Woodlands Celebrates Students' Talents in Art, Music

Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart’s Fine Arts Evening, an extraordinary exhibition and celebration of the student artistic and musical talents, will be held May 19 at the school, 760 E. Westleigh Road, Lake Forest.

The annual event commences with a Student Art Show on display in the Woodlands Academy Art Wing starting May 16 through May 26. A reception will be held from 6-8 p.m. May 19 for the visual artists. Art students will welcome visitors and discuss their work. Woodlands art instructors Catherine DeVuono and Jamie Tuttle, both of Evanston, will also be on hand.

The Woodlands show features students’ best work this year, some of which was recently honored at the Lake Forest Library Art Show and the Deerpath Art League Exhibition. The artwork will be judged prior to the opening. Drawing, painting and photography will be judged by Alan Leder, former director of the Evanston Art Center and ceramics will be judged by Vickie Marasco from the Deerpath Art League.

Awards will honor a “Best in Show” winner along with first, second, and third-place awards in the following categories: photography, drawing/painting/printmaking, and ceramics. Capping off the evening are Woodlands Academy’s instrumental music and choral ensembles, under the direction of Laurel Ann Kaiser of Hawthorn Woods and Elizabeth Kurowski of Mundelein, respectively. The finale Festival Concert begins at 7 p.m. in the Woodlands Academy Chapel.

The Woodlands Academy Orchestra and String Ensemble will perform Concerto in B minor for 4 violins by Vivaldi.  A number of talented performers will also be featured, including junior All State violinist Ingrid Watts of Lake Bluff and senior Min Hee Kim of South Korea. The highlight of the orchestra performance will be the full group’s rendition of Pirates of the Caribbean. Woodlands JV-Kaleidoscope, “A Choir’d Taste”, and the acclaimed choral ensembles, “Kaleidoscope” and “Microscope,” will perform a variety of sacred and secular music.

The evening’s performance will open with  The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun, by Celtic Woman and feature Watts and nationally ranked Irish Dancer, senior Leann Lyden of Lake Forest. “A Choir’d Taste” will perform a Zimbabwean folk song by Elizabeth Alexander as well as the ever popular, This Little Light of Mine by Mark Hayes. The 25-member “Kaleidoscope” will sing How Will I Go Without Ye, featuring Caroline Kagan of Chicago, Allen Koepke’s Dance on My Heart, and end with Randall Stroope’s Homeland.  All are selections that earned the group Gold Awards at the recent National Heritage Festival, held in Washington DC.

Under the direction of senior Kaitlin Donnelly of Winnetka, the 10-member a capella group, “Microscope,” will perform a number of their competition pieces, including Shir Ha-Shirim  by Yehudi Wyner and Faith is the Bird That Feels the Light by Elizabeth Alexander, which earned the group a Gold rating award at the National Heritage Festival competition. The combined choirs and orchestra will end the evening with Adiemus,  from Songs of Sanctuary by Karl Jenkins.

The student choir/orchestra accompanists for the evening are seniors So Yeong Park of South Korea and Shihau Zhou of thePeoples Republic of China; sophomores Zhiting Liu and Sherry Xu of the People’s Republic of China;  and junior Cora Ives of Winthrop Harbor.

Admission to all events is free and open to the public. For more information, call the school at (847) 234-4300.