Harker sent 28 instrumentalists to the California Association for Music Education (CMEA) Solo and Ensemble Festival in mid-March and earned more Command Performance and Superior ratings at Saturday’s festival than any other school participating!
Harker was well represented with standout performances by Cole Manaster, Dylan Qian and Cindy Tay, all grade 11; Patricia Huang and Katherine Woodruff, both grade 10; Dennis Moon and Daniel Pak, both grade 9, all of whom earned Superior ratings.
Superior/Command Performance ratings, the highest given at the festival, were earned by Arthur Oung, grade 4, Jeffrey Kwong and Andrew Lee, both grade 11; Albert Chen and Nayeon Kim, both grade 10; and Krishan Kumar, grade 9.
Other participants included seniors Jasmine Nee, Catherine Stiles and Jason Young; juniors Vivian Li, Nandita Krishna, Dwight Payne, Gene Wong and Evan Yao; sophomores Rohan Chandra and Lydia Werthen; and freshmen Meena Chetty, Nathan Dhablania, Sahithya Prakash, Renu Singh and Andrew Wang.
Ben Tien, grade 12, is working towards becoming the next YouTube/Internet sensation with some great music videos he and family members have been posting. His videos have over 1 million views and he has 5,400+ subscribers. Tien is a member of the Upper School Jazz Band, a member of the 2010 homecoming court and, obviously, loves the limelight. Check out one of his latest efforts, a sweet rendition of Colbie Caillat’s “I Do.” In this outing, Tien draws in brother Josh, grade 10; sister Sarah, grade 6; and their mom, Joyce, and adds piquant comments in pop ups. Just plain fun!
In mid-February the 19th annual U.S. Open Music Competition (USOMC) was held in Oakland. The USOMC, with over 900 participants (mostly pianists), is one of the largest music competitions in the country. Students traveled from as far as China to compete in different levels and categories. Several students from Harker participated, winning a number of accolades. Unless noted, all categories are for the piano.
Bobby Bloomquist, grade 4, third place, treasury of romantic – junior (ruby), “Waltz in A Minor, Op. 124, #4,” by Schumann; Andy Semenza, grade 5, first place, showcase piano duet & ensemble – intermediate, sketches: “Musketeers and Toreadors,” by Gavrillin. Semenza and his partner, Andy Sheng (who does not attend Harker) were selected as one of the outstanding gold medalists of 2011 at the Prize Winners’ Concert. Semenza also won first place, treasury of contemporary – pre-senior (diamond), “Prelude #24, Op. 34,” by Shostakovich. Marcus Chen, grade 5, fourth place, treasury of romantic – junior (diamond), “Andante con moto (untitled) in F Major #26, Op. 68,” by Schumann.
Jonathan Dai, grade 7, third place, showcase piano duet & ensemble – intermediate, “Slavonic Dance #2 in E Minor, Op. 72,” by Dvorak.
Helen Wu, grade 8, second place, showcase violin concerto (ruby), “Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, third movement,” by Mendelssohn; Andrew Jin, grade 8, third place treasury of contemporary – pre-senior (diamond), “Prelude #10, Op. 34,” by Shostakovich. Billy Bloomquist, grade 8, fourth place, open solo 5B, “Sonata in G Major Hob XVI:27 Presto, third movement,” by Haydn.
Vikram Sundar, grade 9, second place, showcase piano solo – intermediate (opal), “Impromptu #1 in Ab Major, Op. 29,” by Chopin and “Sonata #2 in F Major (Allegro), Op.10,” by Beethoven. Sundar also took third place in open concerto – intermediate, “Concerto #12 K.414 in A Major (Allegro),” by Mozart. Paulomi Bhattacharya, grade 10, second place, treasury of classical – advanced, “Sonata in C, Op.13, Grave-molto allegro – first movement,” by Beethoven.
Albert Wu, grade 11, second place, showcase piano solo – senior (sapphire), “Sonata #23 in F Minor, Op. 57, first movement,” by Beethoven and “Prelude in C Major, BWV870″ by J.S. Bach. Wu also took second place in treasury of romantic – advanced (diamond), “Polonaise in Ab Major, Op.53,” by Chopin.
The list of Harker participants was provided to us by a generous parent. Winners are not listed on the USOMC site by school and we apologize if anyone has been left off this list. If your child participated in the 2011 USOMC, please send information to news@harker.org and we will gladly add it to the article.
Renowned cellist/trombonist/composer Dana Leong came to Harker in early March to hold a workshop with upper school music students. Leong is known for hi hip-hop-jazz-electronics fusion and has received much critical acclaim and draws enthusiastic audiences worldwide.
Leong was accompanied by an MC named iLLspokiNN (sic), a member of Leon’s group Milk and Jade. “The master class involved Dana on trombone, cello and vocals (beat boxing) and his MC,” said Dave Hart, middle school music teacher, who arranged for the visit.
About 30 students participated in the master class, held in Nichols Hall. The pair started with one of Leong’s compositions. “It was impressive because the two of them made it sound like a large ensemble,” Hart said. “Dana played his trombone into a microphone that went through several sound modification devices to create different effects. He also used an electronic cello to produce another array of sound effects while iLLspokiNN rapped over the thematic melodies. They were both accompanied by drum beats that Dana created on his computer.
“What makes Dana unique as a musician is that he performs on both the cello and trombone in a wide selection of musical styles,” Hart continued. “Milk and Jade represents Dana playing a more main stream hip hop sound. He also is trained as a classical and jazz musician with a double major from Manhattan School of Music in classical cello and jazz trombone. We were very lucky to have Dana share his musicianship with the Harker students. I actually knew him throughout high school and we used to play together all the time. He has become such a great musician. He also discussed the music business with the students and shared how he manages to be a full-time musician.”
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 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.
The upper school dance production, a yearly celebration of dance with choreography by upper school dance teachers and students, was presented in late January. This year’s production, “Be-A-Muse(d),” was designed by artistic director Laura Rae as an investigation of inspiration and creative processes in the natural world.
“Be-A-Muse(d)”heavily showcased technology to tell its story, with twin projector screens flanking the Blackford stage, reflecting a series of breathtaking panoramas and metropolitan vignettes.
This year’s production drew its music from a panoply of popular, classical, cultural and expressive sources, making room for contemporary bands like Muse and Temper Trap alongside a Hans Zimmer soundtrack, Charles Lingus’ jazz and Niña Pastori’s flamenco.
Student dancers wore shimmering, futuristic outfits that reflected the stage lights, and one memorable moment featured a musical number composed entirely from the startup sounds of a Windows computer.
The production reached its apex in the rendition of the heartbreaking song “This Bitter Earth.” There, dancers in dusty, brown, wrinkled costumes – like decaying leaves in autumn – danced a dipping, worn-down ode, an illustration of the death required for seasonal rebirth.
“Be-A-(Muse)d”was choreographed by teachers Laura Rae, Karl Kuehn, Amalia Vasconi and Adrian Bermudez, along with students Carmen Das-Grande, Katie Forsberg, Nidhi Gandhi, Amiritha Minisandram, Daisy Mohrman, Naomi So, Kenny Wong, Erica Woolsey, all grade 12; Sarika Asthana, Sonya Chalaka, Sarah Howells, Margaret Krackeler, all grade 11; and Tiphaine Delepine, Michaela Kastelman, Molly Wolfe, all grade 10.
The 2011 Winter Concert on Jan. 14 brought together groups from all three campuses for a special two-part show at the Blackford Theater. With eight groups performing, the concert provided a well-rounded view of the talents of Harker’s many instrumentalists.
The Lower School String Ensemble, directed by Toni Woodruff, began the show with their versions of “Sword Dance” by Bob Phillips and “Bach Country Fiddles.” The Lower School Orchestra and Lower School Jazz Ensemble, both directed by Louis Hoffman, then followed, performing a number of popular pieces, including the orchestra’s performance of Strauss’ “Radetzky March” and the jazz ensemble’s rendition of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music.”
Directed by David Hart, who also directed the Grade 6 Orchestra and the Grade 7-8 Orchestra, the Middle School Jazz Band played well-known tunes such as “The Saints Go Marching In” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train.” The Grade 6 Orchestra’s set included the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” and a rousing performance of the famous “James Bond Theme” by Monty Norman. Grades 7 and 8 played “Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity” from Holst’s “The Planets” and concluded with “New World, Mvt. I” from Dvorák’s “Symphony No. 9.”
The Harker School Jazz Band and The Harker School Orchestra, upper school groups directed by Chris Florio, closed the evening. The jazz band was joined by two special guests from Tamagawa Gakuen, Miyu Kondo on tenor saxophone and Marina Saito on baritone saxophone. They performed such tunes as “Bones For Basie” by English composer Alan Hare and the rollicking “You Can Have It” by Morgan Ames and James Foster.
After a brief intermission, the upper school orchestra concluded the concert with their performances of pieces by Verdi, Schubert and Brahms. Their performance of Saint-Saëns’ foreboding “Danse Bacchanale,” from “Samson and Dalila,” brought the show to an exhilarating close.
Upper school vocal group Bel Canto was joined by several friends for the annual WinterSong concert on Jan. 21 in the Nichols Hall auditorium. Directed by Catherine Snider, Bel Canto kicked off with “Everybody Rejoice,” from the musical “The Wiz,” followed by a version of Mozart’s “Ave Verum” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” from the musical “Hair.”
The next phase of the concert featured a number of impressive solo performances by Harker Conservatory certificate candidates, including guitarist Nidhi Gandhi, grade 12, playing “Rondo, Op. 48” by Fernando Sor; Allika Walvekar, grade 12, singing the Weill/Gershwin piece “My Ship”; Catherine Stiles, grade 12, performing a Scarlatti piece on the harp; and junior Charles Levine performing an original piano piece, titled “Winter.”
For the final portion, Bel Canto once again gathered onstage, singing “Ose Shalom,” a traditional Hebrew text set to music by John Leavitt, and the traditional spiritual “Shine on Me.”
This January, Harker’s entire grade 5 class – with a little help from a few talented upper school technical theater students and a cadre of adventurous teachers – took part in multiple performances of the musical “Go West,” by John Jacobson and Roger Emerson.
The musical, a fantastical retelling of the Gold Rush billed as “A Musical Celebration of America’s Westward Expansion,” served as a shared meditation on the origins of Northern California. It was further personalized with several added scenes by performing arts teacher Jennifer Cowgill which framed the story’s narrative as a fifth grader’s presentation to his classmates, and by a new scene in which our heroes run into a tribe of Native Americans.
That scene, written by Cowgill, history teacher Jared Ramsey and math teacher Pat Walsh, featured Ramsey and Walsh alongside teachers Shital Ashar, Joe Chung, Joe Connolly, Kristin Giammona, Shelby Guarino, Cathy Le, Katie Molin, Eileen Schick and Tobias Wade as members of the Nisenan Tribe in the Sierra Mountains, who teach the young adventurers and explorers how to use the land.
Cowgill also served as the director and musical director, and with more than 120 students, she created rich crowd scenes that humanized the extensive palate of 1800s American social life, placing crowds of cowboys, belles, reporters, journalists, sailors, doctors, businessmen, moguls, policemen, train conductors, mayors and politicians all side by side, not to mention one or two horses and cows.
The image of so many actors on one stage, sharing the story, is both rare and striking, and as Cowgill could no doubt attest, bringing more than 100 young students together towards a common purpose is no easy feat, even before they are asked to pour their hearts out in song. Yet, as Cowgill said, “They are singing two- and three-part harmonies in a number of songs in the show. This is very impressive for a group of over 100 fifth graders.”
Indeed, all of the entrances, exits and movements of the production were tied to music, and the show began as a pantomime. Not only that, most of the student-actors remained onstage for the majority of the show. “This would be incredibly challenging for even older students to learn, and they have done it, much to my surprise, quite well,” said Cowgill.
Students from the lower, middle and upper schools were eager to pitch in. Teacher Danny Dunn’s grade 5 technical theater class was stage crew, handling props and directing traffic behind the scenes. Dunn’s middle school technical theater class also devised one of the key design features of the show: an abstraction of a locomotive formed by the rhythmic churning of trunks, wool blankets, a rusted hoe, a lantern and more objects ripped from the era that together composed the ultra-theatrical rendition of an early train.
Meanwhile, three upper school students, Araby Martin, Michael Prutton and Christophe Pellissier, all grade 12, pitched in their time to realize the production. Prutton handled responsibilities as the assistant lighting designer and then the light and video operator during the show. Pellissier served as the sound operator, and Martin worked as assistant stage manager.
Even the show’s program owes a debt to student contribution: fifthgrader Kaitlin Hsu, who also took part in the performance, did the illustration for the program’s cover.
As impressive as the show’s production was, Cowgill was keen on noting the importance of the process to the students’ learning experience and personal development, pointing out that the shared artistic journey helped the students to learn skills of bravery and self-expression, methods of collaboration with a team, and lessons in the cultivation of empathy.
“The process of rehearsing for a show allows them to take risks and share creativity, work with others, and develop consideration for the people with whom they interact every day,” Cowgill wrote in her program note – skills that will serve the students well in whatever their futures bring. “By being involved in this, they are beginning to develop life skills that stretch beyond the classroom.”