The Lower School Winter Concert on Dec. 7 brought together lower school instrumental and vocal groups – including the choir, orchestra, jazz ensemble and string ensemble – to perform a variety of well-loved tunes, including several holiday favorites. As a special treat, middle school and after-school music instructors took the stage for a special group performance of their own!
Tags: eweekly, Performing ArtsThe last fittings are being bolted into place in the new Rothschild Performing Arts Center; in a few short weeks, it will debut. All the hardware, all the sound gear, the plush curtain and the 450 seats in the Patil Theater will be brought into motion by students, parents, faculty and staff on Feb. 2. The building will go live in the finest sense of the term.
From the basement to the fly and with the stage in between, the theater will be busy (for more on the behind-the-scenes and classroom features see news.harker.org. In the basement, students will be prepping in the dressing rooms, those comforting havens where performers can stash their stuff, get into their performance outfits, get their ‘faces’ on and have a last calming sip of water before turning to the audience; and to whence they can return, energized and exhausted, after performing.
The dressing rooms include spacious restrooms and each dressing room will feature counters around three sides, said Kevin Hart, of Kevin Hart Architecture, which co-designed the building with Studio Bondy Architecture. There will be continuous mirrors above the counters, as well as continuous lights above. Outlets are at counter height for hair dryers, razors, curling irons, etc., and those outlets are all switched off at the door, for safety. The rooms are carpeted and the wall and ceiling assemblies are noise-reductive due to their proximity to the stage and auditorium, Hart added.
While downstairs the dressing rooms teem with preparations, upstairs, the audience, up to 450 strong, will have found their way past an intimate plaza featuring one of the oak trees carefully preserved during construction and now replanted in front of the center, perhaps picked up tickets from the will-call window in the tasteful, airy lobby, waved to friends on the lobby balcony and stopped to enjoy a unique art installation: a 34.5-foot-wide, 15-foot-high color LED display.
As performers finish preparing, stage crew members put the final touches on sets and musicians rustle sheet music into place, the audience will be settling into comfy seats by Series Seating. Series has provided seating for many performing arts venues worldwide, including Her Majesty’s Theater in Adelaide, Australia and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
Series provided several alternatives to choose from, and sent mockups of final options so school officials and the design team could actually sit in the chairs and check out the fabric. Seat trim will match the maple in the wall trim and ceiling sound reflectors, and the seat coverings will match the stage curtain. Seats are of a few slightly different widths and staggered so that the view from every seat is between the heads of the row right in front, noted Hart.
Audience seating is in three sections – orchestra, parterre and balcony – and each is at a different angle to optimize views of the stage, noted Hart. “The floor of the orchestra section is sloped, while the parterre and balcony are stepped,” he said. “All three sections are curved to focus on the stage, creating a bowl-like floor. There are also two special rows in the balcony which are a few steps down from the second floor, closer to the stage. The room is extraordinarily intimate: every one of the 450 seats will seem quite close to the action on stage.”
One of the stars of the theater is a Bösendorfer concert grand piano. Bösendorfers are considered one of, if not the, top concert pianos in the world and Harker’s will be stored just off stage in a special closet. The grand opening program has not been set, but perhaps those attending the opening will get a special treat if the Bösendorfer is played as these pianos are in the finest concert halls in the world. The Harker Bösendorfer will provide an unparalleled instrument on which students can refine their skills. In addition, the piano will be a significant draw in attracting top level performers to Harker for master classes and performances. It is a game changer in the world of concert pianists.
The piano that will grace Harker’s Patil Theater stage is a model 214VC CS. VC stands for Vienna Concert and CS stands for Conservatory Series. “The piano is actually a bit of a rarity; CS plus VC is not common and we are lucky we got it,” said Chris Florio, instrumental music teacher and orchestra director.
The model 214VC is seven feet long and the Vienna Concert features are “characterized by projecting an unheard array of colours and optimized mechanical interplay of all action components,” according to the Bösendorfer website. What does that translate to in English? The VC was released in January 2017 and Yamaha’s literature notes the VC has
Conservatory Series pianos come with a distinctive satin finish and simplified cabinet features, practical attributes for piano in a learning environment.
Harker’s Bösendorfer has one final customization that provides a subtle, but important, feature. “We have had large stage casters installed on the piano,” said Florio, “the same casters that are usually on the (Bösendorfer) 280 and 290 concert grands. The piano does not come with stage casters and the use of a grand piano dolly, like we have in Nichols Auditorium, raises the height of the piano. This was a modification to the piano we worked out with Bösendorfer through our vendor.”
Florio noted it was nip and tuck to get the desired piano in the timeframe and within budget.
“Susan Nace (vocal music teacher and director of three Harker choirs) and I tried out pianos last spring,” said Florio. “We collectively decided that the seven-foot Bösendorfer was the best piano for the theater, and one we hoped would fit our budget. It turned out that our budget was not quite enough but, luckily, Yamaha, who owns Bösendorfer, came back with an additional 10 percent off of the sale price.”
Then, a turn for the worse: in the interim, the chosen piano had been sold. It can take up to six years for a piano to be finished; Bösendorfer offers nine models and several special editions, and produces fewer than 300 pianos each year, so getting another 214VC CS by the Feb. 2 grand opening of the RPAC was looking dodgy.
Nonetheless, the muses smiled on Harker and it only took a couple of weeks for another 214 VC CS to come out of production. That was good, but it was July: Florio was away on vacation and the 30-day window to complete the purchase was closing. That was bad, and there was another hitch. “As the sales tax on the piano brought the final cost over our budget, we needed the approval of both Brian Yager [new head of school starting that week] and Diana [Nichols, chair of the board of trustees] to move ahead with the purchase.
“I was in Tahoe when the 30 days was coming up,” said Florio, “and I got in contact with the manager of the dealership to see if we could finalize the deal while I was gone. As luck would have it, Joe Rosenthal [executive director of advancement] was working back in San Jose and Brian was just in for his first week of work.”
Everyone signed off on the deal, “with the understanding that Joe would find a donor to cover the over-budget,” said Florio. “So, in good faith, Joe went ahead and processed the payment for the piano while I ironed out the contract details while on vacation in Tahoe. We had a donor cover the extra cost by the end of summer. It was a hectic week but we got the deal done and got the piano we wanted!”
The “Bösey,” as one Harker pianist referred to it, is currently being stored and will be delivered to the stage in late January. It will be professionally “voiced” for the space but it will likely take a good amount of time for the piano to completely acclimate to the theater. “It’s going to be such a perfect piano for the space,” said Florio.
And that piano will be played. All the equipment in the performing arts world will not breathe life into the building the way the performers will and that is what Laura Lang-Ree, performing arts chair, can’t wait to see. “It’s really not about the details, but rather the overall impact for the audience and kids,” she said.
“Students and audience will be thrilled and overwhelmed each time they walk into the space and realize it’s theirs,” she noted. “We’ve never had anything like it before and it’s state-of-the-art, across the board. We are not just stepping up, we are transforming both in the classroom and onstage by virtue of the building itself. It is the entire impact of an actual building designed for performing arts that is the feature!”
Tags: alumni-express, Construction, express, Performing ArtsFour Harker students qualified for the American Choral Directors Association California All-State Choir, which will perform in San Jose Feb. 15-18. To be selected for the All-State Choir, the students had to audition, qualify and attend the ACDA Regional Honor Choir. Their regional audition scores were used to determine their eligibility for All-State. Musicians will be placed in mixed, men’s, or women’s choruses with approximately 120 singers in each ensemble. Please congratulate Joel Morel, grade 10, tenor, Camerata; Vaishnavi Murari, grade 9, alto, Bel Canto; Karli Sharp, grade 11, soprano, Cantilena; and Meilin Yen, grade 9, soprano, Bel Canto, when you see them!
Tags: alumni-express, eweekly, express, Performing Arts, toppaAlong with the beautiful Patil Theater in Rothschild Performing Arts Center, there are rehearsal rooms, practice rooms and a top-flight scene shop. These rooms support the Harker Conservatory, which graduates between 35-50 certificate students each year, along with the 350-400 non-certificate students participating in performing arts each day. Moving day in February will be the culmination of years of dreaming and hard work.
Laura Lang-Ree, performing arts chair, noted, “We have been involved in design meetings for years, going on on-site visits at other performing arts centers and giving our input as to what works and what does not work.” She can’t choose just one favorite feature, she said, but is enthralled by the view from center stage, the professional fly system, the view from the balconies and, finally, “my amazing, expansive classroom – all the light and space. I think about teaching in there every day,” she said.
Lang-Ree had some performance-specific goals that the new building and equipment will achieve. “The ability to do technical elements like never before,” she said, “to build on site, fly sets, teach unrestricted with the space and sound benefits.”
Its all about the package. The rehearsal rooms alone are enchanting, Lang-Ree noted, “creating a large space for students to rehearse their music with great sound, and the dressing rooms will be spacious and well-lit – a director’s dream!”
Read on for the extraordinary features that will make the building a wonderful home for Harker performers and productions for decades to come!
The Scene Shop
The scene shop includes doors almost 10 feet wide that go to the ceiling so scenery can be moved directly to the stage. After working in a remodeled cafeteria for the last decade, Paul Vallerga, Harker’s scenery master, is delighted with his new shop. “I had quite a bit of input,” Vallerga said. “The most important things I recommended were adequate storage and construction space, proper ventilation, and an adequate station for dealing with paint.
Vallerga noted the main features of the new shop are space and a wide variety of tools for construction and painting. “One interesting feature will be a paint frame,” he said. “This is a wooden frame on one wall on which we can hang backdrops or other scenic units to be finished and/or painted. We will install stage lighting at this frame in order to duplicate the show lighting.”
Vallerga noted the salient points for a good scene shop. “Flexibility and access are the key things. A good shop, like this one, has enough space to assemble and work on fairly large complex units before loading them onstage.
“Probably the most interesting thing here is the fly system. This a counterweighted system of battens which will allow the storage and movement of overhead equipment. I’ve twice attended seminars on the safe use of stage rigging and am looking forward to teaching students about it.” Vallerga noted he is pretty excited to get his hands on the new shop. “I’m actually going to have to remember how to do things I’ve never been able to do at Blackford,” he said. .
Rehearsal and Practice Rooms
A room is just a room, unless it is fitted out by acoustical experts, in which case there is a lot going on behind the walls, ceilings and floors. Building out ultra quiet rooms took a collaborative effort between Kevin Hart Architecture, Studio Bondy Architecture, Charles M. Salter Associates and The Shalleck Collaborative (see last month’s story).
Architects and acoustical consultants like different things, said Jason Duty, vice president of Charles M. Salter Associates, Inc., consultants to the architects for acoustical matters. Architects tend to like symmetry, but, “acoustically, if we could lay out the rooms, the rooms would have more random placement of panels,” Duty said. “The two worlds have to agree. When you get to design with a guy like Kevin, we show him what we are thinking of and they show us what they are thinking of, and we go back and forth until we find the right combination to satisfy both worlds,” Duty said.
Left/Right and Up/Down Acoustics
Acoustical consultants look at the two dimensions of left and right and up and down to plan their sound reduction strategy. Left and right sound management is about isolating adjacent rooms on the same floor by insulating and spacing out the walls. The new building has two floors of rehearsal and practice rooms and the same methods were used on both sets of rooms. All the rooms have fiberglass insulation in the stud cavities of the sheet rock walls, and the sheet rock is up to three layers thick on each side of the walls of rehearsal and practice rooms – that cuts down a lot of sound.
Practice rooms, the small rooms for individuals or small groups, can be constructed to one of two plans, either limited isolation so the teachers can hear students practicing, or more isolation but with a sound-rated window or windowed door, so teachers can glance into see how students are doing. Harker chose the second type and will have sound-rated doors with windows for the practice rooms.
The practice rooms themselves are stand-alone rooms inside the huge, empty space, called a “tunnel,” about 20 feet wide, between the big rooms. So there is a rehearsal room on either side of the building and practice rooms are built as separate structures in the tunnel, between the big rooms, thus insulating the practice room walls from rehearsal walls with air space.
That spacing reduces transmitted sound so the practice rooms and rehearsal rooms can be used at the same time. Even the placement of the practice rooms between the larger rehearsal rooms creates more air space between the large rehearsal rooms, contributing to the sound control between the large rooms, which are expected to have a larger volume of noise.
The tunnel construction also allows for the mechanical distribution of heating and electricity to the big rooms: ducts and electrical wiring come down from the roof above the tunnels. “That makes the architects happy,” said Duty, “as the rehearsal rooms are nice and clean.”
Up and Down Sound Isolation
Up and down sound reduction – sound transmitted through ceilings or floors – addresses two types of sound transmission: airborne sound and impact sound. Airborne sound would include a power saw in the scene shop or music in the big rehearsal room. Impact sound are the vibrations transmitted though solid objects by activities like walking, dancing and certain musical instruments that are supported on the floor. Acoustical reduction is measured in decibels and to reduce noise from above or below, architects can just thicken the cement floor; but going from a 3-inch-thick floor to a 6-inch-thick floor only adds about five decibels of sound reduction; going from 6 to 12 inches of concrete still only adds about another five decibels of sound reduction. A better answer is to use air space and layers of sheeting below the concrete lid, Duty noted.
In a small room, like the practice rooms, designers can use standard 2×4 framing to support the sheet rock ceiling, as is done in normal construction of entryways and bathrooms in condominiums; they hang a false ceiling just below the actual ceiling, leaving an air space.
But, noted Duty, “a dropped gypsum board (drywall) is very challenging in the big rooms. The next nicest thing to do is to use spring isolators that provide a resilient connection to the underside of the floor deck to give both airborne and impact isolation between the floors,” so Duty went with the spring isolators for the four large rehearsal rooms.
To further reduce impact noise, room floors on the second floor will also be “floating” on isolators a few inches above the cement deck. Again, the team could have used just thicker floors, but decided on a wood, floating floor, which uses neoprene “pucks” to support the raised floor, isolating it from the cement subfloor. Fiberglass insulation will be fitted between the neoprene isolators, plywood layered on top followed by the finished wood floor.
This method “helps a lot with impact, but even a little with airborne noise,” noted Duty, “So if a subwoofer is sitting on the floor it has a lot more to go through to disturb the lower rooms.” Duty noted installing the floor isolation is like moving a vibrating cell phone from a table, where the whole tabletop becomes a sounding board, to a couch, where the vibration is almost totally deadened.
Along with controlling excess sound, the flooring design in the big rehearsal room has another important but hidden feature, said Duty. “It was designed by Shalleck Collaborative (who designed the theater components of the building) to be basically a representation of what the stage was supposed to be like: dance should feel the same on (both) floors … pretty typical in rehearsal spaces so lifts and jumps feel the same,” he said.
Windows Are Important
Duty noted the design team has carefully addressed noise coming in and out of the windows. Architects like big glass, he said, “but sound guys see it as a big reflective surface. The adjacent walls typically perform better than the glass. We had to do a big study both on the noise coming out and how far away property lines are, and how much noise from Highway 280 will come into the room. The sound ‘exposure’ drives the glass/window selection,” he said.
Sound Transmission Class (STC) standards are used to choose the proper windows. “Assemblies are likely to be double pane,” said Duty. “The STC covers the whole assembly: the frame and how the glass sits in the frame. If air can get though, so can sound.”
The windows are preconfigured by manufacturers. Designers then choose the appropriate window system. “We just order the correct STC ratings and they show us assemblies that meet those ratings,” said Duty. “The architects pick what they like the look of in terms of finishes.”
Intraroom Acoustics
Aside from isolating the rooms from each other and the outside, attention is given to controlling the sound inside the rooms. “The larger rooms are where it gets interesting,” said Duty. “When people are in a room you can hear the person next to you, but what every conductor battles with is, musicians on either side of the room have to hear each other playing so the left-right ensemble becomes a challenge in the rehearsal rooms,” he said.
The acoustical consultants look at the volume of space (cubic footage), not loudness. “First, there has to be enough square footage so musicians are not sitting on top of each other,” Duty said. “Then you plan to have the room behave itself, with no weird echoes or excessive reverberance, but large enough to provide reasonable reverberance.”
On stage in the Patil Theater, surrounded by orchestra shells, the sound has somewhere to go: out into the audience. In the rehearsal room sound hits the wall behind the conductor. “We have to try to deaden the sound so it is not a mess to stand in all day long, while still having participants hear each other to properly rehearse,” said Duty. Rather than just use absorptive ceiling panels in the rehearsal rooms, the team will install pyramid diffusers on the ceiling, which helps send sound across the room.
Sticking to the Building Codes
One early challenge that drew all they players together was fitting in the layers of ceiling and floor isolation along with the heating and cooling machinery on the roof to stay below the maximum height allowed.
Duty, Shalleck reps, Kevin Hart and Studio Bondy reps all gathered in front of a whiteboard to hammer out the height requirement. The group had to get internal dimensions right. That took huge coordination to make everything fit. The group had to track every three-quarter-inch thick piece of drywall or ceiling panel to ensure it all fit in the building code height limitations. “That’s what makes these fun,” said Duty. “There are certain things about these types of projects that make them different than standard office buildings – you have to take a lot more care with all the different pieces.”
The mechanical system provided another challenge to the team. “It sits on the roof so we had to worry about that sound coming into the rehearsal rooms as well as disturbing neighbors,” said Duty.
The Quiet HVAC System
The heating and cooling system in the RPAC is specially designed to keep noise to a minimum. The actual machinery for the HVAC system sits on the roof, above the practice area, on isolators to separate it from the building structure and to place it as far from the performance area as possible. The machinery on the roof is screened off both for aesthetic purposes and to shield the sound from neighbors.
The auditorium’s mechanical room is located beneath the lobby. Conditioned air is supplied overhead via a series of ducts that travel from that basement room, through the rear curved walls and up to the underside of the roof of the Patil Theater.
One huge sound reduction factor is that the returns, the big vents that suck “used” air back out of the auditorium to re-heat or re-cool, is not a big noisy vent. Instead, about 250 8-inch return vents have been drilled through the main cement deck — one under nearly every seat and the sheer number and spread of the return vents will ensure there is no rushing of air to disturb the audience or performers.
The Rothschild Performing Art Center will open in February 2018. Watch for information on opening ceremonies!
Tags: Performing ArtsMusic teacher Dave Hart invited Bay Area woodwind ensemble Frequency 49 to his middle school classroom on Thursday to show his students how chamber music is performed by professional musicians. The students, who had been creating chamber music compositions in class, watched as the members of the sextet – pianist Margaret Halbig, French horn player (and Hart’s wife) Leslie Hart, bassoonist Patrick Johnson-Whitty, oboist Adrienne Malley, clarinetist Jeannie Psomas and flautist Katrina Walter – demonstrated the various aspects and techniques of their respective instruments, as well as how the group’s unique configuration allows for flexibility in the sounds they can create. The students were then delighted to hear Frequency 49 perform a rendition of a piece by Francis Poulenc. More info about the group can be found at its website, as well as on Facebook and Instagram!
Tags: eweekly, express, music, Performing ArtsThe Rothschild Performing Arts Center, due to open in February 2018, is designed to present a wide variety of wonderful shows to a comfortable audience, and there are a thousand elements, literally behind the scenes, that will enhance that experience. Here is a look at a few of the bigger elements that will make this center an outstanding performance venue for the Harker community for decades to come.
Architects for both the performing arts and athletic centers are Studio Bondy Architecture and Kevin Hart Architecture, which joined forces to design the gym and the theater, including the interiors and the site development, said Kevin Hart.
“As with any project of similar size, there is a large team of in-house architects and designers, consultants and sub-consultants,” he said, “in addition to the general contractor and subcontractors, who have important roles in the design and execution.” Of these many critical subcontractors, two play key roles in the development of the theater technology.
“The theater experts, The Shalleck Collaborative, worked as consultants to the architects to inform the design of the auditorium itself, the stage, rigging, theatrical lighting, orchestra pit, movable orchestra shell, control room, dressing rooms, and many other details,” noted Hart. “They also provided design of A/V systems, including the LED wall in the lobby.
“The acoustical experts, Charles M. Salter Associates, worked as consultants to the architects to design the acoustical qualities of the auditorium, which is adjustable for different uses. They also provided guidance for the acoustics in the rehearsal rooms and designed many of the wall and ceiling assemblies to prevent noise intrusion from outside and improve sound control between rooms.”
Display Wall
The most noticeable item attendees will see is the 34.5-foot-wide, 15-foot-high color LED display wall in the lobby. The display will showcase professional and student work. Once inside the building, the magic of technical theater won’t be as visible, but will provide for a remarkable audience experience.
Orchestra Pit Lift
One of the biggest and coolest pieces of equipment in the new facility is the custom-made, electromechanical orchestra pit lift. The lift is capable of raising and lowering the 48-foot-wide by 10-foot-deep elliptical segment of floor, 332 square feet in all, fully loaded. The segment can be used as a stage extension, for additional seating or as an orchestra pit.
Hart noted the lift platform is a steel superstructure with two interconnected heavy-duty motors which raise the platform on four “Spiralift” columns, Model #ND9, by Gala Systems.
These columns, fascinating pieces of machinery, are created anew each time the lift is used. Motors turn the column bases and a vertical steel band is locked into a spiraling horizontal steel band (picture a giant, high tech slinky) so the column “grows” as it goes up and is disassembled as it comes down, eliminating the need for a deep pit beneath the lift to house the column when in the down position.
Gala Systems noted the system is highly stable vertically and laterally, very quiet, nearly lubricant-free to eliminate any smell and should last the life of the facility with very little maintenance. The system is used in the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and 55 countries around the world. Check out this video on how the system works: http://bit.ly/2yrGTEF. The lift will also be used to move the Bosendorfer concert grand piano from its stage-level closet to underneath the stage if needed. More about this wonderful piano in a future article!
Professional Fly Tower
Another of the major components is the fly tower, containing 35 counterweighted rigging battens for moving scenery, lighting and special effects, and the top of the movable concert orchestra shell. Each batten can be used to raise an item, or they can be used together to raise larger items.
There are three battens for moving the top of the orchestra shell (the back and side pieces roll into place), five battens dedicated to stage lighting and 27 scenery battens, said Jedd de Lucia, a principal at The Shalleck Collaborative. The eight battens that control the orchestra shell and the lighting racks are motorized and can lift up to 2,800 pounds each, while the remaining 27 battens, capable of lifting 1,500 pounds each, are controlled by hand – the counterweights make it possible to move the relatively lightweight scenery up and down by hand. The rigging and lighting equipment is accessed via a series of perforated metal catwalks that run the width of the fly.
Sound and Acoustic Tuning
The main audio control console will be a Yamaha QL5 mixing board, said deLucia. This state-of-the-art soundboard was chosen for its versatility, ease of use and compact size. These soundboards are in use in many venues worldwide.
“The speaker system has a left and a right line array for the main PA speakers as well as supplemental ‘fill’ speakers at the front row as well as below and above the balcony,” noted de Lucia. The system uses the ARCS series of speakers from L’Acoustics, a French manufacturer of loudspeakers, amplifiers and signal processing devices, include ARCS-Series Wide and Focus speakers for main left and right speakers; SB18i subwoofers; X8 balcony fill speakers and 5Xt speakers for under-balcony and front fill speakers. The system is driven via 4-channel LA4X amplifiers. Full specifications can be found at http://www.l-acoustics.com/products-catalog-75.html
The center will have a custom-built, moveable orchestra shell enclosure to create a fuller, more directed sound, said Hart. “The shell consists of overhead ceiling reflectors and rolling wall towers, which will provide an excellent acoustic environment for music performances,” he said. “The theater will also have an audio-visual system to support amplified music and musical theater as well as a projection system for media presentations, including movies.
“Further, the acoustics of the hall can be adjusted for different kinds of performances, like acoustic music, amplified media and spoken word. The mechanism for this adjustability is made up of four banks of curtains, located out of sight above the ceiling, which can be pulled open or drawn closed to change the sound of the hall,” Hart noted.
Lighting, Trap and Curtain
The stage’s production lighting system uses LED stage lighting fixtures, without dimmers, on 96 relay-controlled circuits, and is capable of millions of colors at the touch of a button. The system will be run from the Electronic Theater Control Ion Lighting Console with a 2 x 20 fader wing, said de Lucia. Each batten is capable of carrying up to 50 lights, with a light about every foot along the lighting racks.
The trap, mid-stage, “is 12 removable pieces of the stage floor, which opens access to a room below the stage,” said Hart. “There is no elevator or lift; it will be up to the technical directors to build whatever device makes sense for each production. It could be as simple as a stepladder, or something more elaborate, but the main thing is to enable this special, magical capability to emerge from or disappear into the floor.”
The main curtain of the auditorium, with fabric from one supplier, sewn by a second and hung by a third, from is made of red velour, sewn with fullness. Curtains with fullness have extra fabric across the width or height of the drape. This gives the drape a richer look while increasing depth of field, and the heavy curtain provides more light and sound absorption.
That stage curtain is only a few months from swinging open for the first time. Watch for further updates each month as the Rothschild Performing Arts Center nears completion in February.
Tags: eweekly, express, Harker Giving, Performing ArtsHarker student singers were visited by Emily Sinclair, head of the voice area at the University of California Santa Cruz, and an accomplished professional singer and vocal teacher. Sinclair, who has performed with the San Francisco Choral Society and the Littleton Symphony, had students sing a piece of their choice, after which she offered feedback on interpretation, technique and expression. As the students listened to and incorporated her advice, she noted the improvement in their performance, for which the students were very appreciative!
Tags: Performing ArtsLast month, rising senior Millie Lin was named a member of the All-National Honor Ensembles by the National Association for Music Education. Lin will perform in late November as a member of the Mixed Choir at the Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
According to the NAfME website, the All-National Honor Ensembles are made up of “the top performing high school musicians in the United States.” Students audition for ensembles by submitting unedited videos of an unaccompanied performance. Lin also is slated to be a section leader for the Cantilena women’s choir during the 2017-18 school year.
Tags: Cantilena, music, Performing Arts, toppaThis story originally appeared in the Winter 2016 Harker Magazine.
“Whenever there are extended periods of time when I am not dancing, I feel incomplete,” remarked Jacqui Villarreal ’15, who danced during her entire K-12 career at Harker and now performs with the Santa Clara University Dance Team. “As dramatic as that sounds, it’s true.” Her fervor does not appear to be uncommon. Every year, hundreds of students perform in Harker’s four major dance shows. Last year’s upper school dance production featured a cast of 140 students. That number could very well be eclipsed with this year’s show come January.
This past fall semester, “we had the most students audition for the upper school dance show that we ever had,” noted Laura Lang-Ree, Harker’s K-12 performing arts chair. “We’ve done nothing different. No new publicity, no emails.”
Harker students have been dancing for a very long time. Dance instruction was offered to students at Miss Harker’s School as early as 1903, and was introduced into the regular curriculum by the 1920s. In subsequent decades, dance instruction expanded to include Miss Harker’s kindergartners and became part of the summer programs after the school’s merger with the Palo Alto Military Academy.
Dance teacher Laura Rae further developed the dance program at Harker Academy after joining the school in the 1980s, directing routines for the spring musical and leading the after-school dance program, which started in 1983.
“[Howard and Diana] Nichols were … very passionate about performing arts overall, and Diana had a special love for dance,” said Lang-Ree, who joined Harker in 1995. The addition of the upper school brought further growth to the dance program, including some academic dance courses. Now, students K-12 can learn a wide range of styles, from ballet to jazz to hip-hop. Currently, the program boasts six audition-only dance groups across grades 4-12, each of which attracts dozens of students to auditions every year. Students dance for live audiences as early as kindergarten, and dance is one of six disciplines of focus included in the upper school Conservatory’s certificate program.
A familiar refrain among dance students and alumni is how dance classes initially just seemed like a fun activity to do with their friends. “I was new to the school in fifth grade,” recalled senior Tamlyn Doll. “I asked [my friends], ‘What are you doing after school?’ and they said, ‘Oh, I have dance.’” She opted to try it herself and “fell in love with it pretty fast,” she said.
“It seemed like a fun after-school activity and a lot of my friends were doing it,” added Villarreal. “Over the years, some people trickled out of the program, but I stayed because of how amazing the teachers are and how passionate everyone is about dancing.”
This social element has not gone unnoticed by dance faculty. “I think it’s very rewarding for them to be with their friends,” said K-8 dance teacher Gail Palmer. “They really support each other.”
Many students also discovered that dance offers a unique form of expression through movement. “I love expression in the form of physicality,” said Emre Ezer, grade 12, a performer in Harker dance shows since seventh grade. “I love pretty much every form of expression, but it’s especially fun using your own body.”
Junior Liana Wang, a member of the upper school’s Varsity Dance Troupe, said that dance is “my freedom and my expression of the soul. I find that the freedom of being able to express anything motivates me to continue the art form. I feel less restricted and bound to the expectations of the world.”
Those expectations can often be a source of stress, something students have found can be alleviated through dance. “It’s an emotional outlet,” said Hazal Gurcan, grade 12. “I feel like when I dance, my brain is kind of able to figure out what’s stressing me out.”
“Dance is the way I relieve any sort of stress, so being in college, it is a must for me to continue with it!” exclaimed Noel Banerjee ’15, a dance minor at Loyola Marymount University, where she is also a member of the dance team.
Apart from the uniquely fun and expressive nature of the art form, Harker’s support of the dance program and its faculty have played a large part in keeping students interested. Wang, who has performed with several companies and studios outside Harker, said that the Harker program’s distinct lack of competitiveness has enabled her and many other students to discover dance without feeling the pressure to impress. “From the teachers to the students, all strongly believe in helping one another for the benefit of the whole rather than for personal interests,” she said. “This has made my experience in dance much better and allowed myself to open up to the people around me.”
“One of my goals has always been to keep dance a fun and enjoyable aspect of [the students’] Harker careers,” said Karl Kuehn, upper school dance teacher. “I want dance to be a kind of creative outlet for them.”
For Doll, the nurturing and communal aspect of Harker’s dance program made all the difference. “I don’t think I would have danced at all if I hadn’t come to Harker,” she said. Having tried and disliked ballet at a very young age, she recalled doubting she would ever try dancing again. “But then when I tried it again at Harker, something about the teachers and the environment made it a lot of fun, and it’s definitely not just like any dance class.”
Other students and alumni agree. “Harker was extremely supportive with me pursuing dance in middle school, but also with my time in high school while I was in the certificate program,” said Helena Dworak ’16, now a student at Northeastern University, where she dances with the university’s audition group. “I had wonderful mentors, Karl Kuehn and [upper school dance teacher] Rachelle Haun, who completely shaped my experience in the upper school dance program.”
Another key to making Harker’s dance program welcoming is the relatively low level of commitment required. Students can commit to dancing as little as once a week and still be able to participate in a show. “It’s fun because it’s a high production value, but not necessarily a high-level commitment,” said Lang-Ree. “You can dance once a week, and fully commit to that once a week and be a part of something special as a dance show family member. And I think that’s really appealing to some kids.”
“You can just try it without having to necessarily be fully committed to it,” said Gurcan, who plans to double major in dance and psychology in college. “If the elementary school dance show had been [audition-based] then I would never have started dancing.”
The dance program also teaches its students how to make a good impression at auditions. “I think in general what we hear from our students who’ve left the Conservatory but who got their start in kindergarten, is that they know what to do when they walk into any room,” said Lang-Ree. “So they know how to handle themselves at auditions, they know how to behave in rehearsal, they know what the protocol is for being a team member in a way that not all high school students do know.”
Although technique is important, Lang-Ree stressed that how one carries oneself also gets noticed. “You want to be the nicest person in the room, who happens to be talented,” she said. “And I think that’s something that they bring to the table because they hear it from all of us from a very young age, and in the Conservatory program they hear it constantly.”
Students have noticed other benefits as well. For Wang, dance has been a way to unlock her self-confidence. “When I was younger, I use to be afraid of sharing my ideas and presenting myself in front of others since I felt like I would disappoint them and make mistakes,” she said. But through dancing and meeting choreographers and other dancers, “I was able to gain more confidence.”
Like Wang, many Harker dancers say the program gave them skills that they use in other areas of their lives.
“I have grown so much from leadership opportunities that I was given within the dance department at Harker,” said Villarreal, “and being involved in so much dance made me really good at time management.”
“It’s taught me focus, perseverance, the importance of health and wellness, and self-awareness,” said Dworak. “I am grateful that I received the support to pursue dance, as I never would have been the same person without it.”
Tags: Performing ArtsThe Senior Showcase on May 12 featured the 2017 graduates of the Harker Conservatory’s certificate program performing in various disciplines, including dance, musical theater, and vocal and instrumental music. The 34 students who presented that evening had spent the previous four years in intensive study of one of the seven disciplines offered by the conservatory. At the conclusion of the performances, the students received their certificates to signify their completion of the program, and showed their appreciation for the teachers who provided crucial guidance over the previous four years.
This Harker Conservatory graduates honored this year were:
Dance: Tamlyn Doll, Hazal Gurcan, Surabhi Rao, David Zhu
Instrumental Music: Cuebeom Choi, Maile Chung, Jack Farnham, May Gao, Alexa Gross, Aashish Jain, Soham Khan, Lauren Liu, Edward Oh, Judy Pan, Shekar Ramaswamy, Andrew Rule, Vedaad Shakib, Melinda Wisdom, Alex Youn
Musical Theater: Shivani Awasthi, Zahra Budhwani, Priyanka Chilukuri, Anahita Far, Chetana Kalidindi, Sara Pachauri, Medha Shah, Kayvon Solaimanpour
Theater: Sana Aladin, Sravya Cherukuri, Emre Ezer, Marina Newman, Amrita Singh, Brandon Stoll
Vocal Music: Mia Giammona
Tags: Harker Conservatory, Performing Arts