Men in Black made a Cameo Performance at the 2026 Ohio Music Educators Association Professional Development Conference

Alex Buysse (’26), John Davis (’26), Thomas George (’27), Landen Linberg (’27), Aberto Lopez (’27), Gunnar Peterson (’27), William Petry (’26), and Nicholas Tepe (’27) comprised a guitar ensemble that was featured at the OMEA conference in Columbus, OH on Thursday, January 29. The organizers of the conference opened submissions for performances as early as April 2025. At that time, these students were all in a guitar 3 class together. They recorded themselves playing their arrangements of traditional melodies and submitted the recordings as the Men in Black. They were invited to perform at the conference shortly after.

Veteran teachers, music teachers within their first few years, and aspiring music teachers, clinicians, and vendors stopped to listen to the Men in Black between sessions Thursday. The Men in Black performed Rights of Man, Si Bheag Si Mhor, The Cliffs of Moher, and many other traditional melodies under the direction of Mr. Watras along with Ms. Denning, who teaches Latin and Greek at St X, and also plays mandolin with the St X liturgical musicians.

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