Students honor principal

ORRINGTON – For the last 18 years, an anonymous resident of Orrington has provided a middle school student from Center Drive Middle School with a scholarship to the Maine Summer Youth Music Camp at the University of Maine.

On May 24, several of those scholarship recipients gathered at Center Drive School to participate in the music department’s special farewell concert for retiring principal James White.

Participants included Jamie Wheelden, 1991; Molly Lizotte, 2001; Holly Binette, 2002; Kristyn Murphy, 2004; and Amy Haskell, who received the scholarship in 2005.

The recipients spent the evening singing with the chorus and playing their instruments in the concert band, the beginner band and the jazz band.

Solo performances by Wheelden, Haskell and Murphy were included in the night’s events.

Haskell, an eighth-grader at Center Drive, learned how to play the fluegelhorn at MSYM last summer and delighted the audience when she played “Every Sunrise is a Bonus” with the middle school’s jazz band.

Wheelden confessed that she had not played the saxophone for 10 years, but was happy to dig out her instrument and come back to play for the special evening. She performed the solo she played when she was in eighth grade and received the MSYM scholarship.

Murphy, a soprano who is a sophomore at John Bapst Memorial High School, entertained the audience with a solo rendition of “In My Own Little Corner,” from Rodger and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella.”

Molly Lizotte, now a senior at John Bapst, played her trumpet with the bands and sang with the chorus. Fellow John Bapst student Holly Binette, a sophomore, joined the bands playing her clarinet and singing with the chorus.

The 2006 scholarship was awarded to eighth-grader Kate Fogler, three-time winner as the middle school All-State Jazz best trombone player.

More information about the MSYM summer camp is available at www.umaine.edu/spa.