This story originally appeared in the spring 2014 Harker Quarterly.
After a season that included a beatboxing flautist and possibly the most experimental performance in the short history of the Harker Concert Series, Austin’s Miró Quartet had a tough pair of acts to follow. They were more than up to the task.
The bouncing staccato of Haydn’s “The Lark” went right along with the mood in the auditorium: airy and light, with Daniel Ching’s violin fluttering in and whistling like the titular bird on its favorite perch. Invoking a pastoral serenity, the quartet took flight through the first movement’s quick tempos, as each member exchanged flurries of notes. They maintained this feeling through the slower, more harmonically focused second movement, with Ching’s melodies again appearing front and center, albeit in the shadow of cellist Joshua Gindele’s yawning basslines; violinist William Fedkenheuer and violist John Largess were the perfect complement to the outer voices. With amazing dexterity, they launched into the finale, handling the challenging passages with finesse and exuberance, ending the exhilarating piece to huge applause.
Elizabeth Dwyer, who was attending her third Harker Concert Series event, said, “I love it. I can’t believe the precision.” Miró Quartet being from Austin was a point of interest for Dwyer, who said she had considered visiting the city for its vibrant arts scene.
“I think it’s fabulous,” said attendee Raiida Thompson, who said she enjoys live music. The social atmosphere of the event, she said, was “very impressive. I was not expecting this.”
Surely no strangers to audiences with high expectations, Miró Quartet wisely chose to include Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” as the closing piece. Though occupying a somewhat ironic position as a crowd-pleaser in the chamber music canon (it essentially outlines Schubert’s stages of grief as he neared his own death), it was nonetheless a welcome, if familiar, treat for an audience that had just been taken through Dutilleux’s disorienting nighttime odyssey.
The encore was a selection from Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, ending with an also-unfinished violin line that seemed to delight Ching to no end, leaving him smiling as the final note hung in the air along with all the possibilities of what may have come after.
On Saturday, March 29, at the upper school campus, The Harker School’s science department and the student WiSTEM Club (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) will present the ninth annual Harker Research Symposium. This prestigious event, which draws hundreds of attendees each year, serves to highlight the achievements of Harker students passionate about scientific research, as well as celebrate the wonders of research and innovation in Silicon Valley.
Harker students will give formal talks on the methods and results of the research they have done both at Harker and at collegiate and professional labs, much of which has earned recognition in the Siemens Competition and Intel Science Talent Search. The audience will include not only students and parents, but also members of the scientific community. The event is also an opportunity for middle school students to present their research through poster presentations.
Exhibitors from companies such as NVIDIA, IBM, Google and Tesla will offer glimpses at both current technology and what lies ahead, with eye-catching interactive demonstrations and displays.
New this year is the chance to test drive a Tesla, and an activity for grade 5 students, who can compete in a spontaneous STEM challenge. Returning favorites include a student/teacher panel discussion on Harker’s research program and a chemistry “magic show.”
The morning keynote speaker for this year’s research symposium is Dr. Claire Max, professor of astrophysics and director of the Center for Adaptive Optics at University of California, Santa Cruz. Over the last decade, adaptive optics technology has been used to enhance the capabilities of astronomical telescopes by correcting the blurring caused by turbulence in the atmosphere. This technology also is helping further the understanding of black holes in nearby merging galaxies. Dr. Max also will discuss the applications of this optical technology in imagining the human retina.
Ilya Sukhar ’03 will be this year’s alumni speaker. After graduating with honors from Cornell University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Sukhar worked as an engineer for the online video company Ooyala before working in product and engineering at Etact, which was acquired by Salesforce. He is now the founder and CEO of Parse, whose product greatly eases the process of creating mobile apps across multiple platforms. In 2013, Facebook acquired Parse, which is still independently operated.
This year’s keynote speaker is Salman Khan, the founder and executive director of the Khan Academy (khanacademy.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing high-quality education to people all over the world, free of charge. An MIT grad with degrees in computer science, mathematics and electrical engineering as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School, Khan began tutoring his cousin in math in 2004 while working at a hedge fund based in Boston. His clientele eventually grew to 15 family members and friends, prompting him to create software that would help its users practice the concepts they were learning. He also created YouTube videos to accompany the software. By 2009, Khan’s videos were receiving tens of thousands of views each month. Khan then decided it was time to make Khan Academy a full-time occupation. Today, Khan Academy provides thousands of learning resources, including more than 100,000 exercises and 4,000 videos, on a variety of subjects. It is now accessed by more than 6 million unique users each month, making it one of the most widely used online educational resources.
For information and a detailed schedule, please visit www.harker.org/symposium.
The much-anticipated Night on the Town, Harker’s 11th annual gala fundraiser, was a smash success on Feb. 28 at the San Jose Marriott.
A live auction got the show started and climaxed in a $15,000 bid for a trip to Los Angeles to see the finale of “American Idol.” After the auction, a montage of video and live performances showcased several of Harker’s performing arts ensembles and reminded the audience of the evening’s purpose: to raise funds for the construction of a theater and gym complex on the upper school campus. Highlights of the live performances were charming mother/son and father/daughter dances, a lip sync by middle school teachers and students, and a rock band showing off the talents of both upper school student and adult musicians (sharp-eyed attendees may have spotted Chris Nikoloff, head of school, behind the drum set).
After the show and dinner, some guests returned to the casino games in the lobby while others danced the night away to tunes spun by a DJ.
If it wasn’t already obvious from the promotional copy on their website, PROJECT Trio’s version of Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus,” their set opener at the second Harker Concert Series event of the season, drove the point home. For them, chamber music is the province of the classicists with season tickets to the local symphony, the vinyl hunters keeping brick-and-mortar record stores afloat, the knit cap-wearing cafe denizens, the college-aged millennials combing the depths of Bandcamp well into the night and every type of enthusiast in between.
They reach for the most improbable of goals: To be adventurous, true to themselves and inclusive all at the same time. And they have a ton of fun doing it.
Best known for the percussive “beatbox flute” style of Greg Pattillo, whose videos have been viewed tens of millions of times, PROJECT Trio is as lively as any jazz combo. With their constant swaying, stomping and an eclectic range of influences, it would be easy for a new listener to call them one, were it not for their self-billing as a chamber music group. Their rendition of “Faubus,” led by Pattillo’s flute and anchored by the heavy warbling of double bassist Peter Seymour and cellist Eric Stephenson, even recalls the hip-hop pedigree referenced in Pattillo’s technique, which they carried into a playful revision of that familiar theme from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
As can be expected, their bag of tricks is full of neat surprises, such as their half-classical, half-bluegrass interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” and the serpentine melodies of “Raga Raja,” an original piece inspired by Indian classical music, punctuated by Stephenson’s slinky portamentos. On “Slowberry Jam,” another original, Stephenson switched to finger style, whipping his bowing hand across the strings of his cello like a flamenco guitarist.
Moe Zoyari of San Francisco, who had seen Pattillo’s videos prior to attending and plays the flute himself, called the concert “awesome” and was so excited about it that he made a last-minute attempt get his friends to attend as well, “telling them that, if you can come, just come over right now.”
“I had no idea who they were or what to expect,” said Ann Gazenbeek from Los Altos, “so I just came with an open mind and I’m very pleasantly surprised.”
After the customary intermission, the trio introduced their unsurprisingly non-traditional take on Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” relocating the action to a neighborhood in Brooklyn and providing their own amusing narration and unique musical signatures. Though long, the group’s keen sense of dynamics kept things fresh, and the tune didn’t overstay its welcome.
PROJECT later shifted several decades forward to pay tribute to perhaps one of the first rock bands to make classical instruments cool (to the extent that progressive rock was ever considered cool), performing what Pattillo called “The PROJECT Trio version of Jethro Tull’s version of J.S. Bach’s version of ‘Bouree,’” during which the flautist stood on one leg as a shout out to Tull’s Ian Anderson.
The show’s ender, appropriately titled “The Random Roads Suite,” was a sweeping summary of the band’s approach, starting with the busy and sophisticated “The Puzzle” before slowing the tempo and slightly darkening the mood for the contemplative “Adagio,” highlighted by delicate trade offs between Seymour and Stephenson. So as not to leave the crowd on a somber note, they finished with the Latin-flavored “Pelea De Gallos,” as Seymour and Stephenson again took the spotlight as the two combative chickens mentioned in the title, succeeding in bringing up both the tempo and the mood.
Harker staff writer Zach Jones contributed to this story.
A beautiful fall day provided the perfect backdrop for the 2013 Harker Harvest Festival, the school’s 63rd annual Family & Alumni Picnic.
As in previous years, the event was held on the middle school campus, but faithful picnic-goers surely noticed the fresh and fun changes to this family-oriented day. The multipurpose room held extravagant silent auction packages, offering art, outings with teachers, gift baskets and more. The cafetorium was kept wide open for laser tag, and lower school children were spotted ducking behind blinds scattered through the room as they tried to catch each other with light beams.
The blacktop was, as always, the site of carnival game booths. Here families tried their luck at skill games, trying to knock down, hit, fill, pop or ring objects for prize tickets. The Pig Pong Toss was a wall of cute painted piggies with actual boxes for noses, which kids tried to fill with Ping-Pong balls. At another popular booth kids threw paint on Frisbees as they spun around, resulting in fun and swirly souvenirs.
Around the edges of the blacktop were many fun activities to tempt kids of all ages. A petting zoo with goats and ducks, pony rides, bounce slides, a dunk tank and more all gathered crowds; and, new this year, old-fashioned tricycle and sack races kept both kids and adults giggling. Katie Florio, kindergarten teacher, was enjoying the trike races: “It’s great to see all the kids out having fun with their families and getting to play with all their teachers.”
As Florio alluded to, the structure of the day was changed to allow teachers more time to hang out with their students, and intense games of foosball, Ping-Pong and basketball throws were played out in the gym. Lower school math teacher Diane Plauck laughed, “I started my day having a Ping-Pong match with one of [my students]. He beat me, but still it was fun.”
“It’s probably really great for the lower school and middle school kids to have a chance to play Ping-Pong or foosball with teachers and stuff like that, to really change up the dynamic of how they interact with one another,” said upper school science teacher Gary Blickenstaff.
Aside from the opportunity to bond with their teachers, students also enjoyed meeting up with their friends in a welcoming and fun environment. “I like that most of my friends come here and we just have fun. It’s basically a huge carnival,” said student volunteer Calvin Kocienda, grade 10, who worked the laser tag area with his friends in the robotics club.
Classmate Alyssa Crawford liked that the Harvest Festival “brings all the different grades together.”
Parent volunteers also had a big impact on the event’s success, running game booths, selling tickets and serving food to the hundreds of attendees. “I just think it’s a great opportunity to help the children and help the school,” said parent Tracy Baeckler (Alexandra, grade 5), who has volunteered since her daughter was a kindergartner.
Themed around a fictional Harker Thanksgiving Parade, the student show was a huge hit, highlighting dozens of kids from nine performing arts troupes. Mallika Vashist, grade 6, who performed with the choir group Dynamics, enjoyed that Harvest Festival offered her the chance to perform in front of a large audience. “Performing in front of a bunch of people is really fun for me,” she said.
Making cameos were Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs, as Cookie Monster, Head of School Chris Nikoloff as a giant turkey, and Butch Keller, upper school head, as a big SpongeBob SquarePants “float.” Other administrators as well as the IT and facility departments also walked the stage in the “parade,” to a warm and appreciative round of applause from spectators.
Alumni gathered at their shady grove to reunite and chat, and they had new neighbors this year: the preschool was a welcome presence at this long Harker tradition, with teachers and the newest Eagles having fun in a pumpkin patch. Preschool teacher Tanya Burrell, enjoying her first family picnic, said that not only was it “exciting to see [the preschoolers] outside of the school setting, we’re seeing them explore some of the other booths. It’s nice that they’re part of the larger Harker community.”
Indeed, this event truly captured the community spirit that is so much a part of Harker.
The middle school’s recent Harker Harvest Hootenanny was the first spirit event of the school year for students in grades 6-8. Held out on the field of the Blackford campus, the fun afternoon assembly gave middle school students a sneak peek at some of the games that will be played at the upcoming Harker Harvest Festival, the school’s 63rd annual Family & Alumni Picnic.
Gathering by house and advisories, the students listened to information about the upcoming festival before participating in three field games: a barnyard animal impression contest, potato sack race and spoon balancing competition. The games were set up as advisory versus advisory events, with the winners of each going on to represent their house in further contests. The overall winning house received special spirit points and got to go to lunch first on the next school day.
“It was the first major event to make use of our new house parents – volunteers who help us with various house activities and spirit events,” reported middle school English teacher Mark Gelineau, who helped organize the hootenanny.
Gelineau explained that there are four houses in the middle school, with students placed in a house by their advisory and remaining there during their entire middle school duration. Each house contains students from every grade, with house names coming from the Harker school seal.
The four middle school houses are Praestantia, which means excellence, and is symbolized by a lion; Scientia, which stands for knowledge, illustrated by a dragon; Beneficium, meaning service, depicted by a knight; and Constantia, for character, represented by a horse.
According to Gelineau, each advisory chose students to be their representatives for the potato-sack race, the spoon carry, and the barnyard animal impression contest.
“With all four houses cheering them on, the potato-sack racers were a vision of speed and grace as they hopped and shambled across the field, but ultimately, it was Praestantia House that took that event. The spoon race involved balancing a golf ball on a spoon and running as quickly as possible without dropping it. Beneficium House took the glory there. Then finally, for the barnyard animal impression contest, incredibly convincing pig noises sealed it for Praestantia House, giving them overall victory,” said Gelineau.
This article was originally published in the summer 2013 Harker Quarterly.
The baccalaureate ceremony, one of Harker’s proudest graduation traditions, took place on May 23 at the upper school campus quad and was highlighted by heartfelt farewells from both student and faculty representatives. Also in attendance was the Class of 2014, next year’s seniors, who began making the transition to being leaders and role models.
This year’s ceremony began with a pair of performances from a string ensemble, directed by Chris Florio, and the female vocal group Cantilena, directed by Susan Nace.
After Jennifer Gargano, the assistant head of school for academic affairs, opened, Butch Keller, upper school head, introduced the faculty speaker, history teacher Julie Wheeler. “I will be the first to admit that I have been in a state of quasi-denial that you, the Class of 2013, were really about to graduate, say goodbye, and start a new and exciting phase of your life outside of Harker,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler noted the Class of 2013 may find it “downright exhausting trying to explain Harker to those who haven’t experienced it as they may doubt whether the fictional, Oz-like place that you describe really exists,” but “it’s an opportunity to redefine yourself.”
Emily Wang ’13, salutatorian, said the most important lesson she has learned is that “the great things are the quiet things. When I look back at these days, of course I’ll fondly remember the homecoming games, the spirit rallies, the school dances, the spring musicals. But I think that high school is defined by the smaller moments, those brief flashes of time when you look around you and think, hey, I like where I am right now.”
She likened these moments to building blanket forts as a child. “That experience – of sitting under a blanket and dreaming wildly – is perhaps long gone,” she said. “Yet we carry those dreams with us, an indomitable conviction that we can build castles from bed sheets, that we can build anything, that we can be anything.”
New to this year’s ceremony was the addition of a senior student speaker chosen by the graduating class. The first to be selected for this honor was Carlos Johnson-Cruz, who began his speech by recreating a scene described in the infamous Rebecca Black song, “Friday.”
“You see your friends over at the stop, and they’re in their fancy automobile. One guy is ‘kicking it’ in the front seat, another is ‘kicking it’ the back seat, but they’ll get up if you want them to. Now, you have to make your mind up. Which seat do you take?” Johnson-Cruz asked. “Here, you made something, anything of yourself,” he said. In closing, he reminded his classmates to be aware of the choices that they make and how they affect other people as well as themselves. “‘Know thyself,’ said the Greeks. ‘Know thine actions,’ says Carlos,” he finished.
Head of School Chris Nikoloff closed the ceremony with some heartfelt words of his own before the students departed, the seniors no doubt eagerly anticipating their graduation exercises that weekend. The full text of this story can be found here.
This article was originally published in the summer 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Of all the remarkable milestones Harker students achieve, none is as great or as meaningful as their final rite of passage when they receive their diplomas. The pride was palpable on May 24 at the Mountain Winery as the Class of 2013 walked across the stage, collected their diplomas from Head of School Chris Nikoloff, gave a hug or handshake to Upper School Head Butch Keller, and smiled at their class dean, Jeff Draper, who read each of their names.
The weather was perfect – cool and clear; the music, provided by Harker’s chamber ensemble and all-choir Graduation Chorus, was beautiful; the speeches, perhaps among the best yet of the upper school’s 12 graduations.
Ashvin Swaminathan represented his class as valedictorian, and his speech found a perfect balance between honoring the past and preparing for the future. His first words remembered those who are gone: “Let us not forget how blessed we are to have had our lives touched by the love and friendship of” Jackie Wang ’13, teachers John Near and Sharron Mittelstet, counselor Sandy Padgett and school founder Howard Nichols.
He spoke of his own sickly childhood and his mother’s successful struggle with cancer and posed the question, “By what means did every one of us manage to triumph over our tribulations?” The answer? “Our parents,” who were “iron girders” of support. Introducing his theme of “Let us vow,” Swaminathan adjured his classmates, “Let us vow to continue to treat our parents as our heroes,” to honor them, make them proud and not neglect them “at any time.”
He asked his peers to vow to “never compromise on the value system that our teachers have established for us” in the face of all the temptations to come, and said, “Let us vow to share our leftover resources with those who are not as fortunate as we are.”
The teachers who had led Swaminathan and his classmates on what he called a “beautiful scholastic safari” were on their feet moments after his talk concluded, to be joined almost immediately by his classmates.
Keynote speaker Nipun Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace, an organization dedicated to volunteerism which has nurtured projects resulting in the gifting of millions of dollars of services, including website creation and pay-it-forward restaurants, at which a person eats for free but pays for the meal of the next customer who comes in to dine. He has devoted his entire adult life to the pursuit of giving.
Mehta’s engaging speech was a rallying cry to fix what is “at the core of all of today’s most pressing challenges: … we have become profoundly disconnected …. We have forgotten how to rescue each other.” He says humans are wired to give and to help each other, and asked, “Will you, Class of 2013, step up to rebuild a culture of trust, empathy and compassion?”
There are three keys to living a life of giving, Mehta said. The first is to give, no strings attached. The second is to receive: “When you give externally, you receive internally.” His third key is to dance. “Our biggest problem with giving and receiving is that we try and track it. And when we do that, we lose the beat.”
He closed with this final thought: “Harker Class of 2013, may you all find greatness in service to life. May you all give, receive – and never, ever stop dancing.” Nikoloff also had an opportunity to offer some words of wisdom to the class, which he did in a lighthearted talk titled “Love like a Labrador,” meaning unconditionally and with joy. (See full text here.)
Then diplomas were bestowed, doves were released and tassels were switched from right to left; the graduates processed out of the amphitheater and walked through a tunnel formed by their teachers, who gave a final round of applause as Harker’s newest members of the alumni family were fondly sent on their way.
Cellist Sebastian Bäverstam, the 24-year-old former child prodigy who debuted at Carnegie Hall at age 14, brought the third season of the Harker Concert Series to a brilliant close on Feb. 8, performing a special collection of Russian music from Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff to a sold-out audience.
Partnered throughout the concert by accomplished pianist Pei-Shan Lee, Bäverstam began with Prokofiev’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major, moving gracefully through its contemplative and somewhat somber first movement, trading phrases with Lee as though in conversation. The brisker second and third movements evoked a more upbeat style from the cellist, who swayed and bobbed through the faster sections as the call-and-response interplay with Lee continued. His physical expressiveness seemed to mirror his similarly impassioned interpretation of the material, taking deep breaths before long legato passages and moving vigorously during the galloping, more technically challenging sections, for which he was more than up to the task. Lee handled the piece with the right amounts of aggression and restraint.
Bäverstam and Lee briefly left the stage following the conclusion of the sonata, prompting some audience members to head to the lobby for drinks and hors d’oeuvres, believing the concert to be at an intermission. The two nevertheless returned a short time later to perform Shostakovich’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, but not before Bäverstam quipped, “Sorry. It’s not over yet.”
The shifting tensions and moods of Shostakovich’s sonata were brought out wonderfully by Bäverstam’s ability to interpret the varied themes with both subtlety and flair. The wide, ominous piano passages of the first movement were met by the disquieting melody provided by Bäverstam, whose splendid vibrato powerfully buoyed every note until the disturbing calm was broken by the second movement’s urgency and energy, driven by Bäverstam and Lee’s bombastic yet controlled approach, later contrasted by the desolation and sobriety of the “Largo” movement before being brought a crashing finish in the final movement, guided by the dexterous, emotive performance of the two players.
Following the (actual) intermission, the duo returned to the stage to perform the evening’s final piece, Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, whose challenging first movement, characterized by varying tempos and moods, was superbly handled. The sonata also gave ample opportunity for Lee to demonstrate her immense talents, nimbly maneuvering her way through the piece’s more challenging sections while simultaneously finding the array of emotion underneath. Despite an exhausting program, Bäverstam and Lee had no discernible trouble summoning the energy necessary for the final run of the Sonata’s Vivace.
This story recently appeared in the winter 2012 edition of Harker Quarterly.
The Parker Quartet, the latest in a line of top-flight classical performers to appear at the Harker Concert Series, put bow to string for a packed house at Nichols Hall auditorium on Oct. 26.
The quartet opened with famed minimalist Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres.” First violinist Daniel Chong and violist Jessica Bodner began with the piece’s foreboding harmonies, which were greeted by the cellist Kee-Hyun Kim’s percussive pizzicato, providing an effective, if somewhat violent, contrast to the delicate work of his partners. As second violinist Karen Kim was on sabbatical, David McCarroll served as her replacement that evening, providing a soft, constant hum behind the ominous and sometimes mournful lines.
Astara Marcia commented that the performance was “excellent. I’m a classical musician myself,” said the violist with the Palo Alto Peninsula Pops Orchestra. She also enjoyed the presentation of the event, saying “I’m very impressed. It’s a great way to get people to come back.”
The quartet launched into the evening’s big crowd-pleaser, Franz Schubert’s “String Quartet No. 14,” subtitled “Death and the Maiden,” known to many a listener of chamber music. The quartet took an almost explosive approach to the material, while at the same time allowing themselves plenty of subtlety in the quieter sections. The piece was a great showcase for the musicians’ splendid technique and tight interplay, which the audience met with loud applause.