Taft welcomes landscape and wildlife photographer Andy Giordano to campus this fall as a Rockwell Visiting Artist. Going Home, an exhibition of his work, will be featured in the Mark W. Potter Gallery from October 14 to December 1. There will be a reception in the gallery Friday, October 25 from 5 to 7 pm to welcome Giordano to Taft.

            Giordano draws inspiration from his home: the American West, deep in the Sierra Nevada. Says Giordano, “One of the first lessons we learn as photographers is to be passionate about our subject matter. Shooting what we know gives us a leg up, perceptively. Evoking a sense of place and time (or timelessness as the case may be) is a goal of my landscape work.”

            Originally from Buffalo, New York, Giordano earned degrees in Evolutionary Biology and Zoology before moving to California to work in education.

“As an educator, photographer and outdoorsman, connecting people to the wonder of the natural world is a driving force of mine,” says Giordano. “I first delved into photography while pursuing a graduate degree in Zoology at Washington State University.  The Cabinet Mountain Wilderness in Northwestern Montana was my base of field operations and provided early photographic inspiration, being rugged and solitary. Audiences know many of the dramatic American landscapes because of the great and creative photographers whose images are icons of our open spaces. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to develop my compositional style in a region essentially devoid of photographers in the public eye.”

Giordano notes that his work reflects “unique perspectives and authentic moments…” His pieces, he says, “Not only look like the moments I am experiencing, but also allow the viewer to feel what I was feeling.”

The show continues through December 1. To view Giordano’s work, visit www.andygiordano.photoshelter.com.

Taft’s 2016-17 Music for a While performance series kicks off Sunday, October 16 with concert organist Nathan Laube. The program begins at 4 pm in Woodward Chapel. The event is free and open to the public; tickets are not required.

            A star among young classical musicians, Laube has quickly earned a place among the organ world's elite performers. He has often been a featured performer at the national conventions of both the Organ Historical Society and the American Guild of Organists, and regularly performs at major venues across the globe, including the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Berlin Philharmonie, Copenhagen Cathedral, the Sejong Center in Seoul, South Korea, and the UK’s York Minster, Canterbury Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, Ely Cathedral, and Truro Cathedral. Laube also serves as Assistant Professor of Organ at The Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he teaches with distinguished professors David Higgs and Edoardo Bellotti.  

Laube earned his Bachelor of Music Degree at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and holds a Master’s Degree in Organ from the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, Germany where he was a student of Ludger Lohmann, and recipient of a German DAAD Fellowship Study Scholarship for his studies there.  As a recipient of a William Fulbright Grant, Nathan spent the 2010-2011 academic year studying with Michel Bouvard and Jan Willem Jansen at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Toulouse where he earned Prix de Spécialisé with the mention “Très Bien” and “Féliciations du Jury," in addition to the Prix François Vidal from the city of Toulouse.

To learn more about this or any of the Music for a While performances, visit www.taftschool.org/concerts.  To listen to a performance by Nathan Laube, visit www.concertorganists.com.

All American Boys authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely visited Taft this week for Morning Meeting and Q & A sessions around campus.

            Taft’s all-school summer reading selection, All American Boys is the story of perspective—of how bias and experience both inform and misinform. Reynolds, who is black, penned the voice of Rashad, a black teen falsely accused of shoplifting. Kiely, who is white, gives voice to Quinn, the white teen who witnessed the event, and the violence that followed. And in Bingham Auditorium, as they did in the book, Reynolds and Kiely told their stories, from their perspectives, informed by their experiences.

            Their stories start the same: It is 1998. Teenage boys are riding around town with their friends. The differences end there. It is the middle of the afternoon. Reynolds and his friends pull over immediately when they hear lights and sirens: they went through a yellow light. It is late at night. Kiely is barreling down the highway at 85 miles per hour. He panics when he sees the lights and hears the sirens, and drives even faster. Eventually he pulls over in a vacant parking lot. Reynolds has the nose of a police gun pointed in his face. He is told to lie face down on the pavement while his belongings are searched, then scattered about the street. Kiely and his friends are wished a safe trip home.

           “It’s important for us to frame it for you so that you see these two perspectives that fueled the book,” said Kiely. “Our daily lives are part of a bigger story, and we can’t forget that we all have a role to play in that bigger story…We are hoping that by reading a book like this you choose to step into that story, into the conversation. That you will choose to not look away. That you will choose to say, ‘How do I listen in a way that I haven’t listened before?’ We can’t learn to love each other if we haven’t learned to listen first. We can’t learn to respect each other if we haven’t learned to listen first. All we are asking is that people just find the courage to listen.”

Taft students are combining creativity and design with mathematics and science to produce animated imagery known as generative art. The algorithmic animations were the first project Michael Scaramuzzino’s students tackled in his yearlong, Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science course.

            “This is truly an intro-level AP course,” explains Scaramuzzino. “Most students arrive with little or no prior coding experience; the goal is for them to be fluent in Java by the end of the school year.”

            Generative art is built using complex computer algorithms—well-defined processes and procedures structured for problem solving. The art visually represents the optimization of those processes in the form of music, graphics, or design elements. For Scaramuzzino’s students, it is a good place to begin learning about code.

            “The images the students used in their animations came from a pre-built library,” says Scaramuzzino. “This library allowed them to see a high-level view of object-oriented programming. Now we are pulling back the veil so students can see the level of complexity that was occurring behind the scenes as well as start to understand how this computer graphics library was developed. The next project requires students to use that knowledge to program several classes that will act as blueprints for building their own virtual objects.”

            Raya Petrova ’17 came into the course with no real experience in computer science. At home in Bulgaria she briefly studied Pascal, a somewhat outdated programming language. Raya’s interest in art, combined with a fascination with computer animation work being done by both Pixar and Dreamworks Studios, led her to Scaramuzzino’s classroom.

            “My idea for the animation was to copy the motion of ripples in water; I wanted to play with the structure, and manipulate variables to replicate the motion,” explains Petrova, “I was able to do so by manipulating oscillation in the ‘y’ direction, and in the ‘x’ direction.”

            The end result of Petrova’s work is an animation featuring fish moving back and forth in a dappled and variegated sea. Petrova is now applying her understanding of object variables to creating the hierarchical information sets that will drive code representing her family.

            “There are different variables for each ‘class’,” says Petrova, “family, grandparents, parents, and siblings. Some inherent attributes, like age and gender, will trickle down through the class levels. Other variables will be class-specific, and will be added using different methods and aspects of code.”

            And although computer science is new to Petrova, she plans to continue her studies when she moves on to college next year.

“That I am creating a new world by just typing letters and numbers is amazing,” says Petrova. “It is just incredible.”

View animations from Michael Scaramuzzino’s AP Computer Science classes:

B Block 

F Block

Taft’s first Sustainability Week featured a Morning Meeting talk with Elizabeth Kolbert, author of 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. Kolbert’s talk was akin to a walk through the scientific history of biological extinctions, with particular focus on the current wave of loss, driven largely by human impact. Noting that “extinction is a concept we all take for granted,” Kolbert observes, “We’re seeing right now that a mass extinction can be caused by human beings.”

Kolbert introduced students to a variety of creatures, each emblematic of an “unnatural” change in our world, driven by man; her talk ended with Toughie. The world’s last Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog, Toughie was discovered a decade ago in central Panama. To protect him from the fungal disease killing his species, Toughie was collected and moved to the Atlanta Botanical Garden in 2006.  Toughie died in captivity last week.

            “The last known surviving member of this species died about three days ago," said Kolbert. "That’s another illustration of a creature that we know has gone extinct in our lifetime; we should not see that. So I leave you with this question: What are we going to do about this?"

A multi-award winning author and journalist, Kolbert has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1999. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History was a New York Times 2014 Top Ten Best Book of the Year, is number one on the Guardian’s list of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of all time, won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in the General Nonfiction category, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle awards for the best books of 2014. Prior to joining the staff of The New Yorker, Kolbert was a political reporter for The New York Times.

Cursed as a child, Princess Fiona turns into an ogress every night at sunset. Lacking the mystical powers to cast such a spell, Taft's Theater Arts team had to rely on a different kind of magic to transform students into fairytale creatures for the fall production of the popular musical, Shrek. Enter Tyler Green, magician.

            Green is an inventor, business owner, teacher, and special effects (SFX) makeup artist. He has turned men into monsters, and beauties into beasts. He was runner-up in the Syfy channel’s reality show competition, “Face Off.” Green’s studio is in Litchfield, Connecticut.

            “I took a chance,” says Adjunct Theater Arts Instructor Susan Aziz, “and knocked on his studio door. Although October and Halloween are very busy times for special effects makeup artists, he was willing to help us.”

            Green came Taft his week to give student apprentices a look behind the SFX scenes. Working with latex appliances, prosthetics, and green makeup, Green taught students how to mold, fit, and airbrush, as he transformed Brady Grustas ’19 into the character he will play on stage at Taft later this month, Shrek. Green will come back for a second visit before the show opens next week.

            “Fiona actually transforms from human to ogre during the performance,” explains Aziz. “The change requires split-second timing backstage. It will be both very challenging, and very, very exciting.”

            Shrek opens next week, with performances throughout Parents’ Weekend. The public is invited to attend Wednesday, October 26 at 1:30 pm and Friday, October 28th at 7:30 pm; tickets are not required.

Visit Tyler Green’s website to learn more about his art and inventions.

View more photos from Green's visit to Taft.

Taft will host a reception to celebrate the life of Brian Denyer, a beloved former faculty member who taught at Taft for 33 years, on Saturday, November 19 at 11:30 am in the Faculty Room.

Denyer, who taught French at Taft from 1979 until his retirement in 2012, died on July 25 after a decade-long battle with cancer.

“Whether you knew Brian in the French classroom, the faculty room, the soccer field, or the dorm, you knew a wonderful teacher, coach, colleague, father, and husband,” said Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78. “There are a lot of people who would say, ‘He's about the nicest guy I know.’ He was loved, and even when he began his fight with cancer, he was invariably cheerful, always interested in others, quick to laugh and smile.”

Denyer was passionate about French—the language, the culture, and the literature. He was a terrific and well-respected classroom teacher, at all levels, and a loyal, supportive and caring colleague. He loved soccer, and he coached the varsity with perspective, humor, and spirit. His players would remember him for his simple love of the game. Denyer also directed Taft’s residential program, bringing his leadership to CPT, where he and his wife, Val, lived for many years.

“Perhaps most of all,” said MacMullen, “Brian was one of the most generous teachers we have seen. He always volunteered to pitch in, to drive a sick student to the hospital, to chaperone a dance, to coach an extra season, to take a class when a colleague was sick. He had no ego, a big heart, and a poetic soul. He was as good a man as they come.”

Taft welcomes all who would like to join in remembrance and celebration of Denyer’s life for the reception.

Learn more about Brian Denyer 

Read about Denyer in the Summer 2012 issue of the Taft Bulletin 

Read the obituary

“There are so many things we do here in a given week,” Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78 told the Taft community during Morning Meeting. “We play sports, put on plays and concerts, serve in the local community, and take part in clubs. But obviously we are first and foremost a school. And at the center of student life, and where we devote the majority of our hours and energy is our academic classes, and to the life of the mind. Today is the day we celebrate that.”

Cum Laude Society induction honors the “highest levels of scholarship on campus,” notes MacMullen. It is reflective of Taft’s robust and vibrant academic life.”

The Cum Laude Society is a national organization honoring scholarship and scholastic achievement at the secondary school level, comparable to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi in colleges and scientific schools. Induction into the Cum Laude Society, MacMullen notes, honors “the highest levels of scholarship on campus.” It is reflective of Taft’s “robust and vibrant academic life."

Founded in 1908, the Society now has 382 chapters, most of which are in private or independent schools located in the United States. A maximum of 20 percent of the senior class may be elected into membership in the Cum Laude Society. Fifteen Taft students were inducted this week. Their membership was based on academic performance. Taft’s new Cum Laude Society members are:

Seung Hwan (Sonny) An

Karalyn Rose Baird

Riley Kathleen Bragg

Lauren Grace Fadiman

Eugenie Reid Greeff

Gabriela Nicole Gura

Joseph Han

Zemima Hossain

Zygimantas Jievaltas

Sophie Valentine Kamhi

Marisa Nicole Mission

Juste Marija Simanauskaite

Luke Austin Sommer

Sydney Trevenen

Cristofer Zillo

Seniors may also be inducted into the Cum Laude Society during graduation exercises in June, based on their upper middle and senior year records.

Several Taft students were also recognized for their outstanding performance on last year’s PSAT. Receiving commendation from the National Achievement Scholarship Program for finishing among the top 3.1 percent of test takers were Karalyn Baird, Riley Bragg, Sasha Bridger, Joseph Han, Eve Inglis, Jennifer Jeon, Sophie Kamhi, Nicola Sumi Kim, Marisa Mission, and Cauviya Selva.

Finally, Academic Dean Jeremy Clifford recognized the ranking scholars for the 2015-16 academic year. The students with the highest unweighted averages in their class are:

Class of 2019: 94.7 Andrea Gura

Class of 2018: 96.1 Yejin Kim

Class of 2017: 97.3 Ivory Zhu

Fifty teams from across the Northeast competed at Yale University’s 19^th annual Physics Olympics this weekend. Taft scientists Sonny An ’17, Daniel Yi ’18, Yejin Kim ’18, and Portia Wang ’18 were awarded the bronze medal after five rounds of competition.

Each event in the Yale Physics Olympics (YPO) pentathlon is designed to test students’ knowledge of physics, as well as their creativity and ability to work as a team. Developed by members of the Yale physics faculty, the five, 45-minute challenges included the order of magnitude Fermi quiz, where students estimated how many grams of turkey are consumed in the United States on Thanksgiving; Ole Mississippi, which required students to build a paddle boat from simple materials, then race the boats a fixed distance and against the clock; and Wrights of Spring, where the scientists measured the period of a standard spring-mass system, then constructed two new systems with the same period.

“Our paddle boat was a nice design, but did not have enough stored energy to complete the course,” said Physics Teacher Jim Mooney. “The team did very well on the remaining events, scoring within or close to the top 10 in each. Our overall score placed us third, securing a bronze metal.”

Taft welcomed a distinguished panel of prison reform experts to campus this week. Students submitted questions to the panel prior to the event, which featured candid discussion around the privatization of prison systems across the country, “hyper-incarceration” rates in the United States when compared with those of other industrialized nations, the disproportionate rate at which in minorities are incarcerated in our nation, and the attendant disparity in sentencing terms.

            The panel featured George Camp, Co-Executive Director of the Association of State Correctional Administrators, Waterbury, CT Mayor Neil O’Leary, and Scott Semple, Commissioner of the State of Connecticut Department of Corrections.

Community Service Day 2016 brings new service partners and exciting new projects to the 22-year old tradition that celebrates the Taft School motto, Non ut sibi ministretur sed ut ministret, not to be served, but to serve.

            “This year we want students to think not only about the idea of service, but also about the idea of community,” said French Teacher Sarah Gray, who is coordinating the October 24 event. “There will be posters outside the dining halls in the days surrounding Community Service Day that ask, ‘What is community?’, with space for students to share their thoughts.” 

            Gray has worked to broaden the idea of community by reaching out to new service organizations and creating new service opportunities for Taft students.

            “We have not worked inside a library before,” said Gray. “We have not worked with disabled adults. And in this election year, I had hoped to offer students the opportunity to work with the registrar of voters.”

            And while members of the Girls’ Cross Country Team will work to make a dent in the 150,000 books that need cleaning and sorting in Waterbury’s Silas Bronson Library, and other students will read books and create art with disabled adults at Oak Hill, the registrar of voters had a different idea: she directed Gray to Neighborhood Housing Services of Waterbury, Inc. (NHSW).

            NHSW is a non-profit, HUD certified organization that works to revitalize neighborhoods and create home-ownership opportunities throughout the city of Waterbury. They offer a broad range of programs and services designed to both boost the vitality of community and empower its residents economically, including courses in financial literacy, homeowner education, and youth education. They also sponsor a youth council.

            Taft students have been meeting with the members of the NHSW Youth Council to design and build a fall-themed, urban art installation. On Community Service Day, a vacant lot in Waterbury’s busy North End will be transformed into a collaborative art space. Billed as a "spooky stroll" though seasonal scenes, cornstalks, cauldrons, and hanging ghosts will surround a pathway lit by solar lanterns. Taft teachers Dan Calore and Kevin Danaher are building some of the wooden structures in advance, and will be on hand Monday to oversee the site work. Gray expects this to be a permanent, seasonal installation that will remain in place as long as weather allows, then returns to the space every fall.

             “This project in particular reflects the sense of community and the level of collaboration that is at the heart of Community Service Day,” says Gray. “We share our time and talents because we value both the community that surrounds us, and our relationships with its members.”

Established in 1995, Community Service Day is an opportunity for students to live Taft’s motto, non ut sibi ministretur sed ut ministret, not to be served but to serve.  More than 700 Taft students, faculty, and staff members will travel to approximately 50 locations across New Haven and Litchfield counties this year to lend their support to a wide variety of service projects, from fall cleanup and routine maintenance, to teaching athletics, science and art to area youth. For a look at some of the local organizations Taft partners with, both on Community Service Day and throughout the year, visit the Who We Work With section of our website.

Shrek the Musical opens in Bingham Auditorium this week, with evening performances throughout Parents’ Weekend. Additional performances, scheduled for 1:30 pm on October 26 and 7:30 pm on October 28, are open to the public; no tickets are required.

            Set in a mythical land of  “once upon a time,” Shrek the Musical is the story of a reclusive green ogre living peacefully in the isolation of his swamp. His peace is interrupted when a gaggle of homeless fairy-tale characters—from Pinocchio and Cinderella to the Three Little Pigs—crash the swamp after being evicted from their homes by the evil Lord Farquaad. To get the fairy-tale characters their homes back, Shrek agrees to help Farquaad rescue the cursed Princess Fiona. What follows is a fairy-tale love story for the ages.

            Shrek the Musical is a significant undertaking for Taft’s theater team. In addition to the large cast of characters, the show demands stunning and complex sets, highly technical production and choreography, and make-up challenges that include prosthetic pieces and split-second changes. And it has only been five weeks since rehearsals started.

           “That may seem like a long time,” notes director and theater teacher Helena Fifer, “but when you’re attempting to produce a musical of this scale, five weeks is not much…We’ve used every corner of the school to work each afternoon. Walking around between 3:30 and 5:30 you might see David Kievit down in the scene shop supervising kids with power tools or up on stage teaching the fundamentals of light design, Susan Aziz with the dragon puppeteers on the stage, TJ Thompson rehearsing the soloists in the choral room, Lesley Bowman, our costumer, measuring actors and gathering the many costumes needed, Sarah Surber in the dance studio with the Duloc citizens and the fairy tale creatures, our guest choreographer Nikole LaChioma in the Black Box with the tappers, and me in the faculty room, with whomever was left over!”

            Taft students also worked with professional special effects make-up artist Tyler Green to learn tricks of the trade that will help transform Taft students into ogres, donkeys, and well-known wooden boys.

           “The rewards involved in creating our own version of this well-loved cartoon movie have been well worth the challenges, and we are excited to show you what we’ve accomplished,” says Fifer.

             Students, parents, and families are expected to fill 7:30 pm performances Thursday (open dress rehearsal), Friday, and Saturday, October 20-22, while the 1:30 pm October 26 and 7:30 pm October 28 performances are open to all, including the public. Tickets are not required.

Support for this production of Shrek is provided by the James G. Franciscus Theater Fund and James Hollyday Webb Theater Fund. These funds were established in memory of James Franciscus of the Class of 1953 and Jamie Webb of the Class of 1992 by their families and friends. These special memorials pay lasting tribute to two Taft alumni who found great joy in their love for the theater and acting.

Taft students and faculty fanned out across the region to rake leaves, sort books, stack wood, do farm work, create art, teach children to dance, play soccer, have fun with science and so much more during our 22^nd annual Community Service Day. To view a full gallery of photos from the day, visit TaftPhotos.com 

Click here to read more about this year's service partners and projects. 

When Kathryn Aalto’s husband accepted a position at the University of Exeter in Devon, England, the family, which included three young children, left the US to embark on a grand adventure overseas. On their second day in England, Aalto discovered a book on public footpaths.

         “Walking there is very different than walking here,” Aalto told the Taft community during Morning Meeting. “I can walk from my house in Exeter all the way up to the Hebrides, in Scotland, just on these public footpaths. Before the jet lag had worn off we had clocked in about 20 miles on these footpaths.”

         At the same time, Aalto was reading classic stories to her children, including A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. And she began to wonder, is there truly a Hundred Acre Wood, like the one Milne wrote about? And if there is, can we walk there?

         The answer lies in Aalto’s New York Times bestselling The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood. 

Kathryn Aalto is a landscape designer, historian, lecturer, and nonfiction writer. For the past twenty-five years, her focus has been on places where nature and culture intersect: teaching literature of nature and place, designing gardens, and writing about the natural world.  As a writer, she has a special interest in the geography of childhood and literary landscapes.

Listen to Aalto’s full Morning Meeting talk. 

Well-known author, educator, and environmentalist Bill McKibben visited Taft this week for both Morning Meeting and small group discussions. 

          McKibben’s 1989 book, The End of Nature, is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change; it has been translated into 24 languages. To date, McKibben has authored more than a dozen books.

           Bill McKibben was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize in 2014, an award often called the “alternative Nobel.” He is a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized 20,000 rallies around the world in every country but North Korea, spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.  

            The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the 2013 winner of the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize, and holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities. Foreign Policy named him to their inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers, and the Boston Globe said he was “probably America’s most important environmentalist.”   

            A former staff writer for the New Yorker, he writes frequently for a wide variety of publications around the world, including the New York Review of Books, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone. He lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, where he spends as much time as possible outdoors.

Watch McKibben's Morning Meeting talk.

Bill McKibben came to Taft as a Paley Lecturer. The Paley Family Endowment, established in 2006 by Valerie and Jeffrey Paley '56 and their son Austin Paley '09, supports the Paley Lectures, an annual program of visiting speakers. Invited speakers address the school community on current issues of major significance, such as government, journalism, foreign affairs, environment, and civil liberties, in order to provide Taft students with the opportunity to be inspired by the value and dignity of lives filled with purpose and commitment.

Courtesy billmckibben.com

Taft School's Music for a While concert series continues Sunday, November 6 at 5 pm in Woodward Chapel with A Concert of Remembrance: Mozart’s Requiem. The event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began his Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 in Vienna in 1791; it was unfinished at the time of his death in December of that year. It was completed in 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, and presented to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem mass to commemorate the anniversary of his wife's passing.

The Requiem is celebrated not only for its musical achievement, but for the mystery and speculation surrounding its creation. Many assume that von Walsegg intended to pass the Requiem off as his own work, as he had done with other compositions. When Mozart died, his wife, Constanze, wanted to get the Requiem finished quickly and in secret, so as to attribute it solely to Mozart and collect the full commission fee. Joseph von Eybler worked on it for a while before giving up; Süssmayr completed what we now know as the “traditional” version of the work.

The Requiem is scored for a full complement of brass and strings, as well as timpani and basso continuo (cello, double bass, and organ). The vocal forces include soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass soloists, and a soprano, alto, tenor, bass mixed choir.

The Taft program will feature the vocal tour de force of Taft’s own student choir, Collegium Musicum, and a highly regarded, talented consort, Cantus Excelsus. Bruce Fifer, head of the Arts Department at Taft, directs both groups; they will be accompanied by the Woodward Chamber Orchestra. The program features solo performances by renowned vocalists soprano Louise Fauteux, mezzo-soprano Mary Ann Hart, tenor John Tiranno, and bass Hyong Sik Jo.

Former Taft teacher and naval aviator Colin Farrar returned to Taft with a Veteran’s Day message for the community.

 “Why did a New England prep school kid who majored in history become a navy fighter pilot? I wanted to do something real—hands on—and I knew two things,” Farrar told Taft students. “First, my most meaningful experiences in boarding school and in college were on teams, whether it was football, hockey, or sailing teams, because they offered the reward of being part of something greater than myself. Second, my real passions were racing sailboats and flying airplanes… Naval aviation offered a great maritime tradition, kick-ass flying, and the opportunity to be part of a team.”

Farrar reflected on his time in the military, sharing stories of active duty in places like Bosnia, of lives lost, of pride in service. Noted Farrar, “What motivated me during my years as a naval aviator was not just lofty ideals, but also the awesome sense of responsibility and the enormity of the challenge.”

Watch Farrar’s full Morning Meeting presentation. 

Taft’s Volunteer Council is once again collecting new and gently used coats, hats, gloves, and scarves for Acts 4 Ministry’s annual Share the Warmth coat drive.

Taft has enjoyed a long partnership with Waterbury-based Acts 4 Ministry, Inc., a non-denominational, non-profit charitable organization that supports the needs of families and individuals in financial distress through the collection and distribution of reusable furniture, clothing, and housewares. Taft students support the Ministry’s thrift store throughout the year, helping sort donations on Community Service Day, and through donations, including the annual winter coat drive.

Students and families are reminded that this year’s collection begins right after the Thanksgiving break and runs through the start of the December break, and are encouraged to gather items for donation while away from campus this week. Look for collection boxes around campus, including Lincoln Lobby.

Learn more about Acts 4 Ministry, Inc.

Taft students traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts recently to complete in the prestigious Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT). Founded in 1998, and held twice each year, the HMMT is one of the largest high school mathematics competitions in the world. The tournament draws close to 1,000 students from around the globe, including top scorers from national and international math olympiads.

         “The competition is pretty rugged at this event,” said team coach and Taft math teacher Joseph Zipoli '84. “It draws a very talented, international field. And the problems the team wrestled were extremely difficult.”

          The tournament includes three components: individual tests, the Team Round, and the Guts Round. Individual tests are comprised of 10 short-answer problems, to be completed in 50 minutes; the November tournament included two individual tests. The Team Round is a 60-minute, 10-problem test where all members of a team work together. Each team-round problem has a weighted value relative to the overall scoring for the round. Finally, the Guts Round is an 80-minute team event with 36 short-answer questions on an assortment of subjects, of varying difficulty and point values. The problems are weighted by score, and divided into sets of three. At the starting signal, each team sends a runner to an assigned problem station to pick up copies of the first set of problems for each team member. As soon as a team has answers for one problem set, the runner may bring the answers to the problem station and pick up the next set. It is not expected that students will finish all the problems. Grading is immediate and scores are posted in real time.

            Taft had its best result in the Team Round, where they scored in the top fifth of the nearly 1,000 competitors. Congratulations to team members (in photo, rear, left to right) Sonny An ’17, Yejin Kim ’18, (in photo, front, left to right) Daniel Yi ’18, Peter Yu ’20, Joe Han ’17, and Peem Lerdputtipongporn ’17.

• Taft School's 81st Service of Lessons and Carols
• December 13, 2016
• 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm in Woodward Chapel

• Students, faculty, neighbors, and friends are invited to gather in celebration Tuesday, December 13, 2016, for Taft's 81st annual Service of Lessons and Carols. Two services will be held in Woodward Chapel: the first begins at 6 pm, the second at 8 pm. A reception in the Chapel's undercroft will follow the 8 pm service, and feature refreshments and festive holiday music with Taft's Jazz Band.

• Lessons and Carols services are celebrated throughout the world in anticipation of the holiday season. The best-known service features the renowned Choir of King's College, and is broadcast each year on Christmas Eve from King's College, Cambridge, England. The traditional format originated on Christmas Eve, 1880 in Cornwall England. According to the BBC, Edward Benson, then the Bishop of Truro (later the Archbishop of Canterbury), crafted the worship service as a means of keeping “men out of pubs on Christmas Eve.”

• As in years past, luminarias will light a path from the main campus to Woodward Chapel, where the service will include Nativity readings by faculty, staff, and students, with seasonal music by performance groups that include Collegium Musicum, the Taft Chamber Ensemble, and the Taft Chorus.  

• All are welcome to share in this joyful celebration of the season.