The 2023 upper school spring musical, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” has been nominated for Rita Moreno Awards for Overall Production and Outstanding Actress (Selina Xu, grade 11). A total of 36 productions – as well as 263 individual performers – were nominated in the competition, which includes high school theater programs north of Santa Barbara. Students who win Outstanding Actress and Outstanding Actor will head to New York City for the National High School Musical Theatre Awards, where they will showcase for industry professionals and compete for scholarships. As part of the competition, the cast of “Spelling Bee” will perform a seven-minute compilation of scenes from the show on May 8 at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts. Tickets are available.
Downbeat, the upper school’s show choir group directed by teachers Jennifer Sandusky and Laura Lang-Ree, competed this past weekend in the quarterfinals of the International Competition of High School A Capella, placing fourth in ICHSA’s West region. Samvita Gautham, grade 12, was awarded for Best Student Choreography for Downbeat’s performance of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.” Downbeat competed against 200 other schools to reach this stage of the annual competition. Held by Varsity Vocals, the ICHSA and its collegiate-level counterpart attract thousands of singers every year. The competitions were made famous by the “Pitch Perfect” series of films, in which the collegiate-level competition is prominently featured.
Earlier this week, Ethan Guan, grade 10, was named the K-8 winner in the 2022 Electronic Music Composition Competition held by the National Association for Music Educators (NAfME). Guan’s piece, “No Shame in Games,” earned him a cash prize and can be heard via the NAfME website. He composed the piece as a seventh grader in 2020, thus making him eligible for the competition. This competition is meant to demonstrate the various ways music technology has enhanced music education and is open to K-8, high school and college students.
Ron McCurdy, a professor of music at the University of Southern California, gave a presentation Tuesday on the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. His appearance was the first in a series of four planned for the upper school’s spring semester. McCurdy, who previously served as a professor of music and chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Minnesota, is also the creator of the Langston Hughes Project, a live multimedia performance of Langston Hughes’ “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz,” which will be performed during McCurdy’s fourth appearance in April.
The presentation began with a brief history of the arrival of the first Africans on the American continent in the 17th century, their enslavement by European settlers (at the persuasion of rich European landowners), the Emancipation Proclamation (which McCurdy said was an act of “economic and political expediency”) and the 13th Amendment, which formally abolished slavery but contained a massive loophole: that people guilty of criminal behavior could be placed back into bondage.
“So we know that with the 13th Amendment being enacted, that almost any aspect of African-American life was somehow criminalized,” McCurdy said. One of the most flagrant abuses of the loophole involved the crime of vagrancy, in which a person was unable to produce papers proving they were employed. This criminalization of Black life, McCurdy said, continues today. “It is no accident … that even though African-Americans make up less than 30 percent of the population, we represent more than 50 percent of the population in prison,” he noted.
During the migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and Midwest, “an amalgamation of doctors, lawyers, teachers, dentists, gangsters … you name it,” arrived in Harlem, McCurdy said. This also included a great number of artists and intellectuals, resulting in what has become known as the Harlem Renaissance. “The Harlem Renaissance was probably one of the first times in our country where white America began to take notice of African-American culture,” said McCurdy. Before then, Black Americans were judged only by the amount of labor they performed.
Artists from many disciplines – including music, poetry, painting and literature – created works that chronicled Black life in the 1920s. McCurdy covered several of the key figures during this period, including Hughes, whose work delved into the contradiction of the idea of America as “land of the free.”
Harlem also had its own successful baseball and basketball teams. The New York Renaissance basketball team (often shortened to Rens), was based in Harlem and would play exhibition games against the Boston Celtics, who they frequently defeated. The Rens were paid in checks, which would often bounce. The two teams befriended one another, and the Celtics later demanded that the Rens be paid in cash.
Black musicians in the 1920s, many trained at top American musical schools, had difficulty finding opportunities in America and frequently performed in Europe. These included singer Marian Anderson, who toured successfully in Europe before returning to America. After being denied the opportunity to sing at Washington D.C.’s Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, she gave a now-famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Singer and actor Paul Robeson also became popular for his theater performances, particularly of the song “Ol’ Man River,” which he repurposed later in his life as an anthem against oppression. In the 1940s he was blacklisted for his sympathies for the Soviet Union and stances against American imperialism and could no longer travel abroad to perform.
The Cotton Club began operation in Harlem in 1923, employing Black entertainers whose performances at the whites-only venue helped launch their careers. Due to the popularity of minstrelsy and later vaudeville in the early 20th century, African-American performers “were expected to comport themselves in a very subservient way.” McCurdy recalled a conversation he had with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who held little respect for Louis Armstrong as a boy “until he understood the history. And that way of comporting yourself was a defense mechanism. It was a survival technique,” McCurdy said. “Because if you came across as an African-American man with any degree of arrogance or too much confidence, that could get you killed.”
The growing popularity of jazz brought with it new dances such as the Lindy Hop and the Big Apple. As an art, dance began “moving away from the Victorian style of living, where everything was pristine and carefully done,” McCurdy said. “Now many of the Black dances … these were all dances that found their genesis in the Black community.” This style became popular with white youths, who were “having themselves a ball, much to the chagrin of their parents,” McCurdy remarked.
McCurdy’s next appearance will take place in late February, in which he will examine jazz performance practices and how they are similar to leadership, using examples by Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Benny Goodman.
This week, the upper school show choir Downbeat released a special video for its annual holiday outreach tour, which typically takes place on the first Friday of December. “For the last 25 years, Downbeat has toured all over the Bay Area, bringing holiday joy to preschools, senior centers, dementia units, Grace Cathedral’s homeless lunch clients, the children’s cancer ward at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and more,” said Laura Lang-Ree, upper school performing arts chair. In addition to performing, they also bring gifts, cookies and spend time chatting with residents.
Due to safety concerns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the tour could not be held this year, but the students felt the tradition should continue in some form. “Downbeat decided it was important to continue the tradition for all of our regular outreach places and spread even more joy, as so many people are alone over the holidays due to the pandemic,” Lang-Ree said. Downbeat members spent considerable time over the fall semester creating the video, including the sound editing, arranging and narration. It will be sent to various Bay Area schools, youth centers, hospitals and care facilities. Members of the Harker community can view the video by logging in to the Harker portal and visiting the Performing Arts page.
Ayan Nath, grade 11, recently placed second in American Protege’s We Sing Pop competition. He is slated to perform in the American Protege Summer Gala concert, scheduled to take place in June 2021 at the Isaac Stern Auditorium, located in New York City’s Carnegie Hall. The concert will also feature performers from Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy and South Korea.
Nath’s interest in music began at a very young age, and he has performed in events at Harker as well as Bay Area events such as the Stanford Jazz Festival. He was also invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in 2019 after winning an International Music Talent Award for his performance on the tabla, an Indian percussion instrument.
Downbeat, the upper school’s show choir, traveled to Portland, Ore., the weekend of Feb. 22-23, where it took third place at the West quarterfinal of the 2020 International Championship of High School A Cappella, hosted by Varsity Vocals. The group has qualified for the semi-final round of the competition. Their performance of Billie Eilish and Khalid’s “Lovely” was arranged by senior Max Lee, who received an award for outstanding arrangement, and choreographed by senior Kenya Aridomi.
Every year, Varsity Vocals holds a cappella competitions for high school and college students that attract thousands of singers worldwide. The collegiate-level competition was featured in the popular “Pitch Perfect” series of films.
This week and next week, 16 members of The Harker Orchestra will be working with Kronos Quartet – which will perform Feb. 28 at the Patil Theater – as part of its 50 for the Future program. The students will head to San Francisco this week to begin working on a piece commissioned by Kronos for the purpose of helping young musicians develop their skills for contemporary music. Their work will continue next week when Kronos Quartet visits Harker to give a special master class.
Students participating in the program are: Rachel Broweleit, Hanoom Lee, Arushi Nety, Amla Rashingkar, Jackie Yang and Jeffrey Yang, all grade 12; Sophia Horng and Maria Vazhaeparambil, both grade 11; Lucas Chen, Alex Hu, Thresia Vazhaeparambi, Austin Wang, April Zhang and Tina Zhong, all grade 10; and Sawyer Lai and Cassie May, both grade 9.
The 2020 upper school dance production, “Remixed & Reimagined,” took place Friday and Saturday, featuring 185 dancers performing routines based on alternate versions of songs by popular artists including Usher, Nicki Minaj, John Mayer and Demi Lovato. Several of the routines in the show were created by this year’s choreography class graduates, seniors Kai-Ming Ang and Anna Miner, and juniors Zoe Kister and Kristin Tong.
Last week, the annual grade 5 show brought together a cast of 132 for a humorous, musical retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic short story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The show featured singing, dancing and instrumental numbers, and many of the performers also took on additional responsibilities, such as working on the tech crew, costume assistance and set photography to help make the production a success.