ALL EYES ON THE FUTURE
Hartt School turns 100, with celebrations, reflections that look forward to the next century
The Hartt School at the University of Hartford celebrates its first century of existence this year. The campus has been bustling with a slew of celebratory talks and performances, but the discussions have been focused on the future more than on the school’s illustrious past.
Hartt actually hit the century mark two years ago, but the celebration was muted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and some of the events were postponed until now. One major aspect of the “Hartt 100” celebration finally took place this month: a series of talks and concerts titled “Beyond the Performance: Diversity in Arts and Action.”
In the past week, the Hartt has offered talks on “Designing Ecosystems for Transformation in Now Generation Work,” “Examining the Intersections of Policy, Community, and the Arts,” “How Can You Be an Artist and Not Reflect the Times: Theorizing Black Music and Performance” and “Intentional, Accessible, and Equitable Practices for Student Admission and Retention in Conservatories.”
There was also a roundtable discussion titled “Agency” with — Black composers Kevin Day, Valerie Coleman, Ryan Speedo-Green, Carlos Simon and Omar Thomas — that explored issues of racial equity, cultural appropriation and who can reliably tell whose stories. “Beyond the Performance” culminated this past weekend with a wind ensemble and symphony band concert and a Hartt Symphony performance.
All of the talks and most of the concerts have been archived as videos on the HarttTube channel on YouTube.
Glen Adsit, Hartt’s director of bands as well as its director of instrumental studies, who organized the concerts and co-moderated the composers’ roundtable, says the “Beyond the Performance” events were “meant to say ‘We can perform these works — what will we do with them next?’ The change in the last few years in programming, in all the arts, is that representation matters. A major concern is are we doing all pieces by dead white guys?”
Hartt has been a distinctive and progressive music school since its inception, Adsit says, because of its history of live performance and
“We have to ask ourselves, ‘What
do we want to represent?’ How do we make the great programs we have better and more representative?’ ”
— Hartford Associate Professor Marcus Thomas
relating to audiences.
“The grounding of the Hartt School was always performers, musicians. Performance is in our DNA. It’s what we do. You come to the Hartt school to perform. This is part of the daily service of us as professors. Performers need to be aware of social issues, race, LGBTQ issues. It comes out in the playing — the pieces they play, the collaborations they form.”
Hartford Associate Professor Marcus Thomas, the chair of the school’s department of Music and Performing Arts Management, notes that “the composers here now would’ve been here in 2019 as originally planned, but that the discussion might be even stronger this year than it would have been then.”
“During the past two years, especially after the murder of George Floyd, there was a reckoning. We have to ask ourselves, ‘What do we want to represent?’ How do we make the great programs we have better and more representative?” he said.
Thomas calls Hartt “a very unique and embedded
place within Connecticut. Alumni have gone on to do major things. Our programs are internationally known. Some come back and are on our faculty or staff. We’re a generational school. There are kids here whose parents attended. We’re a small school, more like a family. We have a good relationship with the surrounding community. Our faculty members play with local music groups and arts organizations.”
The Hartt School predates the University of Hartford by nearly 40 years.
It was founded as a music school by Julius Hartt, a local musician and teacher who’d played organ for Asylum Hill Congregational Church and one of his prize students, Moshe Paranov (aka Morris Perlmutter), who’d gained an international reputation
as a concert pianist and taught at Kingswood School. The school started in Hartt’s home on Sigourney Street, then moved to Collins Street and became the Hartt School of Music. The school, renamed the Julius Hartt Musical Foundation for a while following its founders death in 1936, was on Broad Street from 1938 until the early 1960s until its building was demolished to make way for I-84.
In 1957 the University of Hartford was formed by combining the resources of the Hartt School of Music, the Hartford School of Art (founded in 1877 as the Hartford School of Decorative Arts) and Hillyer College and its Ward School of Electronics. What was originally a music program, indeed the first in Connecticut to offer a bachelor of music degree, grew in the second half of the 20th century to offer degrees in music, theater and dance as well as academic programs in music history, music theory, ballet pedagogy, music education, composition.
“We’re coming into this time of innovative and progressive thought,” Thomas said. “It’s not just us — it’s all schools. This is a current that’s happening now. It’s not about a single event or discussion. It’s an opportunity to reflect and reinvent that happens to coincide with a big anniversary. The Hartt 100 is a celebration of our past, but it’s also looking forward. What will we do for the next hundred years?”