Summer 2021 Xaverian Magazine 5
Nathan Sayers ’25
FINDING HARMONY DURING COVID
Xaverian Music Program Hits All the Right Notes
Written by Nicholas Daoust ’21, Communications Corps
f you know Xaverian Brothers High School, you’ve no
doubt heard the saying “In harmony small things grow.”
In a COVID-regulated school year, harmony was hard
to find, but Fine Arts Department Chairperson Dr. Robert
Thorp still invoked this phrase to describe the Xaverian
music program’s necessary shift in the face of the pandemic:
“It’s with this that we continue to nurture music in
our school and in the hearts of our community.”
Given what Dr. Thorp called “the nature
of the pandemic” as a respiratory risk, the
first necessary action was deciding which
instruments were no longer practical under
new restrictions. “In adhering to the state
regulations regarding wind instruments,
Xaverian was able to shift all wind players
to percussion for this academic year,” said
Mr. William Ricciardelli, who teaches
grades 7 and 8 music. “This gave students
the opportunity to study various
percussion instruments, such as snare
drum and bells, as well as continue
in building a strong rhythmic
foundation that will aid them
on any instrument.” And the
transition to percussion was
not an exclusively curricular
shift; as Mr. Ricciardelli
further explained, the new
extracurricular drumline
Hawk-Force-1 “provided
students in grades 7-12 with
the opportunity to participate in
a unique ensemble composed of
snare drums, bass drums, tenors,
and cymbals.” Meeting on a weekly
basis to practice formation drills for
future Xaverian events, the drumline
was an exciting “compliment to the Jazz
Band and Pep Band.”
Choral rehearsals faced similar
challenges, but Xaverian’s music program
was quick to adapt to a new COVID-
friendly environment. As Director of Choral
Activities Mr. Murray Kidd mentions,
state guidelines prohibited indoor singing,
requiring instead sufficiently-masked, sufficiently-distanced
outdoor rehearsals. “X-Men and Choir shifted and sang
outside as much as possible,” says Mr. Kidd, who began
bringing the singing ensembles onto the tennis courts
for practice. Another of his innovative techniques was
mixing individual student recordings to create a collective
track that mimicked group singing. “Students learned
music independently and we prepared recordings for
broadcasting,” he says. “It isn't easy recording music
on your own as a member of an ensemble, but the
guys did well and had a good attitude.”
Curricular music classes found as much success
as the music program’s extracurricular ensembles.
Finding the silver lining within challenging
circumstances, Dr. Thorp said, “We used this as an
opportunity to focus on rhythmic fundamentals as
well as music literacy and sight reading”—skills
that he said are the foundation to musical
performance for any aspiring musician.
Fortunately, a sense of normalcy still
persisted within individual curricula;
the Mac computers were still put to
good use, with obligatory cleaning
and vacancy procedures, and students
adjusted well to a fully-masked and
safely-distanced creative learning
environment. “The Xaverian music
program continues to grow,”
says Dr. Thorp, “because of the
love and enthusiasm of
our students.”