Like many a Swarthmore student, Lili Tobias ’19 finds herself graduating this year with a somewhat different degree than her younger self had anticipated.  She came to Swarthmore planning to major in linguistics, but soon, as she describes it, “music took over my life. And so now I’m a music major and linguistics minor.”

For Tobias, though, that academic transition was less a tortured decision than natural progression, something that “just happened.”  A pianist in high school, at Swarthmore she began taking classes in theory, composition, and musicology, and joined the Swarthmore College Chorus and the Garnet Singers.  Eventually she realized that most of her classes were related to music, and that those were the ones she really cared about. “The department really felt like home to me,” she says of choosing to focus on music.  “I knew all the professors, I knew all the other majors… it just felt like that’s where I belonged.”

That sense of community is what Tobias names as the best part of her experience in Swarthmore’s music program, which although it may be small—there are only two majors in her year—is plenty mighty.  She sees its size as a defining positive attribute, saying that “it’s so welcoming and we’re very close knit. The best friends I’ve made here” tend to be “connected to the music department in some way.”

The small size also affords a lot of personalized academic attention and opportunities.  Tobias has taken a composition course, the only repeatable course in the department, every semester since sophomore spring.  After one’s first time taking it, the class functions like an independent study, so, she explains, “it’s very individualized.”  She gets tailored listening assignments from Professor Gerald Levinson, a well-recognized contemporary classical composer, that he thinks will relate to the direction of Tobias’s own work.  She’s also had the opportunity to compose several pieces for the college Chorus and Garnet Singers, with the encouragement of its director Joseph Gregorio.

Tobias says she tends to listen to and compose mostly classical music, and especially admires “women composers of the past and of the present.  I identify with them because there’s just a lot fewer women that go into composition.” She’s currently writing her senior comprehensive paper on Amy Beach, a composer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Beach was an American musical prodigy who started composing as soon as she learned to play the piano as a young child, and, although she’s rarely part of modern classical repertory, earned in her own lifetime unusual acceptance and success in an overwhelmingly male field.  For her senior comprehensive, Tobias will not only analyze Beach’s work from a theoretical and musicological perspective, but also perform on piano three of her songs, with soprano Rebecca Regan ’19.

She’s unsure as of yet as her exact plans post-graduation, although she says that “going into music publishing is something that’s definitely appealing to me.”  Tobias got a taste of the business as an intern this past summer with Schott Music, a publishing company in her home city of New York. She describes herself as someone who likes editing and creating a pretty and polished final project, and “really enjoyed” combining those skills with her love of music.

Ultimately, whatever specific path she may take, Tobias feels certain that music “is going to be the main focus of my life somehow.”

Lydia Roe ’20

Acclaimed cellist Amy Sue Barston will be coming to Swarthmore College to perform and to hold master classes for student instrumentalists. Barston is a renowned soloist and chamber musician, performing all around the world. Her past performances include concerts at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Ravinia, Bargemusic, Caramoor, Haan Hall (Jerusalem), The Banff Centre (Canada), The International Musicians’ Seminar (England), The Power House (Australia), and Chicago’s Symphony Center.

Barston was first contacted by Andrew Hauze ‘04, Lecturer and Director of the Swarthmore College Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. Barston came to Hauze’s mind as a candidate to invite to campus because of the professional relationship that they built over the past years.

“I first met Amy in 2013 through Astral Artists,” Hauze said. “We were scheduled to play some chamber music concerts together, and then I was delighted to discover that she lives right here in Swarthmore!”

“She is a brilliant musician and world-renowned teacher whose students come from far and wide to study with her, and I had always had it in mind that we should invite her to be more involved at the college,” Hauze continued.

This is not the first time Barston has worked with Swarthmore student instrumentalists.

“She worked with the orchestra string section a few years ago, and her teaching was wonderfully inspired and made an immediate difference in our sound,” Hauze said.

Barston’s visits to Swarthmore College provide an opportunity for students to learn from a musician who has cultivated her performance abilities based on her travels and exploration of different musical styles.

“In addition to her extraordinary musicality, Amy brings a knowledge of a wide range of musical cultures and styles and an enormous breadth of experience,” Hauze said.

During her time at Swarthmore College, Barston will hold two master classes with students: one on Friday, November 9th, and the other on Friday, April 5th, 2019. Both of these classes will be conducted in Lang Concert Hall.

“I know that students will be inspired by Amy’s energy and musical sensitivity: she really lives and breathes musical expression, and I can’t wait for the students to interact with her and find their own response to her musical ideas,” Hauze said.

Not only will students learn from Barston’s expertise, they will also have the chance to perform with Barston on stage.

“I am so happy that Amy will get to work closely with students in a variety of formats, and that she will be our soloist with the college orchestra in one of the greatest of all concertos, the Dvorak cello concerto,” Hauze said.

At the end of this semester, Barston will perform with the Swarthmore College Orchestra on Saturday, December 1st at 8:00 pm at Lang Concert Hall. In addition to the performance with the Swarthmore College Orchestra, Barston will also perform with Ieva Jokubaviciute, a pianist, on Friday, March 29th at 8:00 pm at Lang Concert Hall.

Several media outlets have described Barston’s playing style as eloquent, passionate, haunting, and skilled. Hauze is confident that Barston’s two stages at Swarthmore College will not fail to amaze audience members.

“Amy’s performances are always rich in musical depth and alive with communicative energy,” Hauze said. “She also has an extremely beautiful cello sound, and so attending any recital by Amy is a treat!”

David Chan ’19

Through the Swarthmore College Featured Artist program, Variant 6, a virtuosic vocal sextet, is working with Swarthmore students in recitals, workshops, and master classes throughout the 2018-19 season.

Variant 6 explores and advances the art of chamber music in the twenty-first century by radically reimagining concert experiences through performing rarely heard works, commissioning substantial new works, collaborating closely with other ensembles, and educating a new generation of singers.

Associate in Performance Joe Gregorio first proposed to invite Variant 6 to complete a residency with the Swarthmore Music & Dance Department.

“I had met one of Variant 6’s tenors, James Reese, about three years ago when the Chorus hired him to sing the tenor solos in our performance of Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore,” Gregorio said. “I had suggested to the Department of Music & Dance that we try to bring in Variant 6 for a residency, and was thrilled when our concert manager, Jenny Honig, told me we could.”

As part of their residency at Swarthmore College, Variant 6 will hold concerts, performing alone and with students. Moreover, Variant 6 have two planned composer workshops, one already completed on October 10th and the other scheduled for November 7th, to read original student compositions. Students of Swarthmore Music Professor Gerald Levinson participated in the October 10th workshop, where they sang through choral pieces in progress.

“In this workshop, the members of Variant 6 were able to offer invaluable advice to student composers about the construction of their works and about composing for voices in general,” Gregorio said.

Lili Tobias ‘19, a music major, participated in the October 10th workshop and will participate in the upcoming workshop. Tobias has considerable experience in composing vocal music.

“Many of my friends are singers, and I like writing pieces for us to play together, so voice is one of the instruments I gravitated to from the very beginning,” Tobias said. “I’ve written a bunch of art songs for solo voice and piano, and some choral (or small vocal ensemble) pieces.”

Having Variant 6 present on campus not only provides an opportunity for the group to share their work, but it also gives music students a chance to work in a professional setting and to get feedback from professional musicians.

“We’re very lucky that the Swarthmore Music [Program] is able to get such amazing artists-in-residence, like Variant 6,” Tobias said. “This gives the composition students the opportunity to write for professional-level musicians and get feedback on their music from the perspective of the performers.”

Furthermore, students are exposed to different vocal techniques, especially if they come from a different musical background than Variant 6.

“Variant 6 sings a lot of new music, so during the composition workshop this past Wednesday, they suggested many vocal techniques and subtle differences in voice quality that I was not necessarily familiar with, coming from a background of more traditional, classical music,” Tobias said.

By working with Variant 6, students have the opportunity to expand their voice capability and to enrich their musical education at Swarthmore.

“I think this helped all of us think outside the box regarding what the voice is capable of and the range of sounds it can make,” Tobias continues.

The final compositions generated in these workshops will be performed at the Lunch Hour Concert on November 12th at 12:30 pm in Parrish Parlors. Additionally, Variant 6 will perform a concert of their own programming on Friday, November 16th at 8:00 pm in Lang Concert Hall.

For the 2019 spring semester, Variant 6 will hold a master vocal class for Swarthmore vocalists on Wednesday, March 20th at 3:00 pm. Furthermore, Variant 6 will perform with Swarthmore College Chorus and Garnet Singers on Friday, May 3rd at 8:00 pm. Both of these events will take place at Lang Concert Hall.

“We’ve been lucky over the last few years to have several top-notch choral ensembles visit Swarthmore College: Roomful of Teeth, the Morehouse College Glee Club, and now Variant 6. I feel very fortunate that the campus community has been able to welcome these groups and that choral singers here have had the opportunity to see and hear such high-level choral singing,” Gregorio concluded.

David Chan ’19

In ARC our intention is to bring together two very different drumming traditions of tabla from North India and taiko from Japan.  We sought to find choreographer/dancers whose artistry would include a responsive sensitivity subtle enough yet expansive enough in order to interpret the enormous dynamic and physical range of the arc between these two poles.

We also see a second relational graph producing an arc between the electrodes of tabla and the dance/movement with taiko—an art form comprising both drumming and choreographed full-body movement in equal parts—as the resultant voltage that will illuminate the relationship between the three components.

We hope for exploration as well as reconciliation of these disparate disciplines.  Thundering taiko drums will offer a dynamic contrast to the quieter, complex rhythms of tabla; and as the taiko drummers explore a complex personal kinesphere with the space and volume of their drums, dancers will seek out sonic spaces and the rhythms that define them.

While tabla drums—played as a pair—are now played all over India, these drums are traditionally found in the north of India.  The two drums typically produce as many as twelve distinct sounds and the rhythm cycles can consist of over one-hundred beats.  All rhythmic phrases can be spoken as recitative as can rhythms of Taiko. Tabla often accompanies dance traditionally and today.  The dancers too recite these rhythmic syllables as part of the process of choreographing, teaching, and performing.

Taiko—a term that means ‘fat or big drum’—have traditionally been played for folk festivals and religious rituals in temples, shrines and in sacred forest sites.  Stimulated by massive economic growth of postwar Japan and its concomitant move of large populations to the cities, these urban communities soon developed a nostalgic interest in rural traditions and values and ultimately in their efficacy for the revitalization of their home village communities.  Also, in response to the notion of the Japanese community that the incessant intrusion of the modern was a product of Western enlightened reason, new forms of artistic expression were born. These forms often reflecting traditional source, but in opposition to customary decorative art, sought to express in a diverse and experimental manner a search for post-war identity.

The development of contemporary Taiko has played a role in this search.  In 1971 Den Tagayasu created Ondekoza, the first group that would take taiko from traditional performance sites to international concert stages. The name means ‘demon drumming’—derived from ‘Ondeko’,  a demon drum-dance invocation for a successful harvest or fish catch. Den Tagayasu describes Ondeko as having a contagious, spiritual, shamanistic power found in Shinto ritual.

‘Ondekoza’ refers both to ‘demon dancers’ or ‘artisans’ and is also present in ARC’s culminating section which features references to the demon-sword dance Oni Kenbai, originally a danced offering in order to comfort ancestral spirits, and later, provide inspiration and courage for soldiers before or after battle.  While Oni Kenbai consists of rhythms from the distant past, our performance will incorporate the rhythmic framework of the classical Indian tehai creating an expectant, forward momentum for both dancers and drummers. Our hope is our Oni Kenbai, as well as the full ARC performance, will not only provide comfort to our ancestors, but engagement and inspiration to all in our audience.

Professor Kim Arrow

For a three-week period in July 2018, an entire cast of performers gathered at Swarthmore College’s Department of Music & Dance in order to create a performance titled ARC. This performance project combines music and dance idiosyncratically to explore how different musical genres collaborate or clash and how dancer/choreographers interpret the uniquely created rhythms.

This evening-length performance suite will bring together drumming traditions of tabla (from North India) and taiko (from Japan), along with contemporary Western, African Diasporic, and Southeast Asian dance.

“For instance, how does taiko drumming, known for tremendous sonic impact, interact with the complex rhythmic cycles and sounds of the tabla?” Swarthmore Dance Professor Joe Small asked. “How do the dancer/choreographers interpret the array of rhythms and sounds they can hear?  And conversely, how do the drummers respond to the actions of the dancer/choreographers?”

Taiko, or “fat drum” in Japanese, refers to designs and drums played in Japan and to the art of drumming in various formalized manners. Taiko has had a long history as an instrument, but as performance music, taiko is a post-WWII phenomenon. In North America, taiko was brought over by mostly working-class Japanese immigrants who used it as a form of community entertainment.

“As taiko involves physical dynamism – that is, it’s an embodied form of drumming that can be considered choreography in and of itself – practitioners (especially anyone who feels underrepresented) find the art quite empowering and a means to express their identity particularly in a manner that the public will take notice,” Professor Small said.

Tabla originates from the Indian subcontinent and consists of a pair of drums. Tabla is particularly important in Hindustani classical music since the 18th century. Playing the tabla involves extensive use of the fingers and palms in various configurations to create different sounds and rhythms.

Because of the combination of different musical genres, each artist had to step out of their comfort zones to better understand each other’s work and methodology. Therefore, the effective collaboration needed to create ARC’smusic and dance during its creative residency highly depended on an environment of mutual openness.

The cast consists of three tabla artists: Lenny Seidman, Jonathan Marmor, and Daniel Scholnick; three taiko artists: Joe Small, Kristy Oshiro, and Isaku Kageyama; and three choreographers/dancers: Laurel Jenkins, Annielille Gavino and Orlando Hunter.

ARC was conceptualized by Lenny Seidman, a tabla player and teacher, a composer, Co-Director of Spoken Hand Percussion Orchestra, and Jazz Curator for Painted Bride Art Center. Seidman began studying tabla in 1971, but it was only when Seidman became a student of tabla maestro, Zakir Hussain, that he directed his performing focus exclusively to tabla.

As for Professor Small, he is not only an Assistant Professor of Dance at Swarthmore College, but also a professional taiko drum artist. His creative approach often incorporates postmodern choreography and performance art. Professor Small has been a member of Marco Lienhard’s ensemble, Taikoza, since 2009. He is a disciple of pioneering taiko artist Eitetsu Hayashi and the sole foreign member of his Japan-based professional ensemble, Fu-Un no Kai, since 2012.

“I was contacted by Lenny [Seidman] some time in 2016, inviting me to be part of the ARC project, as I’m a professional taiko drum artist” Professor Small said when asked how he became involved with the performance project.  “Having had the chance to collaborate with Lenny during my time as a Swarthmore undergraduate dance major in 2004-2005, I happily agreed to collaborate.”

ARC will be performed on Friday, October 5 at 8 pm in the LPAC Pearson-Hall Theater, and was financially made possible by support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and Swarthmore’s William J. Cooper Grant.

David Chan ’19

The Dance Program of Swarthmore College enthusiastically welcomed Tiffanie Carson, Assistant Director of Christopher K. Morgan & Artists (CKM/A), onto campus over a three-day period. CKM/A is one of the Department of Music and Dance’s Featured Guest Artists for the 2018-2019 season.

CKM/A is a professional contemporary dance company founded by Christopher K. Morgan and located in Washington D.C. The company is unique in its mission to explore social and cultural issues through dance as well as its intention to demystify contemporary dance. They do so by holding community dialogues and uploading online video content.

During her stay on campus, Carson taught the choreography of In the Cold Room in three classes that were attended by student, faculty, and community members. In the Cold Room premiered at American Dance Institute in 2014. The piece features a trio of women who explore reactions to light, dark, and temperature to create an abstract examination of isolations and connections. The fast-paced energy of the performance coupled with the large-scale movements of the original dancers of the piece was said to leave the audience breathless, because the expressions of the piece are at once primal and poetic.

Students auditioned for this piece and were selected by CKM/A during the weekend. Emma Dulski, Lia D’Alessandro, and Katie Knox will perform In the Cold Room as part of the Swarthmore Fall Dance Concert.

“In the Cold Room is both really beautiful and really difficult to dance, and I was excited to see the student dancers tackle the tough choreography, which they spent over 20 hours learning during the intensive weekend of rehearsals” Prof. Olivia Sabee said.

In the spring, CKM/A will return to campus to present Pōhaku as part of the Unexpected Homeland programming, co-sponsored by the President’s Office Mellon Grant and the Department of Music & Dance.

“Alba Newmann Holmes came to me with the idea of writing a grant last spring based on the idea of Unexpected Homeland” Prof. Sabee said. “I had been interested in bringing CKM/A to campus for a number of years and when I realized that his new work Pōhaku fit Alba’s theme, it seemed like a perfect match.”

Pōhaku pairs hula kahiko (traditional hula) and modern dance styles together to express the conflict that Christopher K. Morgan feels as a mixed-race person who grew up in California.

David Chan ’19