Academic

ACADEMY A BIG PART OF DETROIT
CHILDREN’S CHOIR SPRING CONCERT
When the Detroit Children’s Choir Annual
Spring Concert opened on a Saturday afternoon
in May at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in
Detroit, a certain school on Lake Shore Road
in Grosse Pointe Farms played more than an
outsized role in its production.
In addition to the 11 Grosse Pointe Academy
students performing with the choir, and former
GPA music teacher Lauri Hogle, who is DCC’s
artistic director and director of concert chorale,
serving as conductor for the concert, a special
essay co-authored by Academy 4th graders Selga
Jansons and Grace Rahaim was read aloud to the
large crowd at the beginning of the program.
The theme for the concert, the ninth annual
spring concert for the DCC, was “The Beauty
Around Us,” and the DCC’s nine combined
choirs from more than twenty different cities in
southeast Michigan performed for the first time
on the historic stage of Orchestra Hall.
Three professional musicians from the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra also were on hand to
accompany the choirs: Joshua Jones, percussion,
Samantha Tartamella, flute, and Geoffrey Johnson,
oboe. The DCC’s Concert Chorale and the newly
formed Music Across Detroit Choir for older teens
performed Saturday.
Academy students who participated in the
concert were: Haleigh Howard, Selga Jansons,
Isabella Tomlinson, Angelo Cracchiolo, Megan
Driver, Brooke Popadich, Sadie Kuelling, Julia
Hartnett, Courtney Mecke, Caya Craig and Evelyn
Doan.
GPA’s Hogle, who came to the Detroit area
in 2010, has been working with choirs of all ages
for over two decades. She has worked as a church
musician, directed children’s ministry, and served
as organist/pianist in a number of positions. She
is the former organist for the National Christian
Choir, based in Washington, D.C., and has served
as director of choruses at both high school and
middle school levels in various states, with her
students earning superior ratings and top awards,
including a Carnegie Hall performance. Hogle
also currently serves on the board of the Michigan
Kodály Educators Association and is completing
national Kodály certification in a Master of Music
Education program at Colorado State University.
Last spring, Hogle was honored in a special
ceremony as a “diversity champion” in the Detroit
area by the Race Relations & Diversity Task Force,
which is based in Birmingham, Mich.
SEVENTEEN FROM GPA INDUCTED
INTO THE NATIONAL JUNIOR HONOR SOCIETY
In a moving ceremony held last spring in The Grosse Academy Chapel, 17
middle-school students were inducted in the National Junior Honor Society.
Assistant Head of School for Instruction and Grades 1-8 Principal
Lawrence DeLuca said one of the highlights of the ceremony was when the
students presented thank you notes to their parents.
“The parents read them and then put the NJHS pin on their son or
daughter’s collar. Most of the parents were in tears after reading the notes,”
he said.
Membership in the NJHS is one of the highest honors that can be
awarded to a middle-school student. Chapters in more than 5,000 middle
schools across the U.S. strive to give practical meaning to the goals of
scholarship, leadership, service, citizenship and character.
The new NJHS members from The Grosse
Pointe Academy are Shekinah Aho, Weston
Brundage, Isabella Cubba, Maria Fields, Noah
Humphries, Tierney Janovsky, Ryan Murphy,
Brooke Popadich, Blake Pradko, Josh Roberts,
Nafi Sall, Christopher Scupholm, Sade Shaw, Ian
Shogren, Isabella Tomlinson, Matthew Valente
and Emma Wujek.
THE GROSSE POINTE ACADEMY / FALL 2015 15