On Thursday night, I
had the pleasure to welcome the new local students and their parents to
Appleby. It’s a great experience looking out on a room of bright, smiling faces
tinted with the contradictory blend of excitement for what is to come, together
with mild worry about leaving what they know and are comfortable with. It was
great to watch Andreus, one of our fabulous Grade 12 students, break the ice
with the kids by performing absolutely mesmerizing and seemingly impossible
magic tricks. Even the most cynical teenager couldn’t help but be impressed and
smile.
I shared with the new
parents why this is such a great week. It finally feels like spring has sprung
– the flags on campus are up, the trees are budding, temperatures are rising, and
you can have your full recommended daily intake of protein by walking across
campus with your mouth open. (For those outside of the region, the Toronto lakeshore
area is being swarmed by tiny, completely safe, non-biting, but annoying midge
flies. There are lots of folks wandering around swinging their arms like mad
orchestra conductors!) It’s more than
just the weather though, Appleby won all the rugby and soccer games I took in this
week (and no, I’m not suggesting a causal relationship.)
It is also Arts Week
here on campus. Every day there have been multiple performances across campus.
From massive bands to innovative dance performances to mask-based drama to the
jazz ensemble belting out Chicago’s Make
Me Smile while looking out over the lake, there has been something for
everyone. This year, a few of the newer initiatives included: a powerful
original play about social media and the portrayal of girls; the cooking club creating
culinary treats for the schools and Art Battle. Art Battle was a “competition”
over lunch where about 10 students and faculty are in a circle in the
Schlesinger Dining Hall and are given 15 minutes to create individual masterpieces
in front of the rest of the school. The crowds gathering around the artists
(some of whom really fit that descriptor and others not so much) showed how
much natural interest there is in the creative process.
On Friday, I took in a
couple of concerts in the John Bell Chapel as well as the Finale in the gym. The
contrast in each performance was a window in on the talent of our students, and
also on the notion on variety and how it can infuse passion and interest. In
the finale, we had solo pop/rock vocal performances , an incredible Tchaikovsky
concerto performed by Harry on piano backed by a full orchestra, our great Grade
12 Hold the Phones house band, David
and James performing a ukulele/guitar duet of their own Hawaiian folk song (a
unconventional endeavour if there ever was one as they don’t know the language),
Andreus and Catherine performing a cello duet of Guns N Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle, a little Barry
Manilow from the Concert Band, and the evening closed with the 1812 Overture
complete with chemistry students exploding hydrogen balloons that reverberated
throughout the gym – real cannons couldn’t have sounded better.
The Chapel concerts
had similar variety with great vocal medleys and even one of the string ensembles
shifting from Hadyn into Bruno Mars.
During these
performances many of the students in the audience couldn’t help but follow a little
nuthatch as spent hours flying all around the chapel from the balcony to the
rafters, even landing on some of the stunning stain glass windows – all in a
quest to escape this strange place. Most certainly, audience goers flipped back
and forth between tuning into the music and worrying what would happen if he
was unable to get out.
About three quarters
through the second concert, Timur took the stage (the sanctuary of the chapel)
to belt out New York New York. I have
heard Tim sing crooner numbers before. He has a great powerful voice and both
his timing and his ability to modulate make him a popular and stylish showman. And
he really hit it out of the park that morning.
As Tim was mostly
through his piece, the nuthatch stopped his incessant flying and landed on the
candle hanging above him and the sanctuary. For the first time in hours, the bird
started to sing. Unbeknown to Timur, he was doing a duet with this little
fellow. You couldn’t have written it any better because as Tim was hitting his
last “New York” – the song’s crescendo, the bird finally found small stained
glass window cracked open, flew over, landed on the edge, then, as the audience
erupted in ovation, the bird completed his own chapel odyssey to flying out to
his endless buffet of midges.
What a perfect exclamation
mark on … Spring is here!
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