Seton Hill, Greensburg Salem, Hempfield students perform at New York City's Carnegie Hall

The last time Mark Boyle was onstage at New York City’s legendary Carnegie Hall, an alarm on his cell phone accidentally went off mid-performance.

When Boyle was invited back to conduct a performance as part of MidAmerica Productions’ 40th season staging shows at Carnegie Hall, he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“I made sure to leave the phone in my dressing room this time,” said Boyle, director of choral and vocal activities at Seton Hill University in Greensburg.

In addition to students and alumni from the university, Boyle also brought students from the Hempfield and Greensburg Salem school districts along.

“The invitation was a big deal, and I told our administration I really wanted to bring students with me. Our president, Mary Finger, came back the very next day and said it was a great idea and we should start raising money to do it.”

Students from Greensburg Salem’s Show Choir and Hempfield’s Spartan Chorale were joined by fellow singers from Georgia, California and Tennessee, performing alongside the New England Symphonic Ensemble on June 18.

Madison Resnick, 15, of Salem was one of the Greensburg Salem students who performed.

“I started in the show choir in eighth grade, and I auditioned when I got to high school as well,” said Resnick. “My teacher, Emily Hazlett, was a former student of Mr. Boyle’s.”

Show choir students found out about the trip last fall, and began working with the music during the last 1 1/2 months of the school year. The choirs and orchestra performed “Missa de Requiem,” a Latin Mass for the dead written by Afro-Brazilian composer Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia.

“Pronouncing the Latin words was a challenge,” Resnick said. “But I’m also a French student at school, and that helped a lot.”

Boyle chose Nunes Garcia because he said the South American native’s music doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

“He was composing at the same time as the European greats, and doing it at a high level,” Boyle said. “This was the premiere of that piece of music at Carnegie Hall, and it was really exciting to be part of that.”

Carnegie Hall has a reputation as one of the most acoustically perfect venues in the world, and Boyle said the lone microphone onstage was more than likely just for archiving the performance, rather than amplifying the vocals or instruments.

“Just about any seat is the perfect place to listen,” Boyle said.

That doesn’t include the conductor’s chair, however.

“Where the conductor is at, the sound really is not good at all,” he said with a laugh. “But it’s not about the conductor, you want the audience to have the best listening experience. But onstage, you don’t get a good sense of balance.”

Resnick said she had to settle herself shortly before going onstage to keep from getting overwhelmed.

“When you get there, you just think about all the amazing people who’ve performed there and then you think, ‘I’m just some high school student, and this is happening,’” she said. “It was amazing.”

MidAmerica Productions began producing shows at Carnegie Hall in 1983, and has produced more events at the venue than any other promoter. The June 18 performance was MidAmerica’s 680th show there.