Pomona’s Piano Man

 

Hudson Colletti ’27 sitting next to a piano

While visiting Canada the summer before his first year of high school, Hudson Colletti ’27 sat down at a piano one day and began tickling the ivories.

In town with family for the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Pennsylvania teen wasn’t on stage playing for a capacity crowd inside a palatial concert hall or cozy auditorium.

He was on a street corner.

Within minutes, the sounds echoing through the neighborhood drew passersby, many quick to record the young pianist’s impromptu performance.

“I loved that,” Colletti says. “I thought [playing in public] was a really cool way for me to share something I love. I thought, ‘Why not bring that opportunity back home?’”

Colletti—a first-year student who plans to study economics and computer science, founded Free the Music at 14, not long after returning from Canada. In the years since, he has collected unwanted pianos and provided them to local visual artists as canvases. These customized pianos have found second homes in restaurants and apartment buildings, as well as on various street corners, around Colletti’s hometown of Sewickley, Pennsylvania—population 3,900.

“A lot of people want to learn how to play piano,” he says, “or know how to play but don’t have access to a piano because of how much space they take up or how hard they are to move into a house.”

One of the painted pianos donated to Free the Music.

By placing pianos in public, Free the Music is giving others a chance to fall in love too.

“One of the pianos we placed in town,” he says, “was originally given with nothing inside of the bench, and after four or five months over summer, the bench was filled with books and sheet music from people learning how to play and having lessons there.”

As successful as Free the Music’s initiative has been in his home state, Colletti sees no reason he can’t continue his work elsewhere.

“Music brings people together and brightens our mood,” he says. “It’s a great reminder after finishing a song when people gather around because they have a love of music.”

To see—and hear—Colletti playing one of the painted pianos, check out the video at pomona.edu/hudson-colletti-piano.

Postmarked Art

Here’s one mailing list you might want to be on: Professor of Art Mark Allen turns personal cards and letters into things of beauty, embellishing the outer envelopes with all manner of designs and decorative flourishes. His exhibit From the Desk Of last fall in the Chan Gallery at Pomona’s Studio Art Hall featured prints, posters, zines, pop-ups and a wall of envelopes that once held missives to various friends, faculty, staff, students and alumni. Take a look.

Cards layup of different images Multiple cards layup

At Last, the Glee Club Goes Abroad Again

The Glee Club at Durham Cathedral in England, conducted by Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music. Photo by John Attle

The Glee Club at Durham Cathedral in England, conducted by Donna M. Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music. Photo by John Attle

Going on tour has long been one of the high notes for the Glee Club. But the Gleeps, as they like to call themselves—think Glee People—had been grounded since 2020 before a giddy two-week tour to England and Scotland in May.

Photos via Instagram @gleeclub4747

Photos via Instagram @gleeclub4747

A planned trip to Europe in 2020 was canceled by the COVID-19 shutdown, and the next two years were limited to small outdoor performances in Claremont and a Southern California tour. When the Glee Club took flight again in May, even some alumni from the past few years joined in after missing their chance.

“For those of us in the Class of 2020, a trip to Spain was supposed to be the perfect ending to our already incredible experience in the ensemble,” says Matthew Cook ’20, a former Glee Club co-president and a second-generation Gleep: His mother, Melissa Cook ’90, also sang in the ensemble. “We didn’t even get the chance to sing a full concert in our last semester, let alone go on tour,” says Cook, who earned a master’s in vocal arts from USC in May. “To be able to sing with the 2023 Glee Club and go on an international tour that I lost out on as a student, I feel like I got some closure in that part of my life that was disrupted by the pandemic.”

Photos via Instagram @gleeclub4747

Photos via Instagram @gleeclub4747

After arriving in London, the Glee Club opened with a concert in St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, one of four benefit concerts for local charities. The choir also sang for a Eucharist service in Cambridge’s Trinity College Chapel, traveled to York for a concert in St. Michael le Belfrey and held another in Durham Cathedral (in Durham, of course). In Scotland, they performed in St. Andrews in a joint concert with the St. Andrews University Madrigal Group and closed their tour in Edinburgh with a concert at St. Giles’ Cathedral.

In more normal times, the Glee Club travels each year, with about one international trip for every three domestic tours to give each class an opportunity to go overseas. Other trips abroad have included Italy (2016), Poland (2012)and Germany (2006).

Besides alumni performers, there was an extra alumni assist on this one: Catherine John ’05, a violinist who works as a concert tour manager, helped plan the trip with Donna M. Di Grazia, the David J. Baldwin Professor of Music and conductor of the Glee Club and College Choir, and Elizabeth Champion, the Music Department’s concert production manager and tour manager. “The Glee Club sent me a very kind thank-you note, which I will cherish always,” John says.

Civil Rights Press Photos at Benton Museum

Cecil Stoughton, President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in by Judge Sarah T. Hughes as his wife and Mrs. John F. Kennedy flank him in the cabin of Air Force One, November 22, 1963 (printed 1964). Vintage wire photograph on paper. 6 9/16 x 8 in. (16.67 x 20.32 cm). Gift of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg in honor of Myrlie Evers-Williams. P2021.9.70Inspired by Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68 and the gift of her archives to the College, Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg have donated their collection of more than 1,600 press photographs documenting the civil rights movement to the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in her honor. The Mattis-Hochberg photos include scenes of resistance, acts of civil disobedience and images of civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, James H. Meredith as well as photos of Evers-Williams.

Coming to a Theatre Near You

Rose Portillo ’75, a longtime theatre lecturer at Pomona, has been cast in the upcoming Disney+ film adaptation of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The latest screen version of the popular children’s book has a twist on the original: Alexander’s last name is Garcia, and the film will star Eva Longoria and Jesse Garcia with 9-year-old Thom Nemer as Alexander. Portillo plays Alexander’s grandmother, Lidia Garcia. In another recent Hollywood role, Portillo voiced the part of Señora Guzmán in Encanto, the 2022 Academy Award winner for best animated feature.

Please Don’t Kiss the Art

Urban Light, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Urban Light, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Urban Light, the very Instagrammable installation of 202 historic streetlamps created by the late artist Chris Burden ’69 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gets a lot of love. Maybe a little too much love.

The 2008 sculpture needs a paint job and is one of 23 works selected by the Bank of America Art Conservation Project for grants “for the preservation and conservation of the world’s cultural treasures” in 2023.

“Conservators will apply protective paint layers that have been extensively tested on all the streetlamps, ensuring that substances such as lipstick, permanent marker and dye can be easily cleaned from their surfaces,” the bank announced. Other works selected for preservation grants included 15th-century Armenian manuscripts, Andy Warhol’s Oxidation series and two paintings by Paul Cézanne.

President G. Gabrielle Starr Joins Academy of Arts and Sciences

Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr photographed next to the Academy of Arts and Sciences logo

There was a distinct Pomona College presence at the induction ceremonies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in September, as College President G. Gabrielle Starr formally joined the distinguished academy led by David Oxtoby, who preceded her as Pomona College president.

Starr, a national voice on access to college for students of all backgrounds as well as the future of higher education, was selected for her role in educational and academic leadership. Also a literary scholar and neuroscientist, she took office as the 10th president of Pomona College in 2017.

Elected to the academy in 2020, Starr was inducted in a ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, along with influential artists, scientists, scholars, authors and institutional leaders from the classes of 2020 and 2021 after delays due to the pandemic. Others inducted included singer Joan C. Baez, former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and author Ann Patchett.

Other Sagehens entered the academy alongside Starr. Alumna Adela Yarbro Collins ’67, an internationally renowned and respected scholar of the New Testament, also was elected in 2020. She is the Buckingham Professor Emerita of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School. Alumnus Thomas McDade ’91, elected to the academy in 2021, is a biological anthropologist specializing in human population biology and is the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

New inductees signed the academy’s Book of Members, which already includes numerous Sagehens. Among them are scientists Jennifer Doudna ’85, Sarah Elgin ’67, J. Andrew McCammon ’69 and Tom Pollard ’64; author Louis Menand ’73, art historian Ingrid Rowland ’74, artist James Turrell ’65, journalist Joe Palca ’74 and developmental psychologist Henry Wellman ’70.

The academy is led by Oxtoby, inducted in 2012 and named president in 2018. He served as president of Pomona College from 2003 until 2017. Starr became the third Pomona College president to join the academy. The late David Alexander, Pomona’s president from 1969 to 1991, was inducted in 2006.

Chartered in 1780, the academy has counted Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson among its members, as well as 20th-century luminaries such as Margaret Mead and Martin Luther King Jr. The current membership includes more than 300 Nobel laureates, some 100 Pulitzer Prize winners and many of the world’s most celebrated artists and performers.

Band’s Name Is No Typooo

Last winter, a brewery near campus was looking for a band to play as an opening act. A group of Claremont Colleges musicians quickly pulled one together and gave the event’s organizers the band name “Tea Room” as a placeholder.

“They spelled ‘room’ with three o’s,” says saxophonist Dylan Yin ’23, one of several musicians from Pomona’s jazz ensemble invited by keyboardist Alex Arguelles PZ ’24 to join the impromptu group. “We looked at it, we looked at each other and we nodded.”

Tea Rooom became the official name, though the bandmates joke that they should add another extra o after every show. Each performance since has reflected the quirkiness and versatility of the band.

A 2022 Tea Rooom performance with saxophonist Dylan Yin ’23 at the mic. Photo by Lillian Visaya PZ ’24

“We’re not afraid to try songs we’ve never played before live, take audience recommendations or remix songs that already exist,” says drummer Jeremy Martin ’25, adding that the bandmates try to have a sense of humor in everything they do.

“We’re serious musicians who don’t take ourselves too seriously,” he says.

Trumpet player Nico Santamaria ’25 attributes their improvisational tendencies to the group’s jazz background. Vocalist Cece Malone PZ ’24 and guitarist Amya Bolden PZ ’24 appreciate that the spontaneous approach doesn’t focus on technicalities. It’s a constant learning experience, personalizing performances and interacting with each new audience.

“Music is all about expressing yourself and seeing if other people will relate to that emotion,” Arguelles says. “We can be whatever people need us to be. That’s quite lovely.”

A year later, the band is still playing gigs and has added guitarist Aden Cicourel ’26 as Bolden takes a more part-time role. Says Martin: “I wish I could give you a better idea of how many o’s we’re on, but I think we may have lost track!”

—Oluyemisi Bolonduro ’23

Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College, is back.

sagecast logo

Recorded in the studios of KSPC 88.7 FM, Pomona’s campus radio station, the fifth season offers a chance to listen in on vibrant intellectual conversations with Pomona College professors and hosts Patty Vest and Marilyn Thomsen. Featured faculty include Rosalia Romero (art history), Gary Kates (history), Ellie Anderson (philosophy), Pierangelo De Pace (economics) and Rose Portillo (theatre). Listen at pomona.edu/sagecast or look us up on the podcast sites of Apple, Google or Spotify.

Payton Lecturer: Soledad O’Brien

Award-winning broadcast journalist Soledad O’Brien gave the 2022 Payton Distinguished Lecture in April, explaining how maintaining an anti-bias perspective in journalism means acknowledging our own biases.

“You need other people, other diverse voices, to push for things because your own gut is often wrong.”

—Soledad O’Brien

Pomoniana

All the fun stuff from campus: Pomona College tidbits, traditions, lore and more.

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Bookshelf

Sagehens publish prolifically. The latest books from Pomona alumni and faculty.

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