High School Music
Program Description
The NHS Music Department is one part academic program and one part performing arts company, with well over a hundred NHS students performing in its three large ensembles and many smaller groups each year. First and foremost, we serve an important educational role, helping our students to develop creativity, perceptiveness, self-expression, responsibility and a thirst for excellence, traits that help them achieve success in other subjects and fulfillment in life.
We also serve a functional role for the school and community, as our musicians perform high quality music at over 20 events, ceremonies and gatherings each year, both on campus and off. We help fulfill music’s role as an indispensable part of our cultural life, helping people celebrate, mourn, dance in joy and heal pain.
Many of our students are selected to perform each year with honor ensembles at the regional and state level, as well as in Europe, and have gone on to study at Juilliard, Berklee, Princeton, Oberlin, Ithaca and many more of the finest colleges and universities in the country.
NHS Music offers coursework in vocal, band and jazz performance, as well as musical theater, guitar, music history and music theory.
FACULTY BIOS
John O’Briant has taught at NHS since 2006, where he conducts the wind and jazz bands and serves as the Arts and Wellness Curriculum Coordinator. He has degrees in music education and conducting from Connecticut College and Radford University and has studied with composer/conductor Mark Camphouse and NY Philharmonic staff conductor Michael Adelson.
Kathy Medairos currently teaches at Norwell High School. She graduated from The University of Massachusetts at Amherst receiving a BM cum laude in music education piano/voice/instrumental as well as a minor in psychology.
