Neighbor News
HHS Students Travel to Woodstock To Connect with The Music of the Times
The Harrison High School Marching Band, Color Guard and Majorettes perform their Stadium halftime show "Summer of Love" at Woodstock
The Harrison High School Marching Band, Color Guard and Majorettes traveled to Woodstock to make a deeper connection to the civil, political, and artistic factors of the 1967 “Summer of Love” – the theme for their halftime show this year.
Over 100 HHS students visited the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in this upstate town and had the opportunity to visit the Bethel Woods Museum, watch a 30-minute video of the historic event, and tour the hallowed grounds of the Woodstock Music Festival.
“We wanted to provide the students with three frames of view of the event,” said HHS Band Director Charlie Briem. “One was a broader overview of Woodstock, the second was a view of the stage as a performer, and the third was a view from the grass as an attendee.”
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The Harrison High School Band Stadium Show “Summer of Love” features music from the charts of 1967 by artists such as The Who, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, the Turtles and music from the Broadway show Hair.
“We heard personal recollections of the turbulent 60’s with strong messages of hope for our students in today’s world,” said Briem. “We looked at cultural artifacts from the 1960s in order to understand the energy and creativity that blossomed in this most productive year in American musical history.”
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Following the tours, the students walked down to the original stage location and proceed to play the music of the period, facing what would have been the audience. A number of staff members and guests walked the quarter mile down the hill and enjoyed the concert.
The HHS students then proceeded back to the top of the ridge above the festival site where they found one of their own classmates, HHS junior Elias Mantyla, on the stage. The Harrison High School group and others gathered to hear Mantyla entertain with samples of the iconic music of Jimi Hendrix, including a stirring rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
“At the conclusion of our activities, the lead docent said, ‘Hundreds of schools have visited this place…. none of them performed, and none of them recreated the experience as you did today.’”
