By Lawson Bowman, Shield Editor
The new NRCA Piano and Music Club became an official high school division club in the fall of 2024, appearing at the 2024 Club Fair. The club advisor is Tami Oden, the choral department accompanist and music assistant. “Many students in the club have taken or are taking choir, band, theatre classes, participate in praise teams, Squire Theatre events, or take private music lessons,” Oden said.
Oden aims for the club to provide a faith-based experience for student performing artists. She said, “We plan to have inspirational messages about music and what the Bible teaches us about music and our faith, and how we can use music as we grow in our spiritual journey.”
The Piano and Music Club meets monthly during high school lunch on club off-weeks for this year. They play music for each other and plan to have special speakers join them to teach about music theory, history, and careers in music. The Piano and Music Club is a student-led club. The leadership team includes the following people: Caitlyn Yount, Samantha Shearon, Deborah Oden, Emily Burns, and Bre Shearon.
The club’s activities have already begun. “We went on a field trip to see the shop where the grand piano was restored. We plan to do community service events with club members performing at Duke Raleigh Hospital on a regular basis throughout the school year, beginning at Christmastime. Anyone interested in participating in community performances, on the piano, other instruments, or as a vocalist, is welcome to join our club and share their music with people visiting the hospital," Oden said.
On their field trip to see where NRCA’s grand piano was restored, Mr. Yoak, the restoration technician, welcomed six students to tour his shop and showed the work that he did on NRCA’s grand piano. The piano is nearly 25 years old and needed major restoration inside and out to keep it working like new. Oden said, “The largest part of our piano restoration project was rebuilding the tuning block and replacing the tuning pins and strings.” Restoration on the outside fixed many dents and scratches, transforming the piano into an almost-new glossy black instrument.
Club members were honored to have the opportunity to tour the workshop where NRCA’s grand piano was restored. The restoration specialist showed the students a piano built in the 1870s, pointing out the minor adjustments that had been made to grand piano design over the last 150 years. Oden said, “We learned so much from our time with him that Saturday morning and enjoyed lunch together on our way back to NRCA.”
The restoration will bless the larger NRCA community, too. “We hope that many students and families will enjoy playing and hearing the piano at piano recitals, choir and band concerts, chapel, and Piano and Music Club meetings each month in the newly refreshed Sherrill Center for the Performing Arts,” Oden said.
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