Last weekend, Charlottesville High School held its 50th-anniversary concert. The show featured music from current students and alumni who were part of Knightengales, Charlottesville Singers, and the String, Wind, and Percussion Ensembles. The concert was directed by the current Fine Arts Directors Will Cooke, Emily Waters, and Jason Hackworth, as well as the past Orchestra Director, Laura Thomas, and the past Band Director, Vince Tornello.
The choir performed “Build Me Up Buttercup”, “Hold Me Rock Me”, and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”. The orchestra performed “Hoe Down”, “Psalm and Fugue”, and “Lion City”. The band performed “The Children’s March”, “Toccata for Band”, and “Sesquicentennial Exposition March”. As a concert finale, all alumni and current members of the choir, orchestra, and band performed CHS’s school song, “Charlottesville Onward,” in a new composition by Vince Torrnello.
At the concert, KTR interviewed alumni from the last fifty years. Those interviewed include Herron Stacey ‘88, Liza Sapir Flood ‘96, Lucan Pipkin ‘96, David McCormick ‘97, Jenna Kidd ‘00, Suzanne Ely ‘01, Matthew Ely ‘01, Libby Pearson ‘01, William Russell ‘01, Claire Leeper ‘03, Timothy Terpilowski ‘03, Josh Early ‘07, Curtis Kenney Jr. ‘14, Denise Folley ‘14, Parker Sullivan ‘18, Margaret Lather ‘19, and Nikolas Dillery ‘21.
Did you continue doing music after high school?
David McCormick: Yes. I’m a professional violinist and an arts administrator.
Lucan Pipkin: I did. I actually minored in violin performance in college. And then I played in three different bands throughout my twenties and early thirties, like a range of electronic and hip-hop, different styles of music. Then after kids, I didn’t play violin as much, but I played guitar and now I’m coming back to my violin,and I’m very happy about it.
Liza Sapir Flood: Yes, I played a lot in college and I majored in ethnomusicology and then I started playing bluegrass, fiddle, and then I was playing and I’ve been playing bluegrass ever since and I got a PhD in ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicology is sort of like the anthropology of music, so studying music and culture in the United States, but also globally. Now I teach at UVA.
Josh Early: Yes. When I went to college, joining the UVA marching band with UVA gave me an automatic edge to have people around me that I knew.
Kenney Jr.: Yes. I have a BA in music from VCU in 2022 and I’m currently working on my master’s in music education policy.
Timothy Terpilowski: I did six months in the Marine Corps Band.
William Russell: I studied music in college at Arizona State and I went on to eventually be a professional tubist. So these days, I perform [with Boston Brass] and teach. [Boston Brass] is a little touring group. So we travel on the road and we give performances around the country and all around the world.
How do you look back on your time at CHS?
David McCormick: It’s been a long time. A lot of really good memories. It’s where I sort of fell in love with music and decided to do it professionally.
Denise Folley: I learned a lot about performing in the fine arts. I learned how to appreciate the arts outside of the core classroom, because that’s what’s really going to figure out who you are as a person. Being in three different fine arts programs (theatre, choir, and orchestra) was really challenging, but it also helped me figure out who I was as a person.
Parker Sullivan: Look, I remember when I was here I was so excited to leave. But looking back, being here now, I was very lucky to come here. I would come to school and just make music all day, I would do early morning choir, and then I would kind of twiddle my thumbs in classes for like, however many classes I had, and then at lunch, I would go play music in the choir room. And fifth period I had orchestra.
What is your favorite song you’ve ever performed?
David McCormick: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. It’s my favorite piece of all time. Learned it here first!
Herron Stacey: The ones I like the most, obviously, [are] the drumline in the marching band and the drumline solo that we used to perform.
Where was the coolest place you got to travel?
Denise Folley: We went to Florida. I’ve been to New York twice. I saw Broadway shows. I guess the biggest one that I went to was when the String Ensemble went to Paris, and I was the manager for the network district so I was able to go. As a manager, you would help out with printing music, getting people stuff whenever they needed to, [and] helping out the orchestra director with things that she was too busy to handle.
Timothy Terpilowsk: Toronto, just because getting off the bus to see Niagara Falls, half my body was in rain, half my body was in sunshine.
Do you have a favorite memory from your time at CHS?
David McCormick: I remember playing a jazz solo with the full string and band full orchestra, I think it was my senior year. It was really fun! It was my first time playing jazz in public.
Margaret Lather: When we were in Ireland, we were rehearsing in one of the cathedrals. We ended up cutting the second movement of one of our pieces and a bunch of us just played it for fun without a conductor or anything as a large chamber ensemble in the cathedral and it was magical.
Jenna Kidd: We were the first ones to travel international and now to see the generations after us being able to do it so frequently, it’s just fantastic that we had that opportunity. [And the CHS orchestra decided] if we can do this once,there are opportunities for other folks… some of these folks will never have an opportunity to travel abroad again, so being involved in the fine arts and getting that opportunity shapes them so much.
Lucan Pipkin: I came from a really impoverished background, and I didn’t have money for trips, or an instrument, or lessons, and I was gonna, I was gonna be graduating, and I always used a school instrument. So I played [a song] for my senior solo concert and after that concert, I didn’t know what I was going to do when I was in college. And she brought a violin out, and she was like “Have you ever heard of Christmas in May?” And she gave me that violin, and it still makes me emotional to this day… It made a difference to me.
Matthew Ely: I mean, I’m going to say I married my high school girlfriend, so, I’m going with that.
What skills did you learn from playing an instrument that helped you later in life?
Suzanne Ely: Having that bar set so high because [Mr. Tornello] didn’t ever doubt that we could reach it and he expected us to. Having someone at that age show you, “You can do this, and I expected of you because I know you can play”… We got to realize what a gift it was to be in the program.
William Russell: I think the discipline of learning an instrument and really focusing. You know, being able to focus for long periods at a time and get your work done is something that music really taught me. How to perfect something at the micro level and the macro level is just something that music, only music, can give you.
Herron Stacey: Just having pride in yourself and knowing what our band used to accomplish, it was just a great feeling.
Do you have a favorite song you’re playing today?
Libby Pearson: I’m glad we’re playing Hoe Down. We played that in Vienna, so that was muscle memory.
Josh Early: I think my favorite one we’re playing [is] Toccata for Band by Erickson, which is one we used to play, like, regularly with Tornello every few years, So, I played it one year. And I looked at the piece, and it’s like, the name means nothing. Toccata for Band, okay. But then, we look at the melody and go, Oh, this one. I can sing the whole thing in my head now.
Denise Folley: Build Me Up Buttercup! It’s a fun song, a nice new song.
Parker Sullivan: The Charlottesville High School School anthem.
