2024 FESTIVAL OF LESSONS AND CAROLS
The CHS Fine Arts Department presented its annual “Festival of Lessons and Carols” Wednesday evening at beautiful St. Louis Church in downtown Buffalo.
The Festival of Lessons and Carols is a traditional Christmas Eve service of King’s College in Cambridge, England that dates back more than 100 years.
The service features nine biblical readings ranging from the story of Adam and Eve to the beginning of the Gospel of St. John. Musical pieces – carols – provide opportunity for reflection on the texts.
Students read texts while there were performances by the chorus, orchestra ensemble, guitar ensemble, concert band, and handbells ensemble.
The orchestra, concert band and handbells were under the direction of music teacher and band/orchestra director Kerri Rauschelbach; the guitar ensemble is directed by religion teacher Eric Koessler '84; the chorus is directed by Fine Arts Department Chair Kevin Durkin '98.
Letters and Carols will be performed for the CHS school community on Wednesday, Dec. 18 in Scaccia Auditorium; the performance was originally scheduled for Thursday, which became a snow day.
Readers
Corbin Bryant ’26, Angel Lopez-Castillo ’25, Samuel Gugliuzza ’25, Jaeden Phillips ’25, Mark John ’27, Anthony Notino ’25, Martin Cohn ’26, Patrick Quinn ’28, Solieman El-Ashry ’28, Nicholas Marcello ’25, Owen Cheng ’27.
Blue Handbells
Rocco Cellino, Benjamin Deck, Trent DeVantier, Rocco Diina, Jameson Enright, Louis Gugliuzza, Jeffery Hoffman, Ryan Kubiak, Benjamin Kuwik, Alexander Lane, Ducain Neal, Vincent Tran
Chorus
Maxwell Bahr, Carter Bryant, Corbin Bryant, Aiden Charland, Martin Cohn, Jude Delaney, James Eskra, John Flammer, Emmet Mehaffy, Angel Lopez-Castillo, Carter Ostrowski, Rocco Panzica, Stanislav Ryskin, Tyreeck Storm, Cooper Zgoda
Concert Band
Zack Benczkowski, Derek Birkemeier, Jonathan Burroughs, Aidan Devans, Nazariy Drofych, Antonio Falletta, Liam Krist, Maksim Kushnir, Carson Kwiatkowski, Josh Lanier, Christian Lewis-Flynn, Nicholas Marcello, Evan Mitskovski, Brayden McDonald, Brayden Park, Noah Rajecki, Simon Reda, Evan Rutenkroger, Brett Sauer, Alexander Zgoda
Guitar Ensemble
Ryan Berenji, Travis Blair, Jeffrey Ennis, Anthony Notino, Patrick Quinn, Constantine Santacrose, Octavian Santacrose,
String Orchestra
Will Aung, Owen Cheng, Solieman El-Ashry, John Eugino, Samuel Gugliuzza, Mark John, Alexander Nikitenko, Cooper Trask