This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
United Voices
“United Voices,” Harker’s annual celebration of vocal music, returned to the Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater in early February. The concert featured a wide range of vocal groups from the lower, middle and upper schools, performing classical pieces, renditions of modern pop songs, selections from musicals, traditional songs from various cultures and much more. The Bucknall Choir greeted the evening audience with its rendition of the enduring hymn “Ubi Caritas” before making way for the middle school choirs to perform the Zambian traditional “Bonse Aba.” The middle school groups then performed individually. Other highlights included the upper school women’s group Cantilena singing Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria,” show choir Downbeat’s rollicking version of the Brian Setzer hit “Rock This Town” and the evening’s finale, in which all performers gathered on stage to sing “Circle of Life,” from the classic Disney film “The Lion King.”
Lower School Singers Greet the Holiday Season
A huge cast of performers from grades 2 and 3 took the stage at the Bucknall Theater on Dec. 18 for the annual Holiday Show. Dozens of students, directed by music teacher Carena Montany, sang a variety of songs to celebrate the holiday season, from classics “Jolly Old St. Nicholas,” “O Chanukah, O Chanukah” and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” to newer fare including “Let It Go,” from the hit film “Frozen.”
The show ran smoothly thanks to the hard work of technical director Danny Dunn and her grade 5 technical theater class, as well as deck manager Ken Boswell and stage manager Stephanie Woolsey. Choreography was done by Kimberly Teodoro, and Melissa Lin and Toni Woodruff provided accompaniment on piano and violin, respectively.
Annual Grade 1 Show Celebrates the Spirit of the Holidays
Days before the start of winter break, the homeroom students of Imelda Kusuma, Cindy Proctor, Larissa Weaver and Rita Stone gathered for the holiday show, titled “My Favorite Time of Year.” Directed by Carena Montany, the concert featured students singing holiday favorites such as “Frosty the Snow Man,” “Jingle Bells” and “Spin a Little Dreidl,” with students doing narration between songs. The performance of “Little Saint nick” featured several dancers, with choreography by Jessalyn Espiritu.
Instrumental accompaniment was provided by pianist Melissa Lin and violinist Toni Woodruff. Danny Dunn and her grade 5 technical theater class served as the technical director and crew, respectively.
‘Wild’ Upper School Show Features 130 Dancers
“Welcome to the Jungle,” the title of this year’s upper school dance production, took audiences into the wild for a jungle-themed romp that featured a cast of more than 130 dancers performing in sync to songs by artists including Guns n’ Roses, Phil Collins, Bjork and Lil Jon. The production was a showcase for student choreographers as well as dancers, with seniors Jacqui Villarreal, Sindhu Ravuri, Ryan Pachauri, Darby Millard, Erika Olsen, Andrew Zhang, noel Banerjee and Ashir Bansal, and juniors Emily Pan, Ankita Sharma, Helena Dworak and Allison Wang choreographing routines.
Singers Perform with State and National Honor Choirs
Five Upper School singers successfully auditioned for the California American Choral Directors Association’s All-State Honor Choir. Ishanya Anthapur, grade 12, was named to the mixed choir; Madhu Karra and Sahana narayanan, both grade 11, earned spots in the women’s choir; and Ashwin Rao, grade 10, and Gurutam Thockchom, grade 11, will join the men’s choir. Earlier this year, Anthapur and Narayanan were named to ACDA’s Regional Honor Choir. Rehearsals began in March for a special performance at the First United Methodist Church of Pasadena on March 28.
At the American Choral Directors Association’s national conference in late February, Karli Sharp, grade 8, performed with the Middle School national Girls Honor Choir, conducted by Elena Sharkova, chorus master of Symphony Silicon Valley and an expert on the choral music of Russia.
Winter Concert Showcases Middle and Upper School Musicians
Middle and upper school music groups gave their first concert of the new year on Jan. 16 at the 2015 Winter Concert at the Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater. Performers included the two middle school jazz bands, the Grade 6 Orchestra, the Grades 7-8 Orchestra, The Harker School Jazz Band and The Harker School Orchestra. Among the many highlights was a special appearance by the middle school chamber groups, which performed both modern and classical pieces, including works by Bach and Green Day. The Harker Lab Band also made an appearance, playing a series of jazz selections by Duke Ellington, Fred Sturm and more. The Harker School Orchestra closed the evening, playing the entirety of Dvořák’s “Symphony no. 9” (popularly known as the “new World Symphony”) and Giuseppe Verdi’s “Overture to La Forza del Destino.”
Fifth Graders Bring Pinocchio to Life
This year’s grade 5 show, held Jan. 29-30 at the Bucknall Theater, brought together a huge cast of 130 students for “no Strings Attached,” an updated musical adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s classic novel “The Adventures of Pinocchio.” Directed by Kellie Binney-Smart, the production followed the familiar tale of a wooden puppet’s quest to become a real boy and the challenges he encounters along the way, teaching him the value of friendship and honesty. The massive task of directing so many students could not have been undertaken without the help of a skilled and dedicated crew, which included Danny Dunn and her lower school technical theater class, costumer Carol Clever, stage manager Ken Boswell, deck managers Jordan Wong and Daniel Clark ’10, scenic artist Whitney Pintello, microphone managers Randy LeGris and Oanhna Ly and choreographer Jessalyn Espiritu.
Orchestra Takes First in Portland Festival
The Harker Orchestra took top honors at the northwest Orchestra Festival held near Portland, Ore., March 6 and 7! The musicians performed so well that “judges decided that a final round was not necessary to determine the winner, despite us competing as the smallest school in our division!” said Chris Florio, orchestra director. The annual middle and high school event is held at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, adjacent to Portland.
Harker competed in Division IVF (full orchestra). “We were actually supposed to be in Division IIIF (schools with 1,300 students or fewer), but I was advised to compete in Division IV (1,301 students or more) since it’s more competitive.”
Florio thinks it likely Harker received the highest score of any group at the festival. “There were around 40 or more groups there,” he noted. “One judge gave us a perfect score. The orchestra director from the University of Portland was one of our judges, and he half jokingly offered our entire orchestra admission to his school.”
All in all, it was tremendous experience. “As a last minute honor, the festival director asked us to perform a command performance for the entire group of attendees,” said Florio. “He felt we were so exceptional that it would be a great experience for the other groups and judges to hear us.”
Dancers Perform at London New Year’s Day Parade
Seniors Darby Millard and Noel Banerjee headed to London in late December to perform in the London new Year’s Day parade. “The two dancers earned an invitation this past summer while at the United Spirit Association Dance Camp, for their exceptional technique and performance skills,” said Karl Kuehn, upper school dance teacher. Aside from their performance in the parade, the students also went sightseeing around The Big Smoke and caught a performance of the musical “Wicked.”
Senior Earns Place in National Orchestra – Again
Helen Wu, grade 12, has landed a spot on the national Youth Orchestra for the second consecutive year. “This group has quickly become the country’s premier honor for high school orchestral musicians,” said Chris Florio, upper school music teacher and orchestra director. The orchestra will embark on a tour of China over the summer, performing with famed Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit and pianist Yundi Li and premiering a new work by composer Tan Dun, the Grammy- and Academy Award-winning composer of the score for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
Harker Instrumentalists Named to All-State Honor Bands
In January, several Harker students were named to the California Band Directors Association All-State honor ensembles. Trumpeter Jack Farnham, grade 10, and clarinetists Kristen Park and Cynthia Hao, both grade 11, successfully auditioned for spots in the high school band, while clarinetists Nishka Ayyar, grade 8, and Jenny Shaw, grade 7, were named to the junior high school concert band. The students performed with their respective ensembles at the California Music Educators Association Conference in Fresno, held Feb. 19-22, rehearsing with students and performing for mu- sic educators from across California.
This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
In January, Student Directed Showcase put on its 14th show, further cementing its status as one of the Harker Conservatory’s key programs.
The class, available to students who are selected after a thorough review process, puts students in the director’s chair and charges them with handling all aspects of putting on a show, including casting, blocking (positioning and movement of the actors on stage), visual elements, promotion and everything in between.
“The college counselors tell me it’s up there with one or two APs in terms of the load that a student will have when they choose to direct,” said performing arts department chair Laura Lang-Ree, who runs the class. “If a student chooses to direct, they often will know [of their interest by] seventh or eighth grade. They’ve been coming to SDS or they’ve heard about SDS and they have this passion for leading something, though they may not really know what it is.”
Lang-Ree got the idea for SDS while in graduate school. “I’ve always had a passion for all different types of performing, from dance to instrumental to theater, but when I took [a] directing class, all the light bulbs went on,” she recalled.
After earning a master’s in acting with an emphasis in directing, Lang-Ree began teaching performing arts at the upper school, where she set the wheels in motion for the first Student Directed Showcase. “Too often, in schools and in colleges too, the focus is on one area. Usually it’s performance, and there isn’t a whole lot of attention given to all of the other many, many areas of art that you can not only fall in love with but have a career in,” she said.
Like Lang-Ree, many Harker students have discovered their interest in directing through acting. “I remember my freshman year experience in SDS so clearly,” said senior Caroline Howells, who directed “Almost, Maine” at this year’s SDS and was one of four directors in the class. “I have such fond memories of it, and I’ve done it every year since, and when it came meme to apply to be a director I said, ‘Sure, let’s do this.’”
“I loved my directors, I loved the shows and I loved my characters,” said Zoe Woehrmann, grade 12, director of “Exit” at the most recent SDS. “All of my [fellow] directors ended up becoming huge role models for me.”
The process of selecting directors begins early in the spring semester, when Lang-Ree finds students who are interested in directing a play. “Around March or April, I’ll send them a series of questions to answer in written form and they’ll come and meet with me and we just talk,” she said. After taking a close look at every candidate’s work in the Conservatory, as well as “all the classes that they’ve taken here, leadership that they’ve done inside and outside of Harker,” she receives feedback from school administrators and selects the following year’s directors.
Once the students accept their role as directors, they are given the summer to choose a play, which can be a lengthy but extremely important process. “When you’re going to work on something that intensely and that deeply every single day and you literally can’t stop thinking about it, you’ve got to love it,” said Lang-Ree. “It really has to speak to them.”
Selecting a play proved time-consuming for Howells, who looked at about 50 plays before settling on “Almost, Maine,” a romantic urban fairy tale set in a fictional town. “I read the first scene, the prologue scene, which is very iconic for the show, and I just knew I had to do it,” she said.
“I didn’t actually know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn’t want,” Woehrmann said. “I realized I wanted a heavy ensemble show. I didn’t want one protagonist.” “Exit,” which examines five characters who awaken to find themselves in a theater with no memory of how they arrived, was a perfect fit.
Once the plays are chosen, Lang-Ree meets with the directors to analyze and dissect their plays, which helps them discover what they will be looking for when choosing cast members.
“I think the lion’s share of the academic work is taking these scripts and breaking them apart into the specific acting unit,” said Lang-Ree. “What’s the point of attack? What is the protagonist’s goal? Where is the climax for the production? How does it arc?”
Directors also read one anothers’ plays and offer their own insights. The thorough analysis process gives students “plenty of room to play with their casts and get their interpretation and their feedback,” Lang-Ree said.
About 50 students audition for each play, and the directors work with one another and Lang-Ree to decide who will appear in each production. The entire process takes place in a single evening. “We discuss who is going to be in which production and why, what’s best for the student who’s auditioning, what’s best for the production, and because we know each other so well, usually it’s a pretty collaborative night,” said Lang-Ree.
For some students, the transition from acting to directing can be daunting at times. “It was completely weird for me,” said Woehrmann. “Honestly, when I walked into the first rehearsal and I was the only one there and I was setting everything up and sitting in the director’s chair, I was like, ‘What am I going to say to them?’”
“I always knew that it took a lot to put on a play, but I never realized how much thought and planning goes into every moment. Every scene, every blocking choice, every rehearsal is carefully thought out,” said Grace Hudkins ’08, who directed “The Importance of Being Earnest” in the 2008 production. “You never know what an actor is going to need and you have to be prepared with a ton of tools in your back pocket ready to support whatever gets thrown at you.”
Not surprisingly, the nature of each director’s play results in different directing styles, which can include taking some creative risks. When Woehrmann revealed “Exit’s” surprise ending to cast members after keeping it from them for a period of time, she was relieved that they liked it.
After callbacks with her cast, Howells replaced an entire scene with another one from the play she was directing, which led to some worry about how her actors would handle it. “The first rehearsal I had with them, I actually breathed such a sigh of relief because they actually had pretty good chemistry on stage,” she said. The changes didn’t end there. “If you look at the script of my show, it has very, very specific stage directions, and I pretty much ignored most of them.”
The first-time directors also experienced other challenges that directors face on a project. “With some people in my cast, I wasn’t always quite sure how to communicate with them,” said Howells. “Like, what does this person need in order to get them to the point that I want them to be at? And so definitely with some people it took me longer to find that point, but they all got there in the end.”
Scheduling was another issue. “When you have 10 different people who all have different days where they’re not available, it’s very hard to find time,” Howells said. “And we have our own lives too.
This wasn’t the only thing that I was doing after school.” Because Woehrmann’s “Exit” did not utilize any scenery, she had to get creative with blocking to keep the action from looking too static. “I kind of didn’t want them to be walking aimlessly,” she said. “Because I wanted them to focus on the important parts, but I didn’t want them to be standing still in the middle of the stage not doing anything.”
Moreover, the live setting of a theater production always presents uncertainty. “I was terrified that they were going to forget a line, or that a costume was going to go missing or that a cue wasn’t going to happen. All of these things were constantly going through my head,” Woehrmann said.
“One of the most challenging things about SDS is that you’re not just the director; you’re the stage manager, the set designer, the costume designer, the publicist, the entire production team,” said Hudkins.
Thankfully, the actors’ growth during rehearsals and the confidence they had in the directors were a constant source of inspiration. “When you see people place their trust in you, it makes you care in such a different way than I ever have doing a show,” said Howells. “Having them place so much trust in you, it made make me work harder for them. They’re all my best friends now.”
During discussions with her cast, Woehrmann was pleased to discover that they had thrown themselves fully into their roles and had spotted aspects of their characters’ development that she hadn’t noticed.
Despite the challenges that come with directing a show, the directors find the experience to be highly rewarding. “The Thursday before we had an audience, when we ran through the whole show, I started crying,” Woehrmann said. “Because after it ended, it was just such a relief and we were so proud of our casts and that everything had come together.”
“Being a student director was challenging, it was exhausting, and it pushed me to my breaking point and beyond,” said Hudkins. “But it was also probably my favorite thing I did at Harker, and one of my proudest accomplishments.”
SDS also develops skills that extend far beyond the theater and into a wide range of careers. “Of course it’s a highly artistic process,” said Lang-Ree, “but everything that they’re doing, they’re literally going to use from now on: how to plan a meeting, how to handle a hard conversation, how to organize advertising for your event and make it successful, how to build a team that respects and likes you, how to make phone calls, how to put in receipts, how to go shopping for things.”
“It makes me more confident going forward in college and if I want to do auditions during college, then I’ll be able to handle all of that,” said Woehrmann.
Howells felt similarly. “In the college program I’m going to, I know I’m going to have a lot of different opportunities to act and sing and direct and other things like that, and so I hope that this is just the first show of many,” she said.
Hudkins, who graduated from Mount Holyoke College and now teaches drama at an international school in South Korea, attributes her trajectory since graduation to her time as an SDS director. “When I got to Mount Holyoke, I was already poised in my first year to take on major roles in production teams in our student theater organization, and I became involved practically by accident,” she recalled. Upon graduation, she became an intern at the school where she now works. “I truly believe that you can draw a straight line from SDS to my extensive college theater experience to my current career,” she said.
Upper school vocal group Bel Canto earned an “Excellent” rating at the California Music Educators Association’s Choral Festival in mid-March. The students were evaluated based on criteria including sound quality, technique, musicality and how they expressed song lyrics. They also were shown a short piece of music and given five minutes to learn and perform it for the judges.
“This festival was a really great venue for the students to learn about working toward a collective goal, which is to create a beautiful sound and musical expressiveness as a group,” said upper school music teacher Jennifer Sandusky, who directs Bel Canto. Because groups are not permitted to sing pieces that showcase one performer, the togetherness of the group is especially important. “The achievements they made were because each one of these singers worked together and supported each other.”
An added benefit of appearing at the festival was that it provided valuable experience in performing outside Harker. “After singing for months in my tiny room that isn’t acoustically designed for singing, they had to adjust to hearing themselves in a large auditorium with a concert grand piano supporting them,” Sandusky said. “For the first time, they were able to experience the music in a beautiful concert space, and they had to adjust balance, blend and performance energy accordingly without any rehearsal time in the space.”
Middle and upper school music groups gave their first concert of the new year on Jan. 16 at the 2015 Winter Concert at San Jose’s Mexican Heritage Theater. The grade 6 jazz band got things off to a rollicking start with its version of the traditional spiritual “Down by the Riverside,” followed by Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island.”
Middle school music teacher Dave Hart then directed the grade 6 orchestra in its performance of Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” and Johann Strauss’ “Radetzky March.”
Next up was a series of performances by the middle school chamber groups. The first group – comprising violinists Nilisha Baid, Shalini Rohra and Aditi Vinod; violists Annamma Vazhaeparambil and Mariamma Vazhaeparambil; bassist Anika Fuloria; and trumpeter Arohee Bhoja, all grade 6 – performed their own arrangement of Green Day’s “21 Guns.” The next performers, grade 8 violin duo Constance Horng and Noah Lincke, performed Bach’s “Intervention No. 2.” A special ensemble of Harker private instructors – violinist Pierre Dazin, cellist Natachia Li and bassist Josh Thurston-Milgrom – treated the audience to Thurston-Milgrom’s arrangement of the popular song “Let It Go,” from the film “Frozen.”
The concert then made another excursion to jazz territory with the Middle School Jazz Band’s performances of “Sugar Plum” by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, “Orange Sherbert” by Sammy Nestico and “Chameleon/Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock.
The Grades 7-8 Orchestra was the final middle school group to appear, performing selections from the Harry Potter films and variations on themes by Joseph Haydn and Niccolo Paganini.
Chris Florio directed the first upper school group of the evening, the Lab Band, as it played a selection of jazz pieces, including Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” and “Bernie’s Tune” by Bernie Miller, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
More jazz followed, with The Harker School Jazz Band playing selections such as the Chick Corea classic “Spain,” the Stevie Wonder hit “I Just Called to Say I Love You” and Bill Liston’s “Sitka Shuffle.”
After the intermission, the members of The Harker School Orchestra took their places on stage and began with the second movement of Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphony No. 1.” In one of the evening’s highlights, the orchestra performed entirety of Dvořák’s famous “Symphony No. 9” (popularly known as the “New World Symphony”), before ending with “Overture to La Forza del Destino” by Giuseppe Verdi.
A huge cast of performers from grades 2 and 3 took the stage at the Bucknall Theater on the lower school campus on Dec. 18 for the annual Holiday Show. Dozens of students, directed by music teacher Carena Montany, sang a variety of songs to celebrate the holiday season, from classics “Jolly Old St. Nicholas,” “O Chanukah, O Chanukah” and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” to newer fare including “Let It Go,” from the hit film “Frozen.”
The show ran smoothly thanks to the hard work of technical director Danny Dunn and her grade 5 technical theater class, as well as deck manager Ken Boswell and stage manager Stephanie Woolsey. Choreography was done by Kimberly Teodoro, and Melissa Lin and Toni Woodruff provided accompaniment on piano and violin, respectively.
Days before the start of winter break, the grade 1 homeroom students of Imelda Kusuma, Cindy Proctor, Larissa Weaver and Rita Stone gathered for the Grade 1 Holiday Show, titled “My Favorite Time of Year.” Directed by Carena Montany, the concert featured students singing holiday favorites such as “Frosty the Snow Man,” “Jingle Bells” and “Spin a Little Dreidl,” with students doing narration between songs. The performance of “Little Saint Nick” featured several dancers, with choreography by Jessalyn Espiritu.
Instrumental accompaniment was provided by pianist Melissa Lin and violinist Toni Woodruff. Danny Dunn and her grade 5 technical theater class served as the technical director and crew, respectively.
Members of the Harmonics middle school performance group and Dance Fusion, comprising lower and middle school students, were thrilled to perform at CreaTV San Jose’s 2014 “CreaTiVe Awards Gala,” presented by TiVo, on Jan.10.
The fifth-annual formal evening event took place at the California Theatre in downtown San Jose and is slated to air on channel 30 in San Jose/Campbell on Jan. 17 at 7 p.m.
Dance Fusion instructor Gail Palmer called it “an honor” for the students to be featured in such a high-profile show. Harmonics and Dance Fusion each performed one song during the gala, which pays tribute to Bay Area video makers. A VIP reception preceded the awards show, where winners in 10 categories were announced.
“I thought it was really cool that we got to meet local people in the business,” recalled Harmonics performer Kelsey Wu, grade 8.
Other students said it was fun to be on TV and a great performance opportunity. Grade 8 student Aryana Far called the night “a very different experience from our normal shows.” She added that the audience was very supportive.
Founded in 2007, CreaTV San Jose is a member-based, nonprofit community media center that helps the residents, businesses, schools and organizations in San Jose to effectively communicate their message to a broader audience using our public and education television and Internet channels.
Five Harker singers successfully auditioned for the California American Choral Directors Association’s All-State Honor Choir. Ishanya Anthapur, grade 12, was named to the mixed choir; Madhu Karra and Sahana Narayanan, both grade 11, earned spots on the women’s choir; and Ashwin Rao, grade 10, and Gurutam Thockchom, grade 11, joined the men’s choir. Earlier this year, Anthapur and Narayanan were named to ACDA’s Regional Honor Choir.
Rehearsals are tentatively scheduled to begin in March for a special performance at the First United Methodist Church of Pasadena on March 28.
Prior to his performance at the Harker Concert Series, Milwaukee Symphony Concertmaster and player of the 1715 Lipinski Stradivarius Frank Almond gave a special master class to Harker students in the Nichols Hall auditorium. Almond discussed and taught classical violin techniques to several students, going over concepts such as proper bowing technique, posture and changing the character of notes by holding the bow at various angles.
Harker performing arts groups had a big presence at the Santana Row tree lighting ceremony, “Light Up the Row,” on Nov. 18. Seven groups performed at the event, which was attended by thousands of people. The students practiced for weeks to prepare for the event, and Harker students comprised more of the evening’s performers than those from any other school. This was the first Santana Row tree lighting to feature Vivace, the middle school mixed choir, which performed The Beach Boys’ “Melekalikimaka.” Also present were a variety of middle and upper schools dance groups, including the upper school’s junior varsity and varsity dance squads, the grade 7-8 girls dance group Showstoppers and the grade 7-8 boys dance group High Voltage. Each of the groups performed two sets, including the upper school show choir Downbeat, which did a funny, Tim Burton-esque take on the holiday mainstay “Deck the Halls.”