Upper school vocalists and the ensemble Camerata represented Harker extremely well at the California Music Educators Association (CMEA) Solo and Ensemble Festival on March 12 at San Jose State University.
Students are required to prepare a classical piece to present to a judge, who listens to them and offers critique and advice, much like a one-on-one master class. The judge fills out a comprehensive score sheet with comments which the students keep, and assigns soloists and groups a rank: superior, excellent, good, fair or needs improvement. At the judge’s discretion, a command performance ranking may be added on to a superior, indicating truly outstanding work.
Harker’s musicians were fortunate in their judge this year, a retired voice teacher from the Sacramento area, whose thoughtful insights and gentle humor gave them tremendous confidence and useful tips. For Harker’s Conservatory students, the CMEA festivals are really about these encounters with experts, rather than the scores they receive, and several singers noted how useful the judge’s comments were.
Command performance superiors were awarded to Michelle Holt and Vrinda Goel, grade 12; Katie Marcus Reker, grade 11; and Nina Sabharwal, grade 10. Ashima Agrawal, grade 11, received a superior. Others participating in the festival were seniors Mallika Dhaliwal and Shireen Moshkelani, and juniors Govi Dasu, Sebastian Herscher, Alex Najibi, Bridget Nixon and Lucy Xu. Members of Camerata are Timothy Chou, Mallika Dhaliwal, Ram Seeni, grade 12; Govi Dasu, Sebastian Herscher, grade 11; Cristina Jerney, Nina Sabharwal, Indu Seeni, Pooja Shah, Wendy Shwe, Alice Tsui and Lydia Werthen, grade 10.
Students Wendy Shwe, grade 10 and Diane Villadsen, grade 12, and faculty members Susan Nace and Catherine Snider provided piano accompaniment for the singers.
The winners of the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search were announced Tuesday, and although Harker’s two finalists, Rohan Mahajan and Nikhil Parthasarathy, both grade 12, were not among top 10 winners, we are tremendously proud of their accomplishment in making it to the finals in Washington, D.C.
Harker was the only school in the U.S. to have more than one finalist, and this year’s contest marked the first time California surpassed New York for the largest number of finalists, with a total of 11 students among the 40 who traveled to Washington for the final round of the competition.
Harker extends its warmest congratulations to all 11 members of the California contingent, especially Evan O’Dorney, 17, of Danville, named the first-place winner of the $100,000 prize for his project, a mathematical comparison of two methods of estimating the square root of an integer. We further extend accolades to the remaining 29 finalists for their impressive application to their projects.
O’Dorney was one of three California students to make the top 10, out of the 1,744 entries from high school seniors nationwide. Selena Li, 17, from Fair Oaks, took fifth place and was awarded $30,000, and San Diego’s Xiaoyu “Carrie” Cao, 17 took eighth and won $20,000. Go science!
Sarina Vij, grade 10, took the first place title at the Miss India Star Scholarship Pageant 2011. The event was held on Jan. 28 at the Airport Garden Hotel in San Jose, and was organized by India Waves TV Network and the Swagat Foundation.
The competition was open to any 14-24-year-old student with Indian heritage, and consisted of four rounds – modeling in Eastern and Western outfits, a talent performance, and an IQ round with a question and answer session.
For taking first place in the pageant, Vij was awarded a scholarship of $5,000 to be used toward her college education, as well as an internship with the India Waves TV Network.
The pageant will be broadcast on the India Waves TV Network in all 50 states.
In February, the Lip Sync show provided some welcome entertainment to grade 4 and grade 5 students. The latest installment in this yearly tradition featured performances of songs by Beyonce, Drake, The Supremes and more. As the title of the show suggests, the performers lip synced to the songs while performing entertaining and often hilarious routines onstage.
The show was performed and produced by grade 5 students, teachers and staff, who organized the show in addition to auditioning the performers and providing technical support. Lower school technical theater teacher Danny Dunn and dance teacher Gail Palmer provided additional support behind the scenes.
One stand-out number featured students Anastasia Cheplyansky, Amanda Clausen, Nicole Chang, Stephanie Swanson and Shelby Guarino, grade 5 English teacher, performing The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” in candy-themed outfits. Taylor Kohlmann and Olivia Long also wore eye-catching attire during their pantomime to The Supremes’ “Stop in the Name of Love.” In one of the most memorable numbers, Neeraj Aggarwal and Harrison Buss strutted onto the stage with a dolled-up Joe Connolly, lower school dean of students, to the strains of the Beyonce hit “Single Ladies.”
The creativity and hard work of Harker students translated into significant success in this year’s Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Student artist Vladimir Sepetov, grade 12, won a Gold Key, two Silver Keys and two honorable mentions at the regional level and was awarded a Silver Medal at the national level in the mixed media category. Jessica Lin, grade 11, won a silver medal in the Novel Writing category. Junior Jessica Shen received two honorable mentions in the regional competition. As national winners, both Lin and Sepetov were invited to attend a special ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York City to receive their awards.
In the writing portion, Cindy Tay, grade 11, was recently named a regional Gold Key medalist in the personal essay category. Three other student writers – Emily Wang, Justin Gerard and Shelby Rorabaugh, all grade 10 – received Merit awards.
Held every year by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards contest recognizes high school students in the United States, Canada and in overseas American schools with interests in the visual and literary arts. This year’s contest had 185,000 entries.
The tenth annual Diana Nichols Harker Math Invitational for grades 6 to 8, held March 5, was a highly successful event with 21 local schools participating and about 350 contestants taking part in the individual and team contests. There were 56 competing and five non-competing teams for the team contest. This contest was also the first to include overseas schools, with competitors from the World Foreign Language Middle School in Shanghai, China, and Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement’s Viveka School of Excellence in Saragur, India.
Harker placed well in the individual events in every grade level. Grade 6 competitors David Zhu and Kai-Siang An took first and second, respectively, in their category. At the grade 7 level, Allison Wang took first place, as did Menghua Wu at the grade 8 level.
In the team contests, Harker’s grade 6 team of An, Soham Khan, Angela Kim, Aneesh Samineni, Manah Shah, Peter Wu and David Zhu earned second place. Grade 7 students Grace Guan, Vineet Kosaraju, Anthony Luo, Jonathan Ma, Allison Wang, Michael Zhao and Jessica Zhu also finished second.
A dozen alumni came out to mingle and meet other potential movers and shakers in late February in Washington D.C., at the Urbana Restaurant and Wine Bar in hip Dupont Circle. Administrators Dan Hudkins, director of instructional technology K-12; Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs; and Butch Keller, upper school head, joined the group, which enjoyed food and wine while swapping stories and laughs about working at acronym-ed government agencies like the DoD (Department of Defense), DOT (Department of Treasury), NASA, NIH (National Institutes of Health) and NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health). One alumna revealed the real story behind the fabled Jeans Rebellion of 2002, which had a major influence on Harker’s current dress code policy as it relates to jeans, so watch for that story!
On Feb. 27, Harker’s Quiz Kids team, coached by Bradley Stoll, upper school math teacher, defeated Daly City’s Westmoor High School in their latest contest in front of their largest audience yet. Olivia Zhu and Richard Chiou, both grade 12, and Vikram Sundar, grade 9, scored a total of 1,340 points in two games, and may enter the final round as the fourth or fifth seed. Their next game takes place Sat., March 26.
The girls swim team opened their season with a 110-60 victory over Notre Dame in early March. Harker won all 11 events, qualifying for CCS in eight of them. Senior Jessica Khojasteh, junior Katie Siegel and freshman Manon Audebert each won two individual events, and Kimberly Ma, grade 9 and Amie Chien, grade 10, each won one event. All three relays won and qualified for CCS, with the 400 free relay of Ma, Audebert, Siegel and Khojasteh setting a school record with a time of 3:45.67.
The boys tennis team defeated Pinewood and King’s Academy last week to improve to 4-0 overall. Varsity hosts Crystal Springs tomorrow and travels to rival Sacred Heart Prep on Thursday.
The boys golf team tallied three victories last week, two against King’s Academy and one against Pinewood. Against Pinewood, Maverick McNealy, grade 10, earned his second straight medalist honors by shooting an even par 33. Classmate Kyle Roter continues his strong putting performance, finishing with a 38. Also contributing to the match were freshman Vik Bhagat’s 44, junior Nathan Sowards’ 46 and senior Ram Seeni’s 47.
Softball went 1-1 last week, defeating Andrew Hill 13-3 and losing at Monte Vista Christian 7-1. Against Hill, Sonia Gupta, grade 10, went 3 for 5 and Alison Rugar, grade 10, pitched 13 strikeouts. Rugar has 29 strikeouts in the season so far. The girls have home games Thurs. and Fri., March 17-18.
Boys volleyball had three matches last week, losing to Mountain View and Westmont, but came from two games down to defeat Monta Vista 3-2 Friday. Senior Zach Mank dominated at the net in games four and five while classmate Jacob Chappell led the team in kills.
Baseball lost to Fremont and Liberty last week. Against Fremont, Greg Cox, grade 12, went 2 for 3 at the plate. At the JV level, David Dominguez, grade 11, pitched all nine innings and drove in the winning run against Gilroy last week to earn the 3-2 victory.
Girls lacrosse lost to Menlo-Atherton and Leland last week. Senior Monisha Appalaraju scored against Leland.
Track and field opens their league season March 16 … wish them well!
The Harker School’s yearly middle school dance performance, Dance Jamz, won over an excited audience for two weekend nights in early March at the Blackford Theater. Under the direction of middle school dance teacher Gail Palmer, along with co-directors Amalia Vasconi and Karl Kuehn, a collection of approximately 150 dancers from grade 6-8 performed an eclectic mix of dance styles in front of a vocal and visibly thrilled crowd of family, faculty and friends.
For one fast-paced hour, dancers moved through seventeen musical numbers, leading off with a heart-pumping, vibrant rendition of ACDC’s “Thunderstruck,” eliciting cheers from the first minute of their performance as sharp, in sync moves sent ponytails flying in front of a wall of color and light.
As the performances continued, the speakers cycled through early rock and breezy boogies, past contemporary hip-hop and club mixes, into soulful serenades and pop ballads. In one memorable sequence, set to songwriter and vocalist Sara Bareilles’ “Gravity,” dancers took turns performing delicate, graceful solos, extending across a central chair, as their collaborators moved around and behind them.
A few numbers later, a routine of contemporary pop artist Mike Posner’s “Cooler Than Me” began with a silhouetted tableau, in which the dark figures of eight dancers were isolated against a bright orange backdrop of light.
Dance Jamz is the culmination of many months of work for the dancers, who have taken classes in either jazz, modern, lyrical, ballet, tap or hip-hop, and then built on their foundation with weeks of rehearsal. Nearly one quarter of the performers were boys, who had three numbers of their own, including a contemporary hip-hop performance to Maroon 5’s “If I Never See Your Face Again,” and a heavily-costumed, flashy performance of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll.”
The dances also showcased some of the performers’ hidden talents: one number featured acrobatic cartwheels, and another saw the dancers take turns channeling pop stars as they lip synced. As the production came to a close, the student-performers were greeted with an echoing round of cheers, a fitting finale after sixty minutes of hooting and hollering.