She Puts the Cool in Chorus

When Jessica Nicholson began creating a choral music program in the in 2000, she had two related but distinct challenges.

The first was a simple question with a not-so-simple answer: What’s choral music?

“It’s a vocal ensemble, a team activity where you learn a variety of repertoire of different musical styles, where you get musical instruction as part of a group and then you get a chance to perform outside of school,” Nicholson explains, summarizing her “elevator pitch.” She’s given that pitch countless times over the years as she’s built the district’s choral music program from scratch into a juggernaut that includes some 450 students.

The latter part of that explanation – the concerts outside of school – were Nicholson’s way to answer the second challenge: how to make choral music cool enough to kids that they’d tell their friends about it.

Lydia Sannella was one of just a handful of students who signed up for the choral program in Nicholson’s first year.

“Word got out steadily that it was fun to do,” Sannella says. “Once you do it, you’re hooked. Each student recruited a few more.”

More than a decade after those lean early years, the 35-year-old Nicholson and her colleagues have built the choral music program into a powerhouse, with concerts planned at Disneyland in Anaheim in April and at a San Francisco Giants game as part of the district’s Kiddo Night on May 4.

Trisha Garlock, the executive director of Kiddo, calls Nicholson “an extraordinary and inspirational teacher.”

“Her students adore her, and the gift of music and the inspiration she provides does not end when they graduate, but is carried with them throughout their lives,” she adds.

Sannella, who , can attest to that. She credits Nicholson for bringing her out of her shell in middle school, and for fostering her love for music beyond it.

“Those were some of the best times of my life and they gave me confidence to sing a solo where I was too afraid to even go on stage before,” says Sannella, a chemistry major at UC-Berkeley.

Nicholson offers a club before school called Chamber Chorus for students hoping to take their singing to the next level. She even coached Sannella’s vocal ensemble Imbeni and found gigs for them.

“She’s just a very sweet and welcoming person and everything about the way she runs her program reflects that,” says Sannella.

“She’s an unsung hero of Mill Valley,” adds Dena Cornett, Sannella’s mom. “She is just a tireless, genuinely nice person who spends a lot of time with our kids.”

Nicholson, who lives in Mill Valley, grew up in Grass Valley, Calif., and credits her love for choral music on the outstanding program built at Nevada Union High School by Don Baggett.

“I got pretty inspired there to do what I do now,” Nicholson says.

She studied at the University of the Pacific's Conservatory of Music in Stockton, Calif., and taught music in the Mount Diablo School District for two years before coming to Mill Valley in 2000. When she heard that the Mill Valley district was looking to create a choral music program from scratch, she leapt at the chance.

“It was a little scary but also intriguing that I could craft a program from the ground up,” she says. “There’s not a lot of choral programs ( has one) in this county, which is surprising, so it took a few years of explaining it to start building it.”

Nicholson credits fifth grade music teacher Anna Stearns with getting kids excited in those early years.

“We begged kids to join,” she says of the first few batches of sixth graders. “We definitely had to talk kids into it.”

Nicholson spread herself thin initially, working to generate interest among elementary school students while overseeing the growing middle school program. That included regular competitions and concerts, which triggered choral music’s metamorphosis from “what?” to cool in the eyes of the students, Nicholson says.

Both Garlock and Cornett credit Nicholson for not dumbing down the choral program by focusing heavily on chorus versions of popular songs, as many programs do. While those songs have their place, they say, Nicholson mixed in plenty of complex arrangements.

Nora Thomas, who teaches choral music to third and fourth graders, says that’s by design.

“They want to feel like their learning quality music,” she says, pointing to a recent Vivaldi composition Nicholson had her students working on. “We’re asking middle schoolers to sing Vivaldi. That actually gets them more motivated to do a good job.”

Thomas calls Nicholson’s love for music “infectious.” With the district’s enrollment continuing to boom, the program has ballooned in recent years and will likely continue to do so.

“Sometimes we’ll gather the students for a performance and look and realize, ‘We have a choral army,” Thomas jokes. “Once you harness this kind of passion, it fuels itself and you get younger siblings that come out each year. It’s a huge endeavor.”

That endeavor is about to ramp up.

On Friday, Feb. 10, the Chamber Choir’s fifth graders are set to perform at their respective schools. And on Monday, the middle school’s Chamber Choir is performing at .

In April, the 7th and 8th grade choral ensembles head to Southern California for a choral competition as well as a performance at Disneyland. On May 4, the choral group’s 8th graders are singing the national anthem at a Giants game at AT&T Park.

“The feeling of being on the field in front of all those people never gets old for me and just seeing the faces of the students is incredible,” Nicholson says.

The 3rd, 4th and 5th grad choral ensembles will perform their annual concerts at the middle school on May 14 and 15, with the middle school ensemble performing on June 7.

In the midst of all of that, Nicholson has taken on a new project. On the heels of the retirement of longtime middle school musical director Joan Deamer, Nicholson suggested an event that combined musical numbers and the feel of the school’s annual talent show. The cabaret-style event includes more than 80 students, is set for March 21 and features performances of songs from West Side Story, Oliver and Annie.

“Jessica decided to create something fresh and new that would give our students the opportunity to show their talent and perform in song and dance,” middle school principal Anna Lazzarini says. “It will be new and really exciting.”

All of that makes for an incredibly busy spring for Nicholson, who also coaches the Marin Youth Performers’ acapella ensemble, which rehearses weekly and performs a half dozen times a year.

What could make Nicholson's spring even more hectic? How about planning her wedding, an out-of-state event in June in Troutdale, Oregon.

“It’s pretty crazy right now,” she says.