Manhasset Public Schools was awarded the New York State School Music Association’s Presidential Citation Award, the organizarion’s highest honor that highlights districts that are leaders in music education.
Ten students were selected to represent the school district and performed in Rochester at NYSSMA’s All-State Conference in December.
Katherine Abrams, Lucienne Keyoung, Shinwoo Roy Choi, Robert Lu, William Pereira, Felix Chu, Joshua Chung, Adriana Chan, Thomas Grygiel, and Harrison McKenna were all selected.
“Every single note that I’ve played on my instrument has amounted to this,” said Katherine Abrams, a senior at Manhasset. “We can really see music as more than notes on a page.”
Abrams started playing piano when she was three years old, and “when I was seven years old, I begged my parents to buy me a violin after listening to Vivaldi for the first time.”
Abrams has been in the school band since the third grade and said she is “pretty involved in all things kind of artsy at Manhasset.”
Adriana Chan, a senior at Manhasset, also performed at All-States. Chan has played piano, cello, violin, and trumpet before she finally settled on singing as her musical calling.
“Singing has taught me to get out of my shell and get up on a stage and just sing a whole piece in front of a whole stage without dying of embarrassment,” Chan said
This is Joe Owens’ fourth year as director of fine arts at Manhasset. Owens was also previously the director of fine arts at the Mineola school district when it won NYSSMA’s Presidential Citation Award.
It was during his 20 years at Mineola that Owens learned to get involved with professional organizations like NYSSMA and the Nassau Chapter of the New York State Council of Administrators of Music Education where he is currently serving as president.
Owens said what makes Manhasset’s music department stand out is the support it gets from the district. “Music and the arts is not a thing off to the side,” Owens said, “It’s well integrated.”
Owens said the district supports the department well financially, making sure it has good facilities like the recently renovated auditorium.
Manhasset band teachers Greg Sisco and Nikki Millmann were also invited to give presentations on research projects at the conference.
Sisco has presented to his colleagues at the All-State Conference several times before, and this year his presentation was “Diversity in Wind Band Repertoire.”
He has worked at Manhasset for 10 years, and this is his fourth year as band director.
Millmann presented a project she had done with her former professor at SUNY Fredonia, Travis Gratteau-Zinnel, on how to incorporate teaching about the world and social justice in music class.
This is Millmann’s first year at Manhasset. She talked about her love for teaching kids as an elementary school teacher and spoke on seeing students’ growth.
Millmann said she loves “being there when they open the case and hold the instrument for the first time” and then “seeing them at the end of their fifth or sixth grade year, and suddenly they can really play and they’re really musicians.”
For Manhasset’s seniors, many of whom were in the music program since elementary school, this was a time of reflection as graduation was fast approaching.
Chan said she still wants to keep music as a part of her life after she graduates and plans to do acapella and choir in college. “It’s the one thing that kind of resets me after a long week.”
Abrams will be studying pre-medicine in college, and she said playing an instrument has made her more dexterous, a skill that is needed in medicine.
Although Abrams does not plan to make music her career, she still said she plans to be a private music teacher.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to live without having music as a constant by my side.”
