At Co-Op, A Sweet Springfest Of Firsts

Top: Jaminda Blackmon conducts choir students. Bottom: Members of the band. Lucy Gellman Photos. 

At first, the auditorium was quiet enough to hear a pin drop, Nadia Okwuosa’s honeyed voice winding through the rows as keys laid a foundation beneath it. Joyful joyful Lord we adore thee / God of glory, Lord of love, she started, her hands gripping the mic. The audience was with her. Hearts unfold like flowers before thee / Opening to the sun above.

“Yessss!” came a voice from somewhere in the third row. “Sing it!” The keys swelled beneath her voice. Members of the choir, still and quiet behind her, looked out at a full house, ready to raise their voices to the rafters. And Okwuosa, channeling the young Lauryn Hill who made the piece a cultural touchstone, lifted her face and beamed as percussion and guitar rolled in.

Last Tuesday, collaboration set the soundtrack to 2026 Springfest, a joint concert of triumphant firsts—and some bittersweet lasts—between band and choir at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School. Held on the cusp of students’ spring vacation, the evening became a chance not just for seniors to say goodbye, but for students to celebrate teachers Jaminda Blackmon and Christine Dominguez, both of whom joined Co-Op in August of last year.

Blackmon teaches choir, and Dominguez co-leads the band with Matt Chasen (she also fields needs across the music department, from band to voice to strings). In a year, the duo have done what some students thought was impossible: they stepped into positions that teachers Harriett Alfred and Patrick Smith held for decades, and absolutely soared.

In turn, students—particularly upperclassmen—have had a chance to learn new techniques and grow their skill sets in ways that they didn’t specifically anticipate when they first walked through Co-Op’s College Street front doors several years ago.

“The kids are super talented,” Blackmon said in an interview last Tuesday, as students bounced around the school’s black box theater in evening gowns and neat button-up shirts, some still fixing their ties as they made their way to a piano for warmups. A rack of red-and-white choir robes stood at the ready in the corner. “I know her [Harriett Alfred] and I know how she works. She’s my mentor and she’s my best friend. It was nice to continue what she started, and to add my own twist.”

“Several students said to me, ‘We didn't think anybody was going to be able to replace Mr. Smith, and you are the only person who could do it,’” Dominguez added in a phone call Monday morning, with high praise for Chasen and her Co-Op colleagues across the fine and performing arts. “The respect is there, the appreciation is there, the welcoming is there.”

For both of them, it’s been a year of both demanding teaching and expansive collaboration across musical disciplines, from a new show choir focused (we see you, triple threat actors) to a musical honors society dedicated to leadership through the arts. For Dominguez, that started literally on day one, during a bus ride to a district-wide convocation ceremony at Lighthouse Point Park.

On the way over, she remembered Monday, several seniors started quizzing her on her musical knowledge. It was clear that they wanted to make sure that she knew her stuff—and that they thought she had big shoes to fill. She answered every question they sent her way. By the end of the day, she was playing volleyball with them. Later, many of them told her that “it was that day that we knew you were in,” she said fondly.

That was just the beginning of the year. In the fall, music department teachers—that’s band, choir, and strings—came together for an expanded version of the school’s annual Parking Day, then a Halloween-themed pop-up meant to get students out into the wider world, even if it was just the corner of College and Crown Streets (string students have also performed at IKEA with teacher Henry Lugo, who launched the idea of community concerts when he was still a teacher at Betsy Ross Arts & Design Academy).

They planned winter concerts and holiday pop-ups, and got upperclassmen ready for capstone projects. They jumped into work on the all-school musical with colleagues from the dance and theater departments. Blackmon, inspired by a number of student requests, dreamed up a show choir that students from other departments could and did audition for. Dominguez, who describes herself as “hungry by nature to collaborate,” joined forces with Blackmon to form Tri-M, a music honors society “that focuses on service, creativity, musicianship, and academic excellence/acheivement.”

Even before lights came down on the auditorium last week, that commitment to students was palpable, as Blackmon fielded rapid-fire questions in the black box, and Chasen and Dominguez made sure band students were ready to make their way backstage. Downstairs, senior Andy Sosa soaked it all in, ready to walk onto the stage for one final performance before graduation. As a young vocalist, she drifted towards a table in the back of the space, where a quartet was running Fleet Foxes “White Winter Hymnal” one final time.

“It’s very surreal,” she said minutes later. “Like I’ve just been waiting for this for a while.”

It was hard not to feel emotional, she added. As a kid, Sosa started singing “since I could talk,” and dreamed of being the next Olivia Newton John after watching Grease on repeat several times (Zendaya and Billie Eilish are also on her list of fan crushes). When she arrived at Co-Op four years ago, it was Harriett Alfred who encouraged her to take more chances in music.

Outside of choir rehearsals and classes at Co-Op, Sosa joined the Legacy Studios Drama Club, an after-school club at New Haven Academy that educator Ty Scurry runs with the rigor, precision and energy of a Bob Fosse or George C. Wolfe. She jumped into new roles, from Once On This Island and The Outsiders to a recent pop-punk Hamlet that became part of a teen Shakespeare festival in December. But it’s what she’s learned in that second-floor choir classroom at Co-Op that has helped her get there.

“Honestly, it’s been amazing,” she said, adding that she’s been excited to take on Roland Carter’s arrangement of “In Bright Mansions Above,” one of the evening’s selections, since hearing the seniors perform it her freshman year. “I wouldn’t be doing half the stuff I’m doing without Ms. Alfred, and I wouldn’t be half as confident without Ms. Blackmon.”

“It’s kind of crazy, time just flew by,” chimed in Jay Anderson, a fellow senior who remembered coming to Co-Op in 2022, when Alfred still offered students masks with a clear insert in the middle, so that their mouths were visible as they sang. “I was just a freshman yesterday.”

They’ve savored the journey, including Blackmon’s arrival earlier this academic year. “She’s incredible!” they said. “The way that she can get our voices to work is so different from Ms. Alfred, but not in a bad way.”

Nearby, freshman Alayna Capriglione was equally excited for her first last concert of freshman year (Blackmon fondly repeated the phrase throughout the night, increasingly verklempt from the stage). Since sixth grade, Capriglione has been dreaming about Co-Op—partly because her mom was a choir student there years ago. Blackmon has helped her transform her voice, and given her a sense of belonging at the school in the process.

Students open the concert with "I Am A Small Part of the World."

“I really enjoy how she makes sure that everyone’s okay,” she said as she stepped out into the hallway to chat. Earlier this year, Capriglione remembered, Blackmon had gone from teacher to mediator back to teacher, pulling both her and a classmate aside to talk through a disagreement that was clearly affecting their friendship and their schoolwork. “She’s a safe place.”

Back inside the black box, Blackmon pulled the seniors in for a final huddle, the room falling to a low buzz as conversation continued around them. She looked up, beaming, as students came in close, many of them already arm in arm. Holding Okwuosa and Sosa by the shoulders, Max Hoffman took a deep breath, and looked as though he was already about to cry.

“Alright guys, listen up!” Blackmon said. Out in the hallway, there was a thunderous sound: dozens of band students were making their way downstairs and toward the auditorium. The concert was about to begin. “I know this year was not the easiest for you.”

“Starting the year without Ms. Alfred is mindblowing and crazy. So I basically just wanted to thank you,” she continued. “Thank you for accepting me. Thank you for going for with my crazy ways. And on behalf of everything prior to this moment, thank you for being a part of the choir. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for your voices … take this moment, and relish it. Remember it.”

Max Hoffman, Andy Sosa, Jay Anderson and Nadia Okwuosa.

As students filed onto the stage, an attendee could feel their enthusiasm, which flowed gently from Capriglione’s opening solo on “I Am A Small Part of the World” to Cy Coleman’s bright, dizzying “The Rhythm of Life,” a flashback to 1960s counterculture that had students head-bobbing just slightly as they sang. They balanced it, often, with moments of grace well beyond their years: in “In Bright Mansions,” for instance, Okwuosa stepped forward to conduct, a baton balanced gingerly in her right hand.

As she raised her hands and moved them forward, students split into a layered, lush harmony that made it feel less like a high school auditorium, and more like a church, where sunlight might stream through stained glass windows at any moment. So too later in the set, as seniors serenaded the audience, then removed their red-and-white robes to reveal gala-ready outfits underneath.

Nowhere was it clearer than in the moments of collaboration that knitted the night’s two mellifluous halves together, showing the magic that is possible when students work across the disciplines they are sometimes boxed into. When the band joined in on “Joyful Joyful,” the auditorium transformed into a party, members of the audience talking back to musicians and clapping along. So too as the choir dipped into “Okwagala Kwe,” a hymn performed in Luganda that groups like the Kampala Central Church Choir have popularized.

“The community that I get to interact with, they're all fabulous,” Dominguez said in a phone call after the concert, and it was on display as the band took the stage, Chasen holding his sax as it glinted under the stage lights, and he counted musicians in. As they began with Randall Standridge’s upbeat “Afterburn,” a listener could see and feel that in real time, as horns came rolling in and percussion bounced cheerfully beneath it. By the piece’s first brassy dip, students were leaning all the way into the music, some on the edge of their seats.

Following the concert, senior Keyla Gordillo said that her time at Co-Op—including this year under Dominguez' musical wing, three learning from Smith, and a four with Chasen—has been transformative. In the fall, she plans to attend Western Connecticut State University for music education. In part, her choice of major comes from the encouragement that she’s received while at Co-Op, which has pushed her to try everything from the school musical to the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s (CMEA) regional competition.

“A reflection I have about the concert and Ms. Domingue us how much she has been like a mother to me,” she said in a message after the concert, attaching photos of a music stand that she designed for both teachers, as a thank you for this year. “She’s always there, available for help, and she has been such an amazing teacher to have for my senior year … I wish I had been able to spend more time with her.”

This concert, she added, was “extra special,” because the band got to do a rose ceremony honoring the seniors for the first time she can remember.

The music stand that Gordillo designed. Keyla Gordillo Photo.