EASTHAM — Nearly two years after Brait Builders got to work in February 2023, every component of the first phase of Nauset Regional High School’s $170-million reconstruction project is complete.
While most of the phase-one projects — including the school’s new cafeteria, gym, science building, and arts department — opened just before classes began last September, the performing arts center could not be used until Dec. 19. The delay was due to the need for safety inspections and final permits, according to Principal Patrick Clark.
“I’ve waited 25 years to say this,” said longtime music department head Tom Faris as he took the stage to welcome musicians and audience to the new performing arts center on Dec. 19. “We have a balcony!”
Balconies are not common in high school auditoriums, according to Faris, but 250 of the 714 seats in Nauset’s new auditorium are on the second floor. The walls are accented with reclaimed wood from the school’s old E building, and a network of lighting catwalks are suspended from the ceiling. Ten-foot-high double doors provide backstage access for theater sets and large instruments.
Nauset High’s music groups include a chorus, orchestra, concert band, percussion ensemble, and jazz band, as well as “honors” versions of each. The music ensembles, which are scheduled daytime classes rather than extracurriculars, meet in a pair of rehearsal rooms backstage. The school also offers for-credit classes in guitar, piano, and music production, and the drama club, which meets after school, uses the auditorium, too.
On Jan. 30, the auditorium got its first taste of civic and political life when it hosted a joint budgeting workshop for the Nauset school district. In the future, facilities manager Tony Nannini told the Independent, it’ll be open for more.
“It’ll be a community space, not just for the school day,” Nannini said, adding that performers and presenters will eventually be able to book the space year-round. The second phase of the building project — which includes the remodeling of the A, B, C, and D buildings from the old campus — needs to be finished first, however. “We’d be in a little over our head otherwise,” Nannini said.
Because phase two is focused more on remodeling than new construction, it can be more easily conducted while school is in session, building committee chair Greg Lavasseur told the Independent in 2023. It is expected to be finished sometime this calendar year.
Alumni Concert
The inaugural concert on Dec. 19 was a festive holiday affair starring both current students and Nauset High alumni.
The stage was full on opening night. Nauset’s two music teachers — Faris, who leads the chorus, and Dan Anthony, who leads the instrumental ensembles — had invited all of their former students to perform alongside the current musicians. Nauset Regional Middle School’s instrumental music teachers Berj Hagopian and Megan Anthony were enlisted to help conduct.
For the grand finale, all of the night’s performers took the stage at once — about 135 musicians in total — with some of the chorus members spilling into the aisles as they sang.
Anthony, who directs the jazz and concert bands, told the Independent that playing alongside alumni was a welcome experience for his students because they don’t always get to be part of a full ensemble during their practices. The music department is still recovering from a pandemic-era decline in participation, Anthony said, and the alumni concert was the first time this year that a Nauset band wasn’t missing any instruments.
This reporter, a pianist and 2018 graduate of Nauset, recalls the old music department’s classroom space, a linoleum lecture hall whose ceiling was caving in at the corners. The dark corridor leading from our classroom to the stage had a shaky plywood ramp that rattled as we pushed percussion instruments across it. While playing vibraphone at the alumni concert, the difference between that auditorium and this one felt like night and day.
“I asked every year for 25 years for the venue that our students deserved,” Faris said. “I’m very proud of the way it turned out, and I believe everyone who’s gone in there feels the same way.”
