Music major and biology minor Rachel Hottle ’18 considers herself to have taken “a liberal arts approach to music,” exploring many musical skills and concepts instead of sticking to just one. She plays both the flute and piano, and sings in the Swarthmore College Chorus, Garnet Singers, and Grapevine acapella group. She also composes music herself, including a piece based on Emily Dickinson’s poem, “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark,” that was performed in the Swarthmore College Chorus concert last fall.

Hottle has found inspiration in female composers and songwriters. “I was trained in classical flute and piano but most of the composers of classical music tend to be dead white men,  which was not the most inspiring thing for me growing up,” she said. “It’s hard to look up to Mozart as a young girl. So I play primarily classical music but I draw my inspiration from Joni Mitchell, Carole King, [etc]. I really look up to female singer-songwriters.”

Her interest in the gender imbalance present in classical music has stayed with her throughout her time at Swarthmore, influencing her senior recital. “My initial idea was, ‘I wanna do a recital that has only music by female composers,’ but I have since discovered that that’s kind of difficult since there aren’t a lot of female composers,” Hottle said. She instead adjusted her plans to feature “mainly non- dead white men” in her recital.

Hottle’s senior recital will be “a little more eclectic than most senior recitals,” according to her, including singing, flute, guitar, duets with friends, and a song from Grapevine. “Playing with other people has been an important way that I’ve connected with people outside of your typical social interactions,” she said. “One of my closest friends who graduated, we would just hang out all the time and sing and play the guitar and just harmonize together.”

She has cultivated this love of group music-making since she was 12, when her church asked her to play piano to fill a gap in their ensemble.

“I think that was pretty central to my musical formation, being forced to do things that were a little bit beyond my ability,” she said. “I had to improvise on the fly and learn how to be really flexible, which I think really helped me in group music-making.”

After leaving the tight-knit Swarthmore community where she participated in so many ensembles, Hottle plans to study music cognition in a graduate program. She will also continue playing music as well as studying it.

“Regardless of what I’m doing, I definitely want to keep playing after I leave Swat and I’m not sure how that works in the real world…are there community groups that you can join? Do you just hang up flyers saying ‘who wants to jam with me?’ I don’t know.”

Bayliss Wagner ’21

The Swarthmore College Chorus and Garnet Singers concert on Saturday, December 9 at 3:00 PM invites its audience to celebrate not only Bach’s music on the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, but also the voices and experiences of minority composers. The unexpected repertoire, chosen by director Joseph Gregorio, will feature Bach’s “Magnificat,” performed by the entire Swarthmore College Chorus and Orchestra. The Garnet Singers, a subset of the chorus composed of students at the college, will sing pieces around the theme of light and dark.

Though the Garnet Singers will be performing Bach with a piece called “O Jesu Christ Meins Lebens Licht,” the majority of their pieces come from composers not typically represented in classical choral music, such as women, African-Americans, and people of Native American descent. “I’m very aware that it’s difficult for women and minorities to be represented fairly in the classical concert hall and it’s something I wanted to try and work toward with this programming,” Gregorio said. “I try to pick music from throughout history and from as broad a diversity of composers as makes sense.”

From capturing despair to celebrating hope, these composers each bring their own diverse responses to the Garnet Singer’s theme. One piece not only responds to darkness but attempts to make sense of it through a poem by Emily Dickinson, “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark.” Alto section leader Rachel Hottle ’18 composed the piece this year and will perform as a soloist. Two compositions that evoke a sense of hope are “Sure on this Shining Night” by Samuel Barber and “My Lord, What a Mornin,’” composed by the grandfather of African-American spiritual arrangers, H. T. Burleigh. “The setting is very much at dawn,” Gregorio said of the Burleigh piece. “There’s darkness and there’s the realization of approaching light.”

One of the most unorthodox pieces of the repertoire is the Ute Sundance, a piece sung with vocables instead of lyrics. Ethan Sperry adapted the composition for chorus with the permission of Valerie Naranjo, who based the original composition off of a yearly ritual that her Ute ancestors performed. “The Sundance was historically a very difficult and painful dance ritual,” Gregorio said. “It was thought that through the Sundance, all of the grudges and disappointments and bad feelings of the previous year are cleansed and washed away, so it’s a ritual of purification, really, and the idea that was by the suffering taken on by these dancers, the community was washed clean of all of those bad feelings.”

Reena Esmail, who was a new student at Juilliard when the Twin Towers fell, composed “Ritual” in the wake of the attacks. The “constellation of notes that evoke fear and uncertainty,” as Gregorio notes, express the apprehension that Esmail felt. She based her composition off of a William Stafford poem that she encountered in class the day before 9/11: “As we…began to reel at the overwhelming magnitude and gravity of the situation, there was only one phrase that emerged from the chaos. It was the last line of Stafford’s poem. The darkness around us is deep,” she writes on her blog.

During the second half of the concert, the college chorus and the orchestra will perform “Magnificat,” a liturgical composition based on a Latin biblical hymn. Andrew Kim ’18 will perform as assistant conductor of the piece. In addition, for the first time in many years, professional vocalists will perform with the group, including Swarthmore voice instructors Clara Rottsolk and Nancy Jantsch. This year marks 500 years since Martin Luther posted his 95 theses, initiating the Protestant Reformation. Luther greatly influenced Johann Sebastian Bach, whose musical career is closely associated with the Lutheran reformation. “The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most beautiful results of the Reformation, so I wanted to pay some sort of homage to that,” Gregorio said. “The spectacle of the chorus singing Bach, whose music is very intricate, very florid, but absolutely glorious in sound—I’d like to think that could lift anyone out of a bad mood.”

The pieces that the chorus will perform at their fall concert will evoke emotions ranging from despair to apprehension to joy. The depth of the repertoire will provide an enriching and awe-inspiring experience for all who attend.

Bayliss Wagner ’21

On Sunday, December 10 at 7:30 PM in Lang Concert Hall, the Chinese Music Ensemble will perform its debut concert as an official Swarthmore College ensemble. The group had previously been part of the Fetter Chamber Music program, performing only in the Fetter concerts each semester. Now, the group has sixteen members, with students performing on traditional Chinese instruments including the guzheng (zither), erhu (bowed fiddle), pipa (plucked lute), yangqin (hammered dulcimer), dizi (flute), and percussion.

Directed by Professor Lei Ouyang Bryant and Performance Associate Wang Guowei, the ensemble performs traditional and contemporary music from different regions of China and the Chinese Diaspora. Professor Bryant, who joined the Department of Music and Dance this fall, plays erhu in the ensemble, which she studied along with guzheng in Taiwan, China, and the U.S. Wang, an internationally touring erhu soloist and composer, has directed Chinese ensembles at Wesleyan University, Williams College, NYU, and the Westminster Choir College. He also arranged the versions of the folk songs that the ensemble will be performing in this concert. The program includes Cantonese folk song “Riding in the Countryside,” a medley of three folk songs, Ding Guoshun’s “Spring of Happiness,” Fan Shange and Geshanjida’s “Spring in the Snow-capped Mountains,” Taiwanese folk song “Catching Mud Carp,” Hunan folk song “Chestnut Flower,” and Jian Guangyi and Wang Zhiwei’s “New Song of the Herdsman.” The concert will feature soloists Annie Tingfang Wang, Henry Han ‘20, and Josephine Hung ‘19.

Desta Pulley

In response to increased student interest in conducting, Professor Andrew Hauze introduced the Lab Orchestra in the fall of 2016 as a way to give those students practice. This spring, they performed at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) thanks to Concert and Production Manager Jenny Honig’s efforts to find off-campus performance opportunities for the group. This semester, Swarthmore College Lab Orchestra co-conductors Andrew Kim ’18 and Shira Samuels-Shragg ’20 have had the experience of conducting not only the Lab Orchestra, but also the Jasper String Quartet, a Philadelphia-based group of professional musicians.

“Having a lab orchestra like this is very rare for an undergraduate program,” Kim says. “This is usually a model for graduate conducting programs. I don’t know of any other conducting opportunities even at bigger universities that undergrad students can get that parallels this kind of experience… it’s remarkable what we as a small department can do and the development that has happened in the past couple years thanks to Andrew and Jenny.”

 According to Shragg, the rehearsals with the Lab Orchestra have allowed her to explore different interpretations of the pieces because she can ask the group to perform the piece in different ways. “You get the score, you go through it, and you try to figure out what everything means and what ideas you want to bring to it,” Shragg says. “The perfect situation is that you have such a strong image and understanding of how you want the piece to sound that you can simultaneously hear the orchestra, what they’re playing, and the idealized version you have in your head, and bring the orchestra to meet your vision for the piece. What’s fun with Lab Orchestra is because…it’s literally like a lab, we get to play around, whereas you could never walk into an L.A. [Philharmonic] rehearsal and say ‘oh, I’d like to try this passage three different ways.’ In this setting you can do that, we have done that.”

Kim says that conducting for professional musicians has facilitated the improvement of both the student conductors and musicians. “There’s more of a direct feedback with musicians have been playing in orchestras for a long time, so they can give pointed tips that work really well both for the players and us too,” he says. “I’ve just found that everything that they say clicks with both the musicians and me a lot.” Though the group gives feedback, Kim is still able to assert his own creative agency in the pieces that he conducts. “In my two semesters of working with them, I’ve found the space that I need to still be that leader,” he says. “Even though they’re much more accomplished musicians than I am, they’re good about still giving me that space and allowing me to do what I need to do.”

According to Shragg, the Jasper String Quartet prepares her for her career path as a conductor. “It’s different, but it’s great practice because anything that we get to conduct in the real world, that’s how it’s going to be,” Shragg says.

This weekend, Shragg and Kim will debut their holiday repertoire—featuring Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, Covelli’s Christmas Concerto in G minor, Op. 5, No. 8, and “Winter” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons—at the PAFA rotunda on December 3 at 2:00 P.M. and during the second half of the Fetter Chamber Music Concert on December 2 at 8 P.M. The Jasper String Quartet will be featured in the Elgar pieces as well as performing solos in the Covelli. Kim took the Jasper String Quartet’s suggestion of the Elgar pieces because of the beauty of the music as well as the late Romantic-era style. “I think it’s a challenging piece for our group but they’ve really kind of risen to the challenges of this piece,” Kim says.

Shragg, on the other hand, will conduct the Vivaldi and Corelli pieces. She was inspired to conduct Vivaldi’s “Winter” after hearing it played during her Music Theory class. Hauze suggested the Corelli as her first piece to conduct “because unlike the Elgar, it’s not super dense. It’s still beautiful and there’s a lot to explore there but it’s more manageable,” Shragg says. The Christmas Concerto was composed to follow the story of Jesus’s birth.

The common thread that ties the pieces that both Shragg and Kim have chosen for their fall repertoire is nature. The Elgar piece an English pastoral, the Corelli has a movement called “pastorale,” and the Vivaldi has its own corresponding poem that includes lines like “shivering, frozen mid the frosty snow in biting, stinging winds; running to and fro to stamp one’s icy feet, teeth chattering in the bitter chill.” Both hope that Swarthmore students who attend their performance will be inspired by the wonder of nature, without having to feel the “teeth-chattering,” “stinging” winter weather.

“[The element of nature] is something that’s close to Swarthmore students because we go to school in an arboretum,” Kim said “I hope that at a particularly busy time of the semester it can help people to take a break and even if they’re not outside in cold nature, they can experience nature kind of vicariously in our pieces.”

Bayliss Wagner ’21

On Sunday, November 19th, the Swarthmore College Jazz Ensemble will perform in Lang Concert Hall. The concert begins at 7:30 and will feature the 21-piece student ensemble. They will perform a cross-section of music from the Great American Songbook, Latin jazz, big band standards and modern rock. Andrew Neu has been the conductor of the ensemble since 2014 and continues the long tradition of big band jazz at Swarthmore.

The program begins with the jazz standard “In a Mellow Tone,” composed by Duke Ellington. This arrangement was written by saxophonist Oliver Nelson and recorded by the Buddy Rich Big Band. It features freshman trumpeter, Owais Noorani-Kamtekar. The appropriately titled “Kids Are Pretty People,” by Thad Jones, was originally composed to be performed in the tiny jazz clubs of New York City. This performance features Sam Gardner on trombone. “What is This Thing Called Love” was composed by Cole Porter and arranged by conductor Andrew Neu. This up-tempo treatment features Vaughn Parts on alto saxophone and Josh Freier on tenor saxophone. Josh is again featured on the jazz ballad “Misty,” a tune made famous by Johnny Mathis. The first half wraps up with a very atypical piece for jazz ensemble. Originally recorded by the rock band Radiohead, “Bodysnatchers” has been adapted for big band by Fred Sturm. It was commissioned by the Lawrence University Jazz Ensemble and features Nathan Anderson on soprano saxophone, Sumi Onoe on piano, and Max Marckel on baritone saxophone.

The second half begins with “Cottontail,” another Duke Ellington piece, this one arranged by Duke himself. Olivia Gubler takes the lead on tenor sax. “Lament” is a haunting ballad composed by trombonist J.J. Johnson, and features Ben Hejna and the entire trombone section. Eric Chen plays a Debussy-inspired solo interlude on piano in the middle of the piece. Continuing with another intimate piece by Thad Jones, “Tip Toe” is based on the chord progression to “I Got Rhythm” in the less standard key of Ab. It features the saxophone section up front and a challenging trombone and bass soli featuring Derek Kinsella on the bass. Audiences will also hear solos from Owais, Josh, and Nathan, this time on alto saxophone.

The finale of the concert is an epic Latin jazz piece by trumpeter Arturo Sandoval called “A Mis Abuelos.” This tribute to his grandparents naturally features the trumpet section, along with Dakota Gibbs on guitar. Seth Stancroft drives it to the end with an open drum solo.

This year, the Department of Music and Dance is very excited to host jazz singer Janis Siegel at Swarthmore. She is a founding member of the musical group Manhattan Transfer and a multiple Grammy-award winner. On February 11, she will lead a workshop and perform a concert with pianist John DiMartino, bassist Gerald Veasley, and Andrew Neu on saxophone. She will join the Swarthmore College Jazz Ensemble for a special concert on April 7. This is a great opportunity to hear a world-renowned musician perform with the talented jazz students of Swarthmore College.

At 8:00 P.M. on Nov. 18 in Lang Concert Hall, the Swarthmore College Wind Ensemble, conducted by Professor Andrew Hauze, will bring its audience back to the early 20th century–back to the time of piano four-hands played in British and American homes, of ragtime in bars and brothels and dance halls, and of charismatic folk singers.

The hour-long concert will open with Lincolnshire Posy, an experimental fantasia by Australian composer Percy Grainger. Each of the six movements of the Lincolnshire Posy represents a different folk song that Grainger heard in his tour around the small villages of Lincolnshire. The folk songs memorialize historical events, including an unresolved feud between friends and the story of a missing sailor, once thought dead, returning home to his betrothed.

“In the music, it’s really interesting for the performer to see, ‘Okay, how’s Grainger taking this story and reimagining it in the way that he writes for the instruments?’” Hauze said. “Percy Grainger is not a household name, particularly in America, but he wrote some of the most original music you’ll hear. It has very traditional material so it’s very approachable—there’s a tune, you’ll get that—but at the same time it goes in these directions…when you listen to it and then you step back from it, it takes a moment to fully realize what you’ve heard.”

The second half of the concert will begin with dances composed by Antonín Dvořák. Dvořák’s mentor, Johannes Brahms, had written wildly successful Hungarian dances and suggested that Dvořák do the same. “These composers are mostly writing symphonies and very serious chamber music and in some cases opera, and these are kind of prestige things, but they’re not necessarily big moneymakers,” Hauze said. Some of Dvořák’s most popular and lucrative pieces were the Slavonic dances he then wrote, inspired by his home, the Czech lands. They were piano four-hands duets performed for family and friends as a favorite pastime of middle-class Europeans and Americans in the early 20th century.

In addition, the wind ensemble will perform “Danzon,” a Cuban-inspired piece from Leonard Bernstein’s score for a ballet called Fancy Free. “[“Danzon”] is also a little homage to Bernstein, because he’s entering his centennial year,” Hauze said. “He’s also one of my favorite composers, and wind ensemble in particular plays a lot of Bernstein. It’s really well suited to the group.”

The closing piece of the concert is “The Thriller,” a ragtime piano piece composed by May Aufderheide that Hauze arranged for wind and percussion instruments. According to Hauze, Aufderheide and her contemporary Julia Lee Niebergall were especially notable as a female composers from Indianapolis. “They weren’t in New York, they weren’t in one of the major metropolises, and they were women, and ragtime was dominated by male composers, both black and white,” Hauze said.  “They wrote some great rags but they’re mostly kind of forgotten these days, and I really like to play them on the piano, so I thought it would be fun to start making some arrangements for wind ensemble.”

The link between the varied compositions chosen for the concert is that none were written as concert pieces; they were intended to be sung or danced along to. The lively and lighthearted rhythm of the concert may just make it hard to stay sitting down.

Bayliss Wagner ’21

Student musicians from the Elizabeth Pollard Fetter Chamber Music Program will perform three concerts in the upcoming months. The Elizabeth Pollard Fetter Music Program began in 1975 as the “Pollard Scholarship Funds,” with an initial contribution from Elizabeth Pollard Fetter ’25 in memory of her mother, Emilie Garrett Pollard ’93. The program has evolved several times since its conception, first granting scholarships for string quartets in the 1970s and eventually reaching its present form in 2001. The program currently helps fund the coaching of several chamber music groups. Students are required to audition, but as Fetter faculty advisor Dr. Michael Johns cautions, “[the] Program does not exist to discourage playing, it is here to share the beauty of collective music making with as many willing students as possible.”

Fetter student musicians come from a diverse background of musical styles and a broad range of experience but once a group is formed, Dr. Johns says, the expectation is the same for everyone: play your best, prepare your part, grow with the ensemble, and contribute.” In addition to their coaching, each Fetter group must conduct a one-hour, student-led rehearsal each week. As Dr. Johns emphasizes, “The students are not merely encouraged to take ownership, they must take ownership if the music is to come alive. Chamber music is conversation, not a top-down structure.”

The first program will be held on November 17th at 8:00pm in the Lang Concert Hall, and will feature the Swarthmore College Gospel Choir, a student piano composition, cello sonata, piano four-hands, and a piano quartet (piano, violin, viola, and cello). The program includes pieces by Johannes Brahms, Samuel Barber, and Antonín Dvořák, among others.

The second program will be held on December 1st and is part of the Eugene Lang Celebration. Dr. Johns says that while the Eugene Lang Celebration did not directly influence the program, “the student performers are aware that it is an honor to be on this concert and that they represent generations of Swarthmore students, faculty, and community members who have benefitted from Eugene Lang’s leadership and generosity.” Mr. Lang has made it possible for a great deal of students to pursue their passions in the arts, and the Fetter performers undoubtedly embody his vision of a rigorous, collaborative environment in which diverse musical styles can converge to create something meaningful. This concert is more focused on vocals and will include a vocal quartet, opera scenes, a soprano-piano repertoire (including one piece by the soprano herself), and a piano quartet.

The final program, held on December 2nd, will include three student composer’s string quartets, Renaissance vocal music, a string quartet, and the Swarthmore College Lab Orchestra with student conductors. Student conducting is an incredibly important part of Swarthmore’s music program that permeates virtually all of the performing arts on campus. For example, Shira Samuels-Shragg ‘19 was recently the Music Director for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a job that combines orchestral conducting with dance and musical theater. To have a concert that features student conductors heavily befits their importance, and that of the musicians’, to Swarthmore’s performing arts community as a whole.

In addition to the many things that make the Fetter Music Program special, most groups within the program are taught by an outside professional musician that coaches the group throughout the rehearsal process. Swarthmore Music Chair Thomas Whitman ‘82 appreciates this attribute of the program in particular: “these coaches typically have particular musical expertise that is not present in the core Music Faculty, so Fetter enhances and deepens the overall curriculum of our Department.” He thinks that “Fetter is an under-appreciated gem that exemplifies what is best about the Swarthmore College experience,” molding an already-talented group of musicians into valuable contributors to the larger music world through rigorous practice and a deep intellectual engagement in their material. Dr. Johns agrees, adding that the world we live in now has a need for chamber music that many people probably do not realize: “Chamber music–the art of intimate musical conversation–is a vehicle that allows performers and listeners to experience their full humanity. It has never been more necessary. Students playing chamber music is enormously encouraging because they are the future and they will bring the qualities reinforced through chamber music–cooperation, respect for tradition, increased expressive and concentration capacity–with them into our fast-moving world.”

All of the concerts are free and open to the public

Gabriel Hearn-Desautels ’20