Video: Music Class Sings in St. Thomas Hall Rotunda

Tuesday afternoon, in the waning days of the fall semester before final examinations, 13 Thomas Aquinas College juniors gathered in the rotunda of St. Thomas Hall Wednesday to sing. The brief performance marked the latest chapter in a young but increasingly anticipated custom.

This was not a performance of the Thomas Aquinas College Choir. Indeed, many of the students have little or no choral experience. As members of the College’s junior class, the singers are students in the music tutorial that is required in the third year of the College’s integrated academic program. Students in the tutorial study music’s inner mathematical structure and learn how to read music.

The emphasis on singing, with the public performance at the end of the semester, is a relatively new phenomenon, the inspiration of Dr. Phillip Wodzinski, a tutor on the College’s teaching faculty. After his first semester teaching the tutorial in the fall 2010, Dr. Wodzinski was eager to showcase his students’ achievements; so he arranged for the performance in the College’s faculty and administration building — surprising and delighting passersby.

Buoyed by this success, he arranged for subsequent performances at the end of every semester in which he taught the music tutorial. Now one of his colleagues, Dr. Karen Zedlick, is carrying on the tradition.

Above is a video of the juniors singing “Dona Nobis Pacem.” Enjoy!