(This is continued from A Day in the Life: Part 1)
As one o’clock rolls around, the students gather up their instruments and begin to head out to their 1:20 PM classes in Music Hall, Humanites, Ogg, Hamel Music Center and even the Gordon Dining and Events Center. The ground floor of Gordon is filled with food, of course, but the second floor has a couple large carpeted rooms suitable for, well, events like the Summer Music Clinic (SMC) classes and concerts.
Heading upstairs from the dining hall, the rhythm of the Global Drumming class is hard to resist. Vigorously tapping my foot, however, resulted in a few hiccups while I tried to focus my camera and press the shutter button. A roomful of Dance for Musicians students required quite a few photos because they moved fast and, with a slow lens and so-so light, my camera wasn’t very happy with high shutter speeds. The improvisation in the Acting for Musicians class was easier to photograph but kept me guessing as to what would happen next. A Songwriting/Hip Hop Performance class was held there as well, where groups of students were planning the acts they would perform live or record on video. The only problem with Gordon is that I didn’t find many additional interesting things to photograph.
Mouse over the small photos in galleries to see captions.
Click on any one to enlarge, then use arrows to scroll through the rest of the images.
From the Gordon Dining and Event Center, I walked back north on East Campus Mall, crossed Johnson and University and arrived at the Hamel Music Center. Although this building was completed in the fall of 2019, the arrival of COVID kept the SMC from using this beautiful new facility until this summer. When I was close to the building I could see in the windows what appeared to be the same people coming and going. Once inside, I would have to say that the problem with Hamel is that there are too many additional interesting things to photograph. I couldn’t even get past the stairway!
Some of the bands, orchestras, jazz combos and jazz ensembles rehearse in Hamel during the week. So, I did find something other than stairways to photograph. When I photograph the students, I really like to walk around them on the stage. They do an excellent job of ignoring me. Since the Mead-Witter Concert Hall and the Collins Recital Hall each have a balcony, I could get a different perspective by peering down from above. The Kaufman Rehearsal Hall doesn’t have a balcony, but the simple circles of lights on the ceiling are an interesting effect.
Note: When the Hamel Music Center was under construction, I was invited to accompany and take some photos when supporters were given a tour. If you’re curious to see the skeleton before it was filled out, you can find some photos from late April 2018 in a past post called Some Construction Required.
Leaving the Hamel Music Center, I walked over to Ogg Residence Hall. This is not your father’s Ogg Hall, however. That met the wrecking ball in 2007. Though it’s fifteen years old, this new Ogg Hall still looks clean and comfortable to me. And, by the way, it has that new-fangled technology called “air conditioning.” Ogg Hall’s location, 835 W. Dayton Street, caused a few of my old synapses to fire because I lived in an apartment one block away, 933 W. Dayton Street, during my junior and senior years (1968-1970) at the UW. We didn’t have air conditioning but we used that old-fangled technology called “window screens.”
Ogg Hall is the dormitory where the non-commuting students stay during their week, but it’s also the location of many of the week’s classes. I found some Musical Theater groups and Fiddle Bands to photograph there. Classes designed to help students with specific instruments were scheduled in the 2nd – 6th floor lounges. This was very handy for me because the rooms are located in the same place on each floor and they’re right next to a stairway. So, I could get photos of students playing trumpets, and then run up the stairs to get photos of students playing saxophones, and then run up the stairs … well, sometimes I walked.
After the last class of the day, all of the students flock back to Ogg. There they are warmly welcomed by the counselors who wait by the door and serenade them as they return “home.” Scheduled activities for the students are clearly posted on the windows, there’s room outside for games and an interesting sculpture where the kids can hang out while waiting to participate in desired events — maybe they’ll be escorted down to State Street! I knew nothing about that sculpture, but later learned that Ogg “has an outdoor sculpture titled ‘Basis,’ by artist Dann Nardi. The piece – funded through the state of Wisconsin’s Percent for Art program – features arching columns of pigmented concrete surrounding an outdoor seating area near Murray and Dayton streets.” Now you know as much as I do.
Note: Parts 1 and 2 of this story do not represent a specific day or even a typical day. They merely describe and illustrate some of the activities in which Summer Music Clinic students participate and where those activities are held. The comments are, of course, made solely from my perspective as a photographer tasked with taking a wide variety of candid photos that cover this two-week event. The groups of photos shown are combinations of those taken in both the middle school and senior high school sessions. But, those students didn’t just rehearse for a week and go home, now they’re ready for their concerts!