This week, the upper school show choir Downbeat released a special video for its annual holiday outreach tour, which typically takes place on the first Friday of December. “For the last 25 years, Downbeat has toured all over the Bay Area, bringing holiday joy to preschools, senior centers, dementia units, Grace Cathedral’s homeless lunch clients, the children’s cancer ward at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and more,” said Laura Lang-Ree, upper school performing arts chair. In addition to performing, they also bring gifts, cookies and spend time chatting with residents.
Due to safety concerns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the tour could not be held this year, but the students felt the tradition should continue in some form. “Downbeat decided it was important to continue the tradition for all of our regular outreach places and spread even more joy, as so many people are alone over the holidays due to the pandemic,” Lang-Ree said. Downbeat members spent considerable time over the fall semester creating the video, including the sound editing, arranging and narration. It will be sent to various Bay Area schools, youth centers, hospitals and care facilities. Members of the Harker community can view the video by logging in to the Harker portal and visiting the Performing Arts page.
On Sept. 25, CareerConnect held a Harker alumni panel via Zoom. Three alumni, Haley Tran ’17, Lucas Wang ’17 and Vignesh Panchanatham ’18, talked about things students should know before graduating from high school. They discussed founding and joining clubs, finding summer opportunities, their college experiences and more. In addition, they answered many questions from students.
“This event helped me learn more about the little niches in school and outside of school to do before graduating high school,” said Jessica Zhou, grade 10, commented. “Fostering a connection with teachers in the subjects you are interested in can help you down the road when doing events or projects related to it and making sure to do what you enjoy is extremely important.”
The event was a great success and helped students learn about how to get involved in the Harker community and make the most of high school!
This story was submitted by Gianna Chan, grade 11.
From Oct. 19-23, five teams participated in California DECA’s business pitch challenge, an entrepreneurship video competition modeled after the entrepreneurship events in DECA conferences. Competitors were required to create a new business idea and record a 10-minute presentation about their product or service.
Three Harker students, Harshini Chaturvedula, Anjali Yella and Jasmine Ishikawa, all grade 9, won second place with their app Oasis, which provides detailed information on COVID-19 statistics and safety tips. The app features an interactive map displaying local COVID case numbers, as well as a user rating system for cities and locations such as malls and restaurants focusing on three main areas: mask usage, social distancing and sanitation. “Going into the challenge, we mainly just hoped to receive some feedback and did not expect to win anything,” Yella said. “We worked continuously on our project and received feedback from our parents and DECA mentors, using this to improve our innovation. We learned how to distribute work amongst ourselves and also use teamwork to complete the project on time.”
Congratulations to Harshini, Anjali and Jasmine and all of the participants!
Over the past month, three Harker student athletes were recognized on the 49ers Cal-Hi Sports TV show for their excellence on and off the field. Natalie Vo, grade 12, was featured for her outstanding Harker golf career and her bright future; Vayun Tiwari, grade 11, showed off his award-winning talent for bird photography; and Ashley Barth, grade 11, shared her inspiring story of battling cancer and her relationship with Camp Okizu. Check out all the stories of these outstanding Eagles below:
On Friday night, Canadian singer-songwriter and pianist Laila Biali was the second guest of Harker’s Virtual Concert Series, which features a rebroadcast of a past Harker concert followed by a live chat with the artist. She spoke and answered questions about her career and songwriting process.
Speaking via Zoom from her home in Toronto, the Juno-winning Biali answered questions posed by Dave Hart, upper school instrumental music chair, as well as viewers. She recalled how she found an interest in music at a very early age, starting piano at just 3 and half years old and having aspirations of attending Juilliard or the Curtis Institute of Music by her teens. At 15, she suffered an injury in a car accident that severely limited the use of her right arm. During her recovery, she began learning jazz, which she described as “like learning a new language.”
Her career as a singer began while performing at a jazz festival, where she was offered a scholarship to Toronto’s Humber College and found singing and songwriting as new modes of expression. Later, while touring with a group called Sisters of Jazz, Biali was invited to join trumpeter Chris Botti’s band, which eventually led to her moving to New York. There she found work with Paula Cole (during which she met her husband, Ben Wittman) and Sting, a gig that saw her travel to the English singer’s estate in Tuscany. “Sting is your quintessential rock star,” said Biali. “He could totally be what we call a devo, the male version of a diva. He could just waltz into rehearsal whenever he wanted.” Biali was also inspired by Sting’s discipline and work ethic: “He was the first to arrive and the last to leave, without fail.”
Discussing her approach to songwriting, Biali described the process as seldom constant. “It’s changing all the time and in some ways, it’s really informal,” she said. “There’s a point where it becomes a discipline and I have to sit down and hone the idea.”
Biali finds “raw material for songs all around me,” she said. Sources include news stories and various sights and sounds of the cities she’s lived in or visited. She often leaves voice memos on her phone.
One of her favorite activities is heading to the Banff Centre in Alberta to complete songs she has begun writing, because of its environment and access to resources. “For each of the past three records, that has been an integral part of finishing the songs,” she said. She also runs ideas by her husband, who she said “felt like an ally and a friend right away” upon meeting him when they both worked for Paula Cole.
The video of Biali’s performance at the Patil Theater in September 2019 will be available to view until Mon. Dec. 21. Her latest solo album, “Out of Dust,” and her rendition of “Silent Night” are now available on Spotify, iTunes and other services.
On Dec. 12, a special online charity concert will be held to raise funds for the families of firefighters who lost their lives battling the deadly wildfires that have burned across California since August. The concert, organized by Nathan Liu, grade 9, will be broadcast on Facebook.
“As we navigate these unprecedented times of the COVID-19 pandemic and the continued wildfires in California, I just want to contribute my time to host an online music concert to pay tribute to those fallen heroes [and] also to raise funds to provide emotional and financial assistance to families of fallen firefighters,” Liu said. Last week, independent TV station KTSF featured Liu on a segment about the concert.
The performers include veteran professional musicians, including Sandra Wright Chen, a highly regarded concert pianist and Steinway Artist; bassist Joshua Thurston-Milgrom of the department of music at Stanford University; and violinist Kei Obata. Student musicians Callie Yuan, Shayla He, Ella Yee, Jerry Li and Vardaan Ghai, all grade 9, also will be featured, and Liu also will perform. “The fact that a concert consisted of mostly my peers from Harker proves how talented our Eagle community is,” said Liu. “Due to the pandemic, we were not able to practice together or have an in-person concert, therefore, we heavily rely on remote communication technology to collaborate, such as emails, chat, Zoom and cloud document sharing to brainstorm about the concert.”
The concert is scheduled to go live on Saturday at 7 p.m., and Liu advised those who wish to attend to like the concert’s Facebook page and keep an eye out for a notification when the event is live.
Last week, Rohan Shah ’10 was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Retail & Ecommerce category. Extend, the company he co-founded in 2019, provides an easy method for merchants to offer warranties and protection plans. Its high-profile clients include Logitech, Harman and Advance Auto Parts. Extend allows customers to easily file claims online and receive fast approval, and the company receives a portion of each warranty sale. Extend’s $56 million in funding has come from benefactors including PayPal Ventures, Meritech Capital and Pritzker Group Ventures.
A Harker Lifer, Shah was also a three-sport athlete, which earned him the Super Eagle award for Harker athletes who participate in three sports in a single semester. As a football player, Shah was invited to play in Silicon Valley Youth Classic High School Football All-Star Game in 2010.
Ayan Nath, grade 11, recently placed second in American Protege’s We Sing Pop competition. He is slated to perform in the American Protege Summer Gala concert, scheduled to take place in June 2021 at the Isaac Stern Auditorium, located in New York City’s Carnegie Hall. The concert will also feature performers from Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy and South Korea.
Nath’s interest in music began at a very young age, and he has performed in events at Harker as well as Bay Area events such as the Stanford Jazz Festival. He was also invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in 2019 after winning an International Music Talent Award for his performance on the tabla, an Indian percussion instrument.
As the future middle school campus continues to take shape, Mike Bassoni, Harker facility manager, details how the site is being readied for winter weather in the latest construction update!
Harker has partnered with the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) to conduct an Assessment of Inclusivity and Multiculturalism (AIM). The survey will be administered to all of Harker’s constituents in January and will “evaluate the culture of our school so we can create a strategic action plan based on the findings, to help us continue our work to ensure we are an inclusive and equitable community,” said Head of School Brian Yager in a message to the community.
Topics covered by the survey will include the climate of the school; its handling of issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion; and multiculturalism and multicultural education. Data from the survey will be evaluated by NAIS to create a report that will detail areas of potential improvement and the school will develop strategies according to these data points.
“We encourage the entire Harker community to participate to help us gather as much information as possible,” said Yager. “Your voices will help Harker continue to be the best it can be for our students and community.”