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Commencement production reflects school’s spirit
On the Morse Recital Hall stage, before an empty house, School of Music Dean Robert Blocker said, “the disappointment among and between us all is palpable.” It was the first time the YSM community had not gathered to celebrate the graduating students and the conclusion of another year of music-making. “Despair,” Blocker said, “is a place where hopelessness resides. It is the destination for those who have been completely broken by the world and its relentless disappointments. The artist must summon the courage to take a different, unmapped route, and that detour around the destination of despair enables us to push forward.”
The school’s May 18 commencement was held online due to the pandemic, like so many other events in preceding and subsequent weeks. Still, thanks to a program as rich in tradition and performance as its predecessors, the entirely prerecorded event reflected the school’s spirit.
Blocker presented prizes to graduating and returning students and recognized soprano Renée Fleming and pioneering keyboardist and composer Herbie Hancock, who received honorary doctor-of-music degrees from the university. The most poignant moments of the ceremony, though, were the performances that had been put together remotely, and the conferral of degrees, during which a photo of each and every graduating student graced the screen. The ceremony began with a brass fanfare performed by students, faculty, and faculty emeriti. A vocal performance by choral-conducting students and faculty of Ernest Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), and another fanfare, seemed like moments of triumph given the anxiety of the moment. But it was video of a performance from convocation—eight months earlier—of Franz Schubert’s An die Musik that brought the YSM community back into Morse Recital Hall, if only virtually. Associate Professor of Choral Conducting Marguerite Brooks led students, faculty, staff, and friends in the traditional sing-along, which also featured faculty clarinetist David Shifrin and faculty pianist Wei-Yi Yang ’95MM ’96AD ’99MMA ’04DMA. The inclusion of the convocation performance of An die Musik, the school song, served as a thank-you to Brooks, who retired at the end of the academic year, and as a reminder that music itself cannot be broken.
“What forms of musicmaking will you imagine for the future, and how will they be delivered?” Blocker asked in his charge to the graduating class. “Can music be sustained as a public art? What are the new collaborative frontiers where music research and practice can help repair and restore civility in the world?” q
robert blocker
From top: students, faculty, and faculty emeriti perform a brass fanfare; Renée Fleming; Herbie Hancock
