Faculty Take the Stage at Fall Concert
Updated: 18 hours ago
On September 18, students filled the seats of the Elizabeth Wachsman Concert Hall as Deerfield music instructors presented their biannual Fall Faculty Concert, showcasing a range of genres, including classical, contemporary classical, and jazz. Featuring vocal and instrumental performances, the program included a variety of instruments, including flute, violin, percussion, bass, and saxophone.
Performing faculty members included Music Program Coordinator Sarah Swersey, Vocal Music Lesson Instructor Caitlin Felsman, Music Program Admin Colleen Jennings, Interim Director of Music Yu-Mei Wei, and Music Lesson Instructors Gary Rzab, James MacDonald, Aedan Madden, Bruce Krasin, and Stephen Page.
Former Director of Music Thomas Bergeron established the faculty concert in 2023 as a biannual event. In an article published by the Scroll following the premiere, he described it as an opportunity for his colleagues to showcase their musical talents with the broader school community. Since then, the tradition has continued with concerts each fall and spring.
Pianist Ms. Wei began rehearsing with other faculty members in the spring of 2026 and described the collaborative process as one of the most rewarding parts. “Every time I work with them, I cannot stop thinking about how lucky I am,” she expressed.
Ms. Wei also noted that the concert was “a great opportunity for the students to see their teachers perform,” and directly experience the techniques they learned in classrooms. Ms. Wei did, however, acknowledge the challenges of playing in front of a student audience. “The truth is that it’s difficult to play on stage,” she reflected. “Although you tell your students to gather themselves and keep the tempo stable, I myself also get nervous.”
For Ms. Wei, the faculty concert provided a chance to experiment with “rare things with unusual combinations” atypical of most Deerfield music performances. Pointing to the combination of piano, flute, and voice in the concert, she explained that it provided “a good opportunity to explore different mixtures of music.”
Flutist Ms. Swersey offered a different perspective, noting the concert as an opportunity to return to familiar music. In particular, she revisited Roussel’s “Deux Poèmes de Ronsard” during the faculty concert last spring, which she last performed as a student at Oberlin College. “There is always a deeper understanding of the piece and more comfort with it when you perform it again,” Ms. Swersey explained.
In addition to performing preexisting pieces, the concert also featured the premiere of an original composition from Mr. Rzab, entitled “Knot Vignette.” Despite consisting mostly of pre-rehearsed sections, the performance featured improvisations with sounds that mimicked ping-pong balls. These unique sounds, which eventually became the opening of the piece as ping-pong balls were thrown onto the stage, trace back to Mr. Rzab’s childhood, when he was drawn to their “cool, weird, random rhythm.”
While Mr. Rzab experimented with different rhythms during rehearsals to establish the piece's structure, improvisation preserved the spontaneity he equally valued. For Mr. Rzab, his performances are “really for [himself], and then if there’s an audience there, fantastic.” From his perspective, this sense of freedom allows him to communicate nonverbally with other performers on stage and respond to them in the moment.
For students in the audience, the concert offered them a chance to see their teachers perform and demonstrate the techniques they taught in classrooms. “It’s very different hearing a teacher perform entire chamber music works as opposed to when the teacher demonstrates a phrase of a piece in a lesson.” Ms. Swersey explained. “It is my hope that students can hear things in my playing…like changing tone color to match the phrase or the use of vibrato and how it might change throughout the piece.”
Charles DeSorcy ’28 was especially struck by the coherence of the jazz performance of Sonny Rollins’ “St. Thomas.” “There could be good players, but it’s really the chemistry between the good players that matters,” he said. “The chemistry between the faculty was beautiful.”
Similarly, Nicholas Xu ’27 also highlighted the jazz piece, particularly its improvisational aspect. “[It] is always so cool because it demonstrates such complete mastery,” he explained, adding that the musicians must rely on each other while performing. “It’s the same kind of feeling as when you watch someone … free solo Yosemite,” he said. “Sometimes you are just in awe of what other humans can do.”