Under new direction, Northport High School’s orchestra program hopes to increase community visibility
Northport High School’s orchestra, a staple of our district's award-winning music education, has recently undertaken new leadership, both student and non. With this new direction comes much hope: fresh events to be planned, positive reforms to be implemented, and long-lasting traditions to be forged.
After roughly 30 years of working in music education, the orchestra’s former head director, Ms. Margaret Janke, retired at the culmination of the 2020-2021 school year, a term which saw wide retirements within the Northport-East Northport district, across the board. Now, Northport High School has elected Mr. Michael Susinno to run the coveted program alongside the orchestra’s senior leader and president, Ethan Koenig. Most recently, Mr. Susinno – himself a graduate of Northport High School – has taught orchestra at Northport Middle School. He was asked to take his current position at the high school upon Ms. Janke’s retirement.
In a conversation with the Journal, Mr. Susinno detailed his pathway into the classroom as a long and winding one. “When I was a high school student in Northport, I was a teaching assistant when Don Sherman ran the program. He pulled me aside and asked if I had any plans to go into music education… I said, ‘I really want to go into medicine.’ He was the first of a long string of people who talked me out of medicine, and talked me into music education… And it was the happiest pathway anyone could have found for me. It really is the perfect fit: I love music, I love people, I love kids.”
As echoed by both Mr. Susinno and Ethan, the orchestra’s main goal for the 2021-2022 school year is a simple, but daunting one: increase community visibility. This is the direction underpinning the ensemble’s entire operation, which has, up until this point, maintained a relatively low level of community recognition. “I think where we fell short in the past, was that we stayed in this [the orchestra] room,” explains Mr. Susinno. To combat this, initiatives have already been introduced on the sidewalks of Northport Village: most Saturdays, weather permitting, groups of orchestra students will showcase their talents down at the Village farmers’ market, performing everything from the classics (Barber, Beethoven, Vaughan) to TV/film selections.
The Northport High School orchestra, however, has their eyes cast on something far wider: “Once we build our confidence and regain our sharpness, I hope that we can tour and perform internationally. The cruise that we have potentially occurring would feature music by British and American composers. The dates are August 7 through 14, 2022; the ship is the Norwegian Joy… We just need approval, and that’s not going to be given unless certain conditions can be met. If that goes well, next year would be Italy.”
Mr. Susinno spoke with fondness of his memories as a Northport High School student, where international travel was, as he described, the highlight of his young musical career. “I went to Italy with the choir; we spent the whole month of August of ’96 in Germany in an exchange program; I went on regional trips to Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston.” Mr. Susinno hopes now to pay these experiences forward to his students as a director.
The orchestra has a bevy of events planned within our town borders, too. In an article published by The Port Press, Northport High School’s student-run newspaper, Mr. Susinno detailed such events, including a “Halloween Spooktacular,” a Halloween-themed performance for students, tomorrow, October 28. The concert will be livestreamed at 2:15pm, and available on the orchestra’s YouTube Channel after that. For the concert, orchestra members will perform “Danse Macabre, This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
The orchestra has also formed a partnership with the prestigious Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, a Manhattan-based, critically acclaimed ensemble under the direction of maestro David Bernard. “Over the course of the academic year, our students will be invited to attend performances in the Hudson Yards area and welcome maestro Bernard to work with them here at Northport High School,” said Mr. Susinno of the newfound affiliation. “This sharing of ideas and strategies will really help our students push their orchestral abilities to the next level.”
Students will be able to witness the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony through what is known as an “inside-out” concert format, in which audience members (in this case, the students) are seated between the orchestral musicians; this allows for an immersive viewing experience as the young musicians will be able to read their music and watching their bow quiver down the instrument up close.
Mr. Susinno believes the orchestra has a special place within the music-driven community of Northport. “We [the orchestra] represent a vehicle, that the community of Northport can send our best and brightest forward – out into the local area to represent us – and show people that we really are a very special place… I think Northport, for many years, has always focused on finding the talent in all of our students and helping them show that. I think the orchestra is a wonderful vehicle for showcasing the talents that we have here.”
Ethan, perhaps, summed up the entire mystique of the Northport High School orchestra best: “We are getting out into the community, we are becoming a more active part of the high school, and we are becoming a more outward representation of what the school has to offer,” he said. “We have something to offer that people can see and say, ‘I want to do that.’ And I think it’s already happening – the process has already begun, and it’s only going to get better in the future.”
