By Sentinel Staff
The sad news is that Sally Tonkin, 17, won’t be home for Thanksgiving this year, for the first time.
The happy news is that it’s because she’ll be leaving on the 6 a.m. plane Thursday on her way to New York City to sing in Carnegie Hall.
Sally, a senior at the Auburn Adventist Academy in Auburn, Washington, is a member of the school’s Sylvan Chorale, which was invited last spring to take part in the fall holiday concert program in New York.
The 22-member school chorale will sing Monday, Nov. 26, as one of the ensembles in the Distinguished Concerts in International New York’s “A Winter Rose: The Holiday Music of Martin & Hayes.”
While in town, the singers also will be tourists, with plans to see “Phantom of the Opera,” visit the Statue of Liberty and go to the top of the Empire State Building.
“It’s pretty exciting,” said Sally. The chorale will leave Seattle on Friday and return next Wednesday.
Sally Tonkin
The invitation to sing at Carnegie Hall came through award-winning composer and pianist Mark Hayes, whose secretary had seen the Auburn choir performing on Youtube.
The concert will feature the music of Hayes and a fellow composer, Joseph Martin.
When Sylvan Chorale director Melia Williams received the invitation last spring, she got the support of the school board and others, and the students themselves helped raise funds.
“We worked really hard,” Sally said. “And we still have to raise funds when we get back.”
Along with the fundraising, Sally has school work (mostly A’s), a job as the head RA in the girls dorm, and keeping up on her music.
“We just finished a musical, ‘Oklahoma’ – I played Ado Annie,” she said.
This isn’t the first trip for the choir under director Williams. Last April they went to Hawaii, where they sang in parks, on beaches, at schools and churches.
They did a tour of Alaska, in 2016, and have taken weekend trips to Washington, Oregon and California, performing at schools, in churches and at community events.
In December they will sing Handel’s Messiah at the Chehalis, Wash., Community Sing-along at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
Sally has high praise for chorale director Williams.
“I just love my teacher!” she said. “She’s the reason I’m in singing ... she encourages us, helps us ... we feel like family.
“Mrs. Williams is the best!”
Sally was born in Sitka then lived with her parents in Texas for seven years before she and her mom, Patty McDaniel, returned to Sitka, where Sally attended sixth to eighth grades at the Sitka Seventh-day Adventist School.
Her mom, the daughter of longtime Sitkans Debbie and Wally Stilson, graduated from high school here in 1998, and also took part in music programs. She’s now the owner and operator of The Salon.
Sally taught herself to play the piano, starting at about age 8, and also plays the flute. She’s been taking voice lessons all four years at the Auburn academy and plans to attend the University of Washington, with a major in voice and a focus on opera.
For now, Sally is still trying to take it in that she’s actually going to sing at Carnegie Hall.
She said she knows music is a hard business to get into, and in her sophomore year she had told herself, “When I get to Carnegie Hall I will have made it – big!”
Now here she is.
“I just can’t believe it’s really happening – I told my grandma that until the plane takes off in Denver ... that’s when I’ll get excited.”
