On Friday night, this year’s Summer @ the Conservatory program completed its three-week camp with a showcase featuring three shows brimming with talent from students, alumni and faculty. The days leading up to the showcase were spent in the classroom working on all aspects of theater craft, from scene study to set building, with workshops in dance, auditions and voice from Los Angeles-based professionals, while afternoons were spent in production for the showcase.
High school-level Conservatory Intensive students were featured in “The Bully Plays,” directed by theater veterans Tony and Tanna Kienitz. Conservatory Presents, directed by Class of 2015 alums Zoë Woehrmann and Madi Lang-Ree, produced two productions: “Daisy Pulls it Off” (Lang-Ree) and “Race to the Saturn Exhibit” (Woehrmann). Lang-Ree and Woehrmann are both graduates of the Harker Conservatory’s certificate program and went on to complete degrees in the arts. Lang-Ree graduated magna cum laude from Chapman University with a B.A. in theater, with departmental honors, and minor in integrated educational studies. She begins work at The Goodman Theater in Chicago this August. Woehrmann recently graduated from New York University with a B.F.A. in drama from the Tisch School of the Arts. Recent Harker graduates Emmy Huchley, Neha Premkumar and Ellie Lang-Ree – also Harker Conservatory graduates – served as production assistants, aiding in the classroom in rehearsals and with design execution.
Laura Lang-Ree, Harker’s K-12 director of performing arts, founded S@tC last year and serves as its artistic director. The program was started following the closing of the California Theatre Center, one of Lang-Ree’s favorite local summer theater offerings. “Our three weeks was such a joy and I loved watching our students grow,” she said. “Being able to work alongside such talented graduates is a teacher’s dream. I’m so proud of everyone involved!”
Senior Ellie Lang-Ree was recently named a finalist in the Steve Silver Foundation and Beach Blanket Babylon “Scholarship for the Arts” competition. This annual contest for Bay Area high school students awards winners in three categories – acting, dancing and singing – with a $15,000 scholarship to put toward their college education. Lang-Ree, a finalist in the singing category, will perform on June 3 at San Francisco’s Club Fugazi for a panel of judges, which includes Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman, actor Will Durst and opera composer Jake Heggie. Congratulations and best of luck!
Just before spring break, the Harker Orchestra traveled to Los Angeles to see a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the world famous Walt Disney Concert Hall and attend workshops by Christopher Russell, conductor for Azusa Pacific University’s Symphony Orchestra, and Glenn Price, director of performing and visual arts at Caltech. They also made a special visit to Disneyland to take part in a Disney Performing Arts Soundtrack Session, in which they sight-read and recorded a portion of the soundtrack to a Disney film under the guidance of industry professionals, who gave them feedback on their work. Following the workshop with Russell, the orchestra gave a special live performance at the Universal Studios 5 Towers Stage.
This year’s upper school spring musical, “Urinetown,” wowed audiences this past weekend at the Patil Theater with its timely satirical tale of political unrest. The cast, who this summer will be the fourth in Harker history to travel to Scotland to appear at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, were fantastic in their roles as the citizens, businesspeople and politicians caught up in the drama of a town in the clutches of a ruthless megacorporation.
The upper school received a visit today from the Langston Hughes Project, a fusion of music, literature and history led by Ron McCurdy, a professor of music at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.
McCurdy first gave a morning lecture on Langston Hughes and the many artists of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Later, the accomplished trumpeter was joined by drummer Mike Mitchell, bassist Giulio Cetto and pianist (and 2001 Harker middle school graduate) Yuma Sung at a special assembly at the Athletic Center, where McCurdy gave a powerful performance of Hughes’ poetic suite “Ask Your Mama,” reciting and singing Hughes’ lines as images and film reels of figures and events of African-American history were displayed behind the group.
Members of the upper school’s Jazz Band later attended a special master class given by McCurdy, where they performed Cannonball Adderley’s “Work Song” and received his feedback. McCurdy advised students to use their sheet music as a roadmap and avoid scanning it too much as they played. He also told them to learn the history behind the pieces they learn: “If you understand the history of why you’re doing what you’re doing, it’ll make a whole lot more sense to you.”
McCurdy also worked with the Downbeat show choir, which had been learning Nina Simone’s version of the 1960s show tune “Feeling Good.” After hearing their rendition, McCurdy coached the singers supporting the soloists to do more than simply sing the notes in their part. “Sing like you mean it,” he said, referring to the optimism in Simone’s performance. “I’ve got to hear that joy, that optimism.”
Four upper school students were recently selected to be members of California All-State Honor Ensembles, and will perform at next week’s California All-State Music Education Conference, Feb. 14-17 in Fresno. Clarinetist Allison Yen, grade 11, and string bassist Anika Fuloria, grade 10, will both perform with Symphonic Band. Junior Kai-Ming Ang will play French horn for the Concert Band and cellist Rachel Broweleit, also a junior, will perform with the Symphony Orchestra. All four students are members of the upper school’s Harker School Orchestra, directed by Dave Hart.
Senior Kelsey Wu was recently selected to be a part of Jazz in the Neighborhood’s Emerging Artists Program, which connects young Bay Area jazz talents with mentorship and performance opportunities with professional musicians. Wu, who performs with The Harker School Jazz Band and the show choir Downbeat, earned a spot in the program after a rigorous selection process that required applicants to submit videos of their performances or schedule live auditions. Those selected for the program are expected to have a five-song repertoire they can perform from memory, along with the ability to improvise on those songs as well as several jazz standards. Wu’s first performance as part of the Emerging Artists Program will be with the Dahveed Behroozi Trio at the California Jazz Conservatory on Feb. 6. at 7:30 p.m.
Founded in 2013, Jazz in the Neighborhood is a Bay Area-based organization that presents performances by local professional jazz artists and supports working musicians by arranging fair compensation for their work.
The upper school show choir, Downbeat, was recently accepted into the 2019 Varsity Vocals International Championship of High School A Cappella, a global competition highlighting high school a cappella groups. They will travel to Portland, Ore., in January to compete in the quarterfinal round. Varsity Vocals organizes a cappella competitions for high school and college students that attract thousands of singers from across the world every year. The collegiate-level competition is featured in the “Pitch Perfect” series of films, which has become one of the highest-grossing musical comedy franchise of all time.
“We are thrilled to receive this wonderful opportunity!” said Downbeat co-director Jennifer Sandusky. “It will provide a new performance venue for our singers’ musical growth with adjudicated feedback on our singing and performing skills.”
The Harker Conservatory held its inaugural Summer Conservatory program in June and July, inviting young theater enthusiasts to grasp a unique opportunity to hone their craft and learn from top instructors and industry professionals.
Laura Lang-Ree, Harker’s director of performing arts, had been exploring the idea of a summer program at Harker, as she knew firsthand the value of strong summer performing arts programs, both as a professional and a mother to three performing arts-loving kids.
“But I also knew that there was nowhere to host it. … With nowhere to host such a program, it was only a dream – until this year,” said Lang-Ree, alluding to the opening of the Rothschild Performing Arts Center. As the opening of the new building approached, she began looking into how to develop a summer program while addressing another challenge: how to create a program that would not directly compete with other summer performing arts offerings outside Harker that she felt were “already doing a wonderful job.”
“There was a lot around that was really great, and there is no reason to compete with programs that are already doing a great service in the community,” she said. To this end, Lang-Ree began searching last summer for a specific niche that the future program would fill to enhance the selection of summer offerings without competing with them.
It was around this time that Lang-Ree discovered that one of her favorite theater companies, the California Theatre Center, would be closing its doors after more than 40 years. Lang-Ree, who found the news “devastating,” stepped up to help fill the void left by CTC’s closure. Her own children – rising senior Ellie, Cecilia ’13 and Madi ’15, who was on staff at Summer Conservatory – had enjoyed great experiences at programs such as CTC and Peninsula Youth Theatre. “Our summers were full of fantastic theater opportunities,” she said. “Losing CTC was a loss to the entire community.”
With the information she had gathered from consulting people from other summer programs, Lang-Ree designed the Summer Conservatory to be “a process-based, in-depth, thoughtful program for kids who are really hungry to learn more, do more and be more as a theater artist student.”
Students in grades 6-9 joined the Conservatory Presents course, designed for young theater lovers eager to build their chops. A more advanced course, called Conservatory Intensive, was available for grade 9-12 students by audition only. Morning classes – both required and elective – emphasized voice and movement, scene study, improvisation and other techniques.
“One of the interesting things about being a performer is you go deeper as you repeat lessons already learned,” Lang-Ree explained. “There’s a certain level of repetition that’s very important to becoming a more finessed performer, and yet we’ll always have something a little bit more to hand the older child so that they’re getting more to chew on as they grow.”
Students spent the afternoons rehearsing for one-act plays that were performed on the final day of the program. Performers were cast following auditions held at the beginning of the course.
Among the directing staff, 2015 Harker Conservatory graduates Zoe Woehrmann and Madi Lang-Ree were brought on as co-directors for the showcase, and helped develop and teach acting classes in addition to their directorial duties.
“We’ve been a part of the performing arts program at Harker for our entire lives, and it’s what inspired us to pursue theater in college as well,” Woehrmann said. “When we heard of the opportunity to be able to help be part of the inaugural group of teachers and directors to start the summer program at Harker … we just jumped at the opportunity.”
Because of their extensive conservatory experience (both were directors featured in the 2015 Student Directed Showcase), she and Madi were given considerable freedom when helping to create the Summer Conservatory curriculum along with Lang-Ree. Both alumnae also are studying theater in college, with Madi having directed a one-act play in her most recent semester at Chapman University, and Woehrmann, a rising senior at New York University, planning to take a play she wrote and directed to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
“We worked together before camp actually started to design the curriculum and the daily schedule of classes we thought were important and how we were going to structure them and what we were going to teach within them,” Woerhmann said. They then worked in conjunction with Lang-Ree to come up with the best possible age-appropriate class curriculum for serious theater students.
Madi, who has previous experience teaching at other summer programs, said she was surprised by how much students already knew and their enthusiasm for the many aspects of the program. “I don’t remember knowing very much at all about Shakespeare in middle school, but I’ve had a couple kids who are like, ‘I’ve got this monologue memorized from Hamlet and this one from Macbeth!’” she exclaimed. “And then some kids will really like movement or really like improvisation and some kids will keep asking us, ‘Can I help with costumes or can I help with tech elements as well as being on stage.’”
Students with that eagerness to delve deeply into theater are precisely the type Laura Lang-Ree hopes the program will continue to attract. “[Summer Conservatory] is for the kid who believes what’s fun is the day-to-day work, the rehearsals where they can go deeper and bring out all the details of their characters and the story they are telling” she said. “That’s what they will achieve here.”
The Harker Conservatory reached a milestone this past weekend, as this year’s spring musical, “42nd Street,” was the first to be held at the Rothschild Performing Arts Center. Set in 1930s New York, “42nd Street” is a classic yarn about showbiz dreams and behind-the-scenes drama, with all the dazzling music and choreography natural to a musical about a musical.
It was also a great choice for the first musical to take place in the new, state-of-the-art Patil Theater, outfitted with a stage large enough to hold what director Laura Lang-Ree termed “the embodiment of the genre.” The complex set pieces and captivating performances drew big audiences, which filled the Patil Theater nearly to capacity for two of the four showings.