As seniors this fall go through the ever difficult college application process, those particularly music-oriented will make recordings displaying a particular talent, whether it be instrumental or voice. These recordings are only made by certain students who are performing at an extremely high level, and have hopes of going to a conservatory or performing professionally in college. Recordings are by no means required, and if the student is not an accomplished performer these recordings often can end up hurting applications and prevent them from getting in.
Choate offers services to create these recordings, but you can also get them done by a music school, a private producer, or create them on your own. About fifteen Choate students per year create these recordings, and about ten use the school’s service. The rest use some other method.
Choate has no official program or staff for this, but Ms. Kegel and Mr. Bozzi volunteer to help Seniors create the recordings. Ms. Kegel, a chorus instructor, said ,”It is just something generous that Mr. Bozzi and I do to help the students.” Ms. Kegel coordinates the process of college recordings, and Mr. Bozzi films the students. Ms. Kegel and Mr. Bozzi both do this for free, but most students need to pay an accompanist around one hundred and fifty dollars to rehearse and record with them.
Since Ms. Kegel and Mr. Bozzi do this free of charge, creating a recording through Choate is generally cheaper than hiring another school or producer.
Hannah Price ‘18, who plays viola, created a recording this fall at a local private music school. She told me that she chose to not record at Choate because the places where you can record at Choate, the Chapel and the Recital Hall, l are not best suited to recording, in her opinion. She said, ‘The Recital Hall doesn’t have very good acoustics, and the Chapel can be kind of iffy.” Similarly, she also argued that the process was arduous, expensive, and incredibly time-sensitive.
Another senior sending a recording is Daniel Zanuttini-Frank ‘18. He is a classical guitarist who is applying a music conservatories. Zanuttini-Frank created his recordings by himself. As he has been creating recordings of himself on his own for a number of years, and his rationale for not using the service Choate provides was based around time pressure as well as quality. He said, “I have my phone and my microphone, and frankly, the quality I get is better than the quality of these other recordings, and I can do as many recordings as I want.”
The Music Department at Choate provides a less expensive way to create college recordings, but students often still choose to record outside of Choate due to personal preference. No matter the manner of recording, it s amazing to be surrounded by such dedicated and talented musicians and watch them pursue their college goals.
