The Arts
In March 2007, Brighton High School students acted in a one-night only shadow production of Our Town at Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, New York. Directed by BHS's own Judy Shomper, 11th grade English teacher, the play provided an opportunity for the students to make new bonds with professional actors after viewing several rehearsals and the professional final product.
The musicals at BHS were directed by Larry Dugan for a number of years starting in 1986.
In fall of 2007 Senior Kyle Glickman, one of Judy Shomper's students, won a Rochester youth literature contest held by Geva Theater with his short play The Country That Failed to Fight. (A French Production)
Brighton High School has over 20 different musical groups, ranging from Jazz Band to Crazy Pitches, a coed a cappella group. The Crazy Pitches are a favorite group of students at the school, and their annual show, "Pitch Black", is a highly anticipated event each year. Additionally, Brighton High School flourishes instrumentally under the direction of Therese Schmid and Michael Struzik, and each year, they lead many different musical groups in instrumental ensembles, musicals, and other variety types of events for the school. Also, many students part take in the local Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and the Hochestein Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Brighton High School is always represented in these groups with many talented student musicians. Some of the notable past student musicians are Paul Nam (clarinet), Elaine Cho (flute), Malcolm Williams (trombone), Evan Hart (French horn), and Abby Holub (violin).
In 1991, "The Morning Show" was created at BHS by producers Bennett Killmer and Joe Nussbaum, with the help of teacher, Richard Tschorke. Nussbaum went on to direct the short film George Lucas in Love, and the feature films Sleepover and Sydney White starring Amanda Bynes. Tschorke was the adviser of the club for twenty years. The show originally only had a few small cameras. Since then, the show has grown to include 2 professional cameras, a graphics machine, audio board, and a switch board. The Morning Show continues to be a professional and quality program with the supervision of the new adviser Mr. Chris French. In the 1986–1987 school year, "Brighton Beat," a precursor to The Morning Show, was produced. This show included one news and one interview show each week.
In 2009, Brighton's Jazz Appreciation Club founded Bagelfest, an early-morning festival dedicated to the appreciation of jazz music while enjoying hundreds of bagels. More than 150 students, along with an assortment of BHS faculty, gathered in the band room on May 29 for the event. Bagelfest even featured a live broadcast on Brighton's student-run Morning Show. "I've never felt so proud," declared Jonah Smith, president of Jazz Appreciation Club, "everyone had a great time, and their donations really showed their enthusiasm." Bagelfest attendees donated enough money to fully cover the cost of the festival; in the years to come, the Jazz Appreciation Club hopes to raise enough money to donate all proceeds to various charitable organizations that expand jazz literacy in younger generations.
Read more about this topic: Brighton High School (Rochester, New York)
Famous quotes containing the words the arts and/or arts:
“The Germans are always too late. They are late, like music, which is always the last of the arts to express a world condition,—when that world condition is already in its final stages. They are abstract and mystical.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.”
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957)