Otis Carrington

Among the many well-trained faculty members who have taught at Sequoia High School over the years, the name of Otis M. Carrington stands out particularly. He joined the teaching staff in 1907 as the art and music instructor, and went on to head the music department he developed at the school, teaching an unprecedented forty-three years.

Mr. Carrington is best remembered as one of the world's foremost composers of operettas for children. In 1912 Carrington felt his students were ready to perform an operetta. While there was a large body of musical literature to choose from, all off it was written for professional singers, and not for the voices of school children. That year, Mr. Carrington wrote his own, "The Windmills of Holland". It was the first of more than forty operettas to come from his hand and led American music critics like Harold Rogers of the Christian Science Monitor to call him "the leader of the operatic field of educational music".

Between 1923 and 1945 student productions of his operettas were standard fare at Sequoia High adn at Redwood City elementary schools. Sequoia was the testing ground for his work. Carrington and B.E.Myers, an instructor in the commercial arts department at Sequoia, published and distributed the work as Meyers and Carrington, School Operettas. The sucess of these children's operettas is evidenced by their over twenty-five thousand presentations world-wide. The majority of composer/librettist's children's operatic work was created between 1923 and 1945 at Sequoia High School, as an integral part of Carrington's productive teaching career. Otis M. Carrington wsa the only California composer to make such a significant contribution to the art form of operatic music for children. The auditorium is named in Mr. Carrington' honor.

Source: National Register of Historic Places Registration Form prepared by Kent L. Seavey/Preservation Consultant, on behalf of the Sequoia High School Alumni Association, September 1, 1994.