of
about 25 students on stage, supported by another
25 students working backstage, lighting, makeup,
wardrobe, and the pit band. This show has many
costume needs, and our crew is doing an excellent
job masterminding how to pull everything off. Our
www.houltonalumni.com
show will be on November 22-24th. We hope to see
many alumni in the audience. What was your favorite
musical that was performed at Houlton High School?
Please visit us on our Facebook music boosters page
and let us know. We would love to hear from you and
reconnect! At the bottom of the article, we will leave
you a handy Facebook QR code for you to find us.
The modern band program went from 40 students
enrolled in the class last year to 65 this semester. We
anticipate another 15 to 20 more students once we
start the afterschool program in January. We hope to
team up with John Pasquarelli, who owns a beautiful
recording studio in Hodgdon (Vibration Recordings),
to help record students so they can have the added
experience of a recording session.
We are in the process of hosting three festivals this
year. The instrumental jazz festival is scheduled for
February 12th with a snow date of the 13th. We
should have about six groups from around the county
performing to qualify for the state jazz competitions.
We are also hosting the first state and district Modern
Band festivals in April and May. Those dates are still
being determined. We will post those dates on our
Music Boosters Facebook page.
Things are looking good for this school year. The
students and teachers are excited to see how the year
progresses. We look forward to meeting with many
of you over the year at our concerts or around town.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions
or interest in helping with anything.
Take care and keep music alive in your homes!
Kevin Mania
HMHS Music Department
kevin.mania@rsu29.org
207-538-3860
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