Photo by Toffy Prakittiphoom ’24/The Choate News
With the arrival of graduation month, seniors have been busy rehearsing and performing in their highly-anticipated senior recitals — an event that serves as the students’ last opportunity to share their talent and hard work with the community.
This year, among the many performers are Rebecca Alston ’22, Claire Fu ’22, and a band composed of Henry Kops ’22, Jarett Jean Jacques ’22, Max Xu ’22, and Sejin Kim ’22 with support from their peers from the Jazz Ensemble.
As a voice student in the Arts Concentration Program, Alston performed a variety of genres at the Seymour St. John Chapel, ranging from classical and musical theater selections to popular songs and original compositions. Alston spent most of her rehearsal time in Colony Hall exploring the sheet music on the piano.
Apart from meeting with her teacher regularly to go over specific techniques, Alston attempted to run through the performance from the beginning to the end in St. John Chapel several times to find the most realistic experience possible.
Alston has focused her practice to become more comfortable with the higher part of her range. “I was trying to make sure that those were strong notes where my voice wouldn’t crack, and I’ve been pretty proud of how I’ve been able to expand through practicing,” she said.
Practice makes for a better performance, but it does not always soften the train of emotions performers experience. “It’s definitely always nerve-wracking, and I think when you spend that much time preparing for something, you always want it to be absolutely perfect. But sometimes, you just kind of have to go with things, and overall, I’m still proud that I did it,” she described.
Fu performed four violin pieces in Colony Hall on May 8, forgoing the typical westernized classical repertoire for “Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto (梁祝小提琴协奏曲)” in her recital. The piece, Fu explained, is “super pretty, but no one plays it for repertoire, ever.” Pulling from her Chinese identity, she further elaborated, “I wanted to tie my culture into my music and make sure that I’m also representing the diversity that music has to offer.”
Unlike Alston and most other performers, Fu is not part of the Arts Concentration Program, so she is not required to complete the senior recital. However, after realizing how little time she had to practice the instrument now compared to in middle school, Fu found rehearsing for the senior recital to be helpful in maintaining her hobby and skills in the violin. “I felt like the senior recital would be a way for me to find a purpose and a way to improve on the violin again,” she said. “I want to be able to continue to practice violin for my own enjoyment and to also work on pieces that I could play for myself instead of just for the orchestra.”
In a band formed in their sophomore year, Kops plays the drums and sings; Jean Jacques the trumpet, saxophone, and piano; Xu the upright bass, bass guitar, and piano; and Kim the guitar and the piano. Similar to Alston’s repertoire choice, Kops described their May 7 selections, “we’re doing a bunch of different genres — some jazz standards, some pop, some classical pieces in there as well, some blues.”
The band members are focused on their goals. “It’s about what exactly we want from this recital, what it is that we want our audience to feel, and how enjoyable it is for the audience,” said Jean Jacques. Xu reiterated the sentiment of audience engagement, adding, “With most of the genres we have, there’s a lot of room for audience-and-performer interactivity. I mean, when we were just rehearsing earlier, we were bobbing up and down and everything, and so it’d be nice if the audience could as well.”
While the band expressed their struggles to concentrate as a group, they believe they compensated for the lost time with their dedication and hard work. “When it came the time to really get grinding on this recital that we were all super scared of, we all took it extremely seriously, and I think we all put in a lot of work,” he said. Describing the band’s dynamics, Kim said, “So long story short, we are the most dysfunctional yet the most united.”
Despite the challenges many faced, the seniors have found the process to be a rewarding experience. “I definitely learned a lot and grew a lot as a musician and a soloist, and I think that it was definitely the right decision for me to do regardless of what the outcome of my senior recital is,” Fu said.
