Arranged in a loose circle in the Recording Studio, about fifteen students recorded two songs live, three takes each. Vocalists stood and sang in a line in front of microphones and music stands, while other musicians sat in a state of deep concentration, instruments in hand. Two professional musicians stood in the circle with them, with Music Director Garrett Gleason at the center, orchestrating the performance. A finished recording is a lasting representation of a musician's craft, and that morning, during a single class block, Proctor students were on their way to creating a professional recording of their own.
The professional musicians were Dan and Larkin Bogan, who play together in the New York band Sir Richard Newton and currently perform in Wicked on Broadway. They met as castmates in the show and began writing songs together between performances in the stairwells of the Gershwin Theater. This recording session, and an evening public concert on the Norris Family Theater stage, were part of the second edition of Proctor's Visiting Artist Series. This series was created by Garrett Gleason to give students the rare opportunity to rehearse, record, and perform alongside working musicians. In Garrett’s words, students leave with "an empowered sense that they are part of this very important small tribe." When reflecting on what students learn through the process, Garrett points to the skills – both art and science – that ensemble performance demands, or "How do I learn something well enough to look away from the sheet music and dial myself in?"
Under Garrett’s direction, students have found new avenues into music through the House Band group, a rotating series of Open Mic events across campus, Project Period “Songwriting and Recording,” and student-led Senior Project album projects. More students are finding their way into music at Proctor, and going deeper once they do. Max arrived in the fall as a guitarist and has since added piano, drums, and bass while growing as a producer. In the Band Recording afternoon activity, for example, musicians swap roles from song to song. Luke, who learned to read sheet music on the saxophone in sixth grade, found he could play by ear, and at Proctor now practices solos and has even found a love of improvisation. At the “Live at Lovejoy” show (in the Lovejoy Library) Luke and others improvised an entire set. During winter term House Band sessions in the Recording Studio, Luke also handled much of the engineering himself – the wiring, the sound board, and the levels. Running the booth and doing post-production work using the software Logic Pro deepened Luke's understanding of what it meant to be a musician.
Playing next to professionals taught students what rehearsals with each other could not. "Nothing can prepare you, no matter how much you work, for that real thing," Max said, and what stayed with him was watching how the visiting musicians warmed up, practiced, and set up their gear. Luke felt the usual nerves of meeting someone new, then watched his nervousness dissolve. The artists, he said, were "just people who also want to do music with you." Garrett watches that shift happen every year. The "Mount Olympus" image students carry of professional musicians, he said, "goes out the window" the moment everyone is in one room and the artists are tuning instruments and cracking jokes – "we're just people in a room." With that barrier gone, a career path to music starts to look, in his words, "way more attainable."
The performance pulled in students who do not usually share the Recording Studio – students from different grades, friend groups, and spring afternoon activities. The Music Studio, Aoife said, is one of the easiest places to bond because everyone there cares about music in some form. During the session, as she looked around the room, she saw feet tapping and bodies swaying along to the beat.
Performing on a stage or in front of a crowd creates a ripple of unexpected shifts in a student's experience outside of music. Max, who referred to himself as “the kid who once would never raise his hand,” played guitar for hundreds of people in his first month on campus, during Fall Family Weekend, and now, he said, "when I'm doing this, I'm me." Aoife volunteered for a solo two nights before Spring Family Weekend, before she had even learned the song, and was nervous during the performance, but came away with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Luke has carried that same confidence from running the Open Mic series into signing up for Global Art Classroom next winter.
Later that Friday evening, the community filled the Norris Family Theatre as students took the stage behind Dan and Larkin, playing original Sir Richard Newton songs alongside two numbers from "Wicked." Friends, teachers, and colleagues came to support them and to enjoy an evening of live music on campus. When the last song ended, the students walked offstage with a public concert behind them, two professional recordings in their portfolios, and the gratitude of a community that had turned out to hear them play.
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