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Health & Fitness

Harvey Singers Enjoy a Weekend of Music

Members of both the Upper School and Middle School choruses had a special treat for the weekend. They gave their singing voices a rest and instead enjoyed performances by others.

On Saturday evening, Harvey’s Middle School Chorus took a bus into Manhattan to attend a performance of Benjamin Britten's children's opera "Noye's Fludde." The musical adaptation of the medieval mystery play, “Noah’s Flood” featured children from local Upper East Side churches performing the opera side by side with members of the children and adults choruses from the Lighthouse International, an organization serving the blind and visually impaired.

Composer Benjamin Britten conceived of this idea for his children's opera to include amateurs and professionals as well as young and old together in the same cast.  Harvey’s choral director Kathyrn Cushman said, “Adding a new dimension of having both sighted and blind people in a theatrical performance provided a greater challenge to this beautiful music and story.”  Harvey students studied the music and story before attending the opera performance.  Mrs. Cushman said her students seemed to appreciate seeing the performance. “They especially enjoyed watching the youngest children play the roles of the animals on Noah's ark, entering two-by-two, each blind child singer paired with a sighted partner.” 

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The Harvey students going to see the performance were Zoe Lewis, Abby Sirota, Elizabeth Mahony, Maya Mehrara, Daniel Pope, Courtney Warren, Alex Breitenbach, Brooke Dodderidge, Pierce Steinberg, Joe Nardi, Chloe Savitch, Courtney Alexander, Jared Peraglia, Hana Cornell, Sarah McLean, Andrew DeRose and Sasha Fox.

On Sunday afternoon it was members of The Harvey Upper School Chorus who went for a trip, this time more locally, to attend a performance of chamber music as invited guests of Caramoor. They heard a chamber music group called the Dover String Quartet perform. The group consists of three 24-year-olds, two young men and one young woman, who met while they were students at the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia. Mrs. Cushman says, “The group has recently received much acclaim for their virtuosity and mature sound in their playing.” 

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After the concert that included  “Adagio for Strings" by Samuel Barber, as well as selections by Mendelssohn and Beethoven,  Caramoor invited the Harvey students to join with other local students for hot chocolate and cookies while meeting the performers.  The students participating from Harvey were Mary Nichols, Gabby Cacciola, Carolyn Stark and Taylor Robinson. 





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