The Mannes Sounds: A Celebration of Renewal and Hope Festival was a night of extraordinary live music after months of online performances. Pavlina Dokovska, the festival’s artistic director, introduced the event by saying, “community is when we can touch each other, it is something so precious. And I vividly remember the last live concert of Mannes Sounds.”
On this night, performers lit up the John L. Tishman Auditorium as excited audience members watched from their seats and their computers if they joined the live stream.This was the first time in 19 months that the auditorium seats were filled, hearing and feeling the energy of live music.
Saxophone, guitar, bass, and drums were in constant collaboration, a call and response generated through their instruments. In the five-piece jazz performance, Marvin Carter, a fourth-year student at The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, was front and center. Carter was the saxophonist and his sounds roared out into the audience. When not playing, Carter gently rested his hands along the neck of his saxophone, eyes closed, swaying his head and neck back and forth.
On bass was Colson Jimenez, a fourth-year Jazz and Contemporary Music student, who plucked at the strings with his fingers keeping the beat. Jimenez’s hands slowly moved from chord to chord, as the other musicians sped up, his fingers ripped down the strings expressing tight sounds.
After Jimenez’s bass feature ended, all the musicians joined back in seamlessly. Orian Rosenzweig, a fourth-year Jazz and Contemporary Music student tapped along the drums in content calmness, holding cymbals to stop them from playing after he hit the drums. He rubbed his hands along the drums, slowly pressing through the music.
Photo by Alexandra Nava-Baltimore
Tirth Engineer, an industrial design student at Parsons who watched the performance in the audience said, “It’s like a decompressing session where we can sit down, listen to music, and chill.”
Kai Gluska, a fourth-year student at the school of Jazz and Contemporary Music, played the guitar. He sat down with his instrument on his legs, wearing a red, black, and gray scarf, lightly wrapped around his neck. He was igniting the chords throughout the show. Soft, gentle music changed into loud extreme smashing strumming. Mesmerizing sounds radiated off the stage, gently affecting each audience member. Towards the end of the performance, he pulled the sax off his body, holding it in the air giving off more power through the room.
As in-person attendance was limited to only students and faculty, three cameras were set in the audience section for an experience for the home viewers.
In her speech, Dokovska said, “Tonight the three schools of COPA, the College of Performing Arts, have joined forces in an all-American program curated and directed by the great Stephen Brown-Fried. Tonight is featuring poetry and music by some of the greatest poets and composers of America, all of the different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds which make our beautiful country so unique and so strong.”
Justin Armstrong, a second-year MFA acting student shared a fully memorized recitation of the land acknowledgment, expressing that The New School resides on Munsee Lenape land, a home once occupied by Indigenous people.
On the stage sat the student performers, calm and collected. Covered in head-to-toe black outfits, the musicians dressed in unison and all wore masks, even the flute and clarinet players. Conductor David Hayes led the students in a performance of “Appalachian Spring” by composer Aaron Copland, which included a variety of instruments roaring together in joyful unison. The violin and viola bows moved swiftly through the air in-sync, grazing the strings, projecting sharp, abrupt beats.
Photo via the Mannes Sounds Festival Live Stream on Youtube
In the audience, Patrick Hong sat in the front row, with his trumpet in the case on his lap, “Musicians [are] coming back from the pandemic,” he said. As a third-year jazz student at The New School of Jazz, he was looking forward to supporting his friends and watching them perform again in person.
Mannes Sounds was created by Dokovska in 1999 to give students performance opportunities. Because of the event, students have played at many prestigious venues throughout the years, such as Carnegie Hall.
As the music continued, the audience member sitting next to me gently tapped each of their fingers along the top of the seat in front of us as if playing the piano, perfectly hitting each beat. A variety of sounds progressed from highest to lowest pitch through the arrangement of 29 students. They were the first musical performance of the night, but the show had only just begun.
Richard Kessler, Executive Dean for the College of Performing Arts and Dean of Mannes School of Music, shared in his speech praise for the incredible work New School students have done throughout completing online classes. “It is what we did together as students, as faculty, as staff to preserve our community, to preserve our culture, and to preserve who we are as people and working together.”
“I heard about this concert, this performance, a long time ago,” Xusheng Yu, an industrial design student, said “I was really pumped to come. I saw it on the digital posters across campus. This is the second one that I am watching in person because the first was yesterday, the string orchestra.” He sat in one of the middle rows of the auditorium. “I am a big fan of live music, and I want to support the school community, but also, you know, being able to come back together and listen to these amazing sounds, being in-person listening to it, I think it is a whole other level,” Yu said. “I am just excited to be here.”
Photo by Alexandra Nava-Baltimore
Like most Mannes Sounds events, the production process for the concert took a year to plan. Beginning with the idea for the theme, Dokovska and Brown-Fried then began working together to curate the event over the next months, selecting poems and pieces of work to be performed. However, students did not start practicing together until the start of the fall semester, just five weeks ago.
“Due to everyone’s different schedules, the event itself all had to be put together and coordinated very quickly, in just a couple days, so the Production Staff of the College of Performing Arts deserves a huge congratulations for what they accomplished,” Brown-Fried said,
He and Dokovska expressed deep gratitude for the students and professors who made this event possible and are excited for the aroma of music that will fill Manne’s halls while preparing for future events.
The Mannes Sounds Festival’s first performance was sensational, and more will continue throughout the school year, with upcoming performances found here.
The performance can be revisited here.