At The New Century School, two yearly events are the most anticipated happenings of the year—the Winter and Spring performances. This year’s Elementary and Middle School Winter Concert featured new TNCS Musical Director Javan Bowden. He put together a truly great show and introduced a few new approaches to the format, including having students introduce the songs they were about to sing with an interesting tidbit about its background written by Mr. Bowden.

As always, the show started with TNCS students wowing the audience with their Mandarin Chinese and Spanish prowess.

Songs in World Languages

First up, TNCS Kindergarten and 1st-graders sang “The Face of Happiness” (幸福的脸) by composer Dàjūn Huáng.

Next, students in grades 2 through 8 took the stage to sing “Our Time” (Wǒmen de shídài,我们的时光), by TFBOYS and composed by Mr. Fantastic and Yun Yun Wang.

For the third and final selection of the world languages portion, all elementary and middle school students joined together for “La Bikina,” by Rubén Fuentes.

Strings Ensembles

Next up was the instrumental part of the show. Said TNCS strings instructor Yoshiaki Horiguchi:

Welcome to the strings portion of the Winter Concert at The New Century School. Thank you for all the music teachers and families parents and students who do everything that they do for this community. The wonderful thing about this presentation that we’re about to perform is that the strings program in its fourth year of existence, so I’ve had these kids for a few years now, and it’s such a wonderful pleasure to see them grow and learn and develop as people through instruments. The first couple of years is devoted to learning the actual instrument, but this year, we actually got to explore a lot more of the creative process and learning how to work together through music. This arrangement is something that they put together themselves. I hope you all enjoy “Appalachia Waltz,” by the TNCS Alsop String Ensemble and composed by Mark O’Connor.

The Alsop Ensemble was followed up by the Bernstein Ensemble, who played “Red Wing,” also by Mark O’Connor.

Choral Selections

The final and largest group of songs was put together by Mr. Bowden:

I’m Javan Bowden, and I have the honor of being this year’s music director at The New Century School. It has definitely been a pleasure preparing the students for our Winter Concert. We will be delivering seven selections, the first from our K/1 group, called “Winter Wiggles,” by Teresa Jennings. Here we go!

These songs had wonderful accompaniment by some friends of Mr. Bowden’s—Stephen Moore on bass guitar and Peter Roberts on piano.

Following the K/1 group, most of the next songs were introduced by TNCS students, as mentioned above. Next up, a TNCS 6th-grader introduced “I Have a Voice”:

Over 70 child actors from Broadway’s School of Rock,  The Lion King, Kinky Boots, On Your Feet, Matilda: The Musical, and more have lent their voices to an emotional and uplifting new anti-bullying charity single. The song “I Have a Voice” is a powerful anthem for any kid who has felt alone among his or her peers. It’s written by Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn and lyricist Robin Lerner and can be found in the newer musical Song of Bernadette. All of the profits from the song go to http://www.nobully.org, through Broadway Kids Against Bullying, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that trains schools how to activate student compassion to stop bullying and cyber bullying.

“Hot Chocolate,” from Polar Express, written by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard and arranged by Roger Emerson, needed no introduction!

A TNCS 7th-grader introduced “My Favorite Things”:

“My Favorite Things” is a show tune from the 1959 production musical The Sound of Music, one of the famous Broadway writings from Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein. Rogers wrote the music, and Hammerstein wrote the lyrics to this son. Although first appearing on stage in 1959, most people know the film version, which was released in 1965 and won five Oscars. The film featured actress Julie Andrews of Mary Poppins in her famed role as the musical’s leading protagonist, Maria, who was the governess of the rich Captain von Trappe’s children. This song famously appears in a scene in the film where the von Trappe children Maria look after are frightened and go into her room during a thunderstorm. She sings this tune to comfort them. This piece exemplifies “rounds in music,” where one group starts off a specific song and the next group starts to sing the same song a bit later.

“Dreams of Harmony” was introduced by another TNCS 7th-grader:

This piece derives from a large songbook entitled, Peace Songs for Children. Composer Joanne Hammil writes, “while tucking in my children one night when they were young, I was flooded with knowing that parents all over the world were doing the same. With the same big wishes for their kids’ happiness and safety and well-being and future, but simply saying their loving ‘goodnights’ in different languages. One world full of harmonies from all our glorious differences—that’s my dream. Part 1 sings “goodnight” in nine different languages: English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Swahili, Chinese, Russian, German and Hebrew. Part 2 harmonizes with Part 1, with a wish in English for us to all be ‘one family’ and to fill the world with dreams of harmony,” creating one counterpoint, which is a harmonic relationship between two voices that are independent in rhythm and contour.

A TNCS 5th-grader had the honor of introducing “When We’re Together,” with music and lyrics by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson:

In 2013, Frozen became a smash hit. Part of the reason was due to the movie’s soundtrack full of catchy and memorable songs, chief among them being Let It Go, the movie’s most show-stopping musical number. It remains to be seen whether the upcoming Frozen II will produce such a song on that same level. Nevertheless, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, Disney’s new holiday featurette that continues the original Frozen story certainly tries, with “When We’re Together.”

Closing out the show was good, old “Jingle Bells,” this version with music and lyrics by James Pierpont and arranged by Betsey Lee Bailey.