Hutchison starts the new school year with an exciting change by welcoming Hannah Crowley to the upper school music community. Mrs. Crowley has been working with early childhood for the past few years, so this was a big switch. “It’s different, but great, and it’s really fun to make complicated music beautiful which you can’t do with little kids.”

Mrs. Crowley has enjoyed getting to dive into harder and more challenging pieces with these girls. Hutchison’s new music teacher has seized this opportunity and chosen pieces from a lot of different genres. “We’re doing a piece from Africa that’s in Swahili that’s really fast and hard, a Spanish piece that’s beautiful and hard harmonically, and a couple pop pieces from artists like Olivia Rodrigo.” Mrs. Crowley encourages her girls to explore different genres and cultures. “I’m just excited to experiment more with different genres like some oldies and musical theatre.”

One of the biggest challenges this year is the usage of masks and the effect they’re having on the class. However, there is a special mask called a singer’s mask that is just farther from the face, allowing more room between face and mask.“ It’s difficult because I can’t pull down my mask and show them “Hey, this is how your mouth is supposed to look”, but hopefully we will get there.”

Mrs. Crowley overall has loved working with the older students at Hutchison and has many fun projects planned. A future plan for the class is to experiment with different genres. The vocal point class performs at Thanksgiving Chapel and the Winter Concert. “I encourage students to get out and come see us perform this year because we have some awesome stuff planned!”