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

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

In addition to their teaching, Swarthmore professors frequently work on their own, independent projects. Most recently, on April 27, Olivia Sabee, Assistant Professor of Dance, and Thomas Whitman, Daniel Underhill Professor of Music, debuted their collaborative ballet The Wedding Guest at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The Wedding Guest features Swarthmore alumni musicians, current students as dancers, and Olivia Sabee’s own dance company, Agora Dance.

Professor Whitman composed the ballet’s music. He has previously mainly worked on operas and contemporary dance pieces; this is his first time collaborating with a choreographer on a ballet. Professors Sabee and Whitman considered a number of ideas, before deciding they were interested in environmental themes. Sabee suggested adapting Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. As Professor Sabee explains,

“We were talking about all types of different ideas and decided we wanted to portray the natural world, with elements of supernatural…we originally talked about climate change, though that faded from the final piece… [The Rime of the Ancient Mariner] is a piece that can really stand on its on, with no dialogue or acting, although of course we had to pare it down a lot.”

“It’s a great story in terms of environment,” adds Whitman. “The human at the center of it all inexplicably shoots a beautiful creature of nature and gets punished by nature in return, which seemed like a colorful and resonant image. It also has a lot of opportunities to write cool music – there’s the albatross, sea monsters, storms, a calm sea, dance music for the wedding, all these different elements that seem extremely promising.”

“I was intrigued by the idea of writing a ballet with a real, old-fashioned narrative storyline,” adds Whitman. “I like working in collaboration, because it makes it much easier for me to feel like I’m contributing a piece to a larger puzzle. Collaborating with Olivia and my former students, and traveling to D.C. together, was the most pleasant part of the experience.”

Most of the dancers who performed on the program came from Agora Dance, a D.C.-based company co-directed by Professor Sabee. Overall, The Wedding Guest included three professional and seven student dancers.

“The dancers I chose had to have strong ballet skills, but also experience with improv, contemporary dance, and inversion,” says Sabee. “The dancers in this ballet were all chosen for the way they use their arms, which is very important, especially for the albatrosses…My favorite choreographic moment is a pas de deux by the two albatrosses. It’s simple in many ways, very pared down as far as movement goes, but we spent a lot of time working on arm movements to develop birdlike qualities.”

Professor Sabee spent hours watching videos of birds and of water, from waves to whirlpools, to better understand how the dancers could best reproduce the movement of water. She also worked with Swarthmore Associate in Performance Chandra Moss-Thorne, who danced the part of the titular wedding guest, and Tara Webb, who supervises the Swarthmore Theater Department wardrobe and helped design the costumes.

Meanwhile, Professor Whitman watched a number of wedding dances on Youtube in order to compose the festive music for the opening marriage scene. He was also in charge of finding musicians, three alumni and two non-alumni freelance musicians. According to Whitman, “I originally was going to hire freelance musicians in D.C. to play the score, then Olivia decided students should be part of the show. It made no sense to transport D.C. musicians to Swarthmore for rehearsals, so it was better to hire students…I was unsure about asking student musicians, because they would have had to skip a few days of classes. So ultimately I called alumni I have worked with and played with socially. Traveling to D.C. with everyone was wonderful.”

Regarding the presence of professional performers from Agora Dance, Sabee believes “any opportunities to bring students together with professional dancers is really exciting because it really pushes the students to perform more fully, and pushes them physically. We have a great crop of very talented students, and everyone thought it was great working with them.”

The ballet itself, which was part of a larger, 1-hour program, was a major success. Over three hundred people attended in person, with an extra 3,500 watching on livestream. Both professors have expressed delight in working so closely together, and hope to do more collaborations in the future.

Emilie Hautemont ’20