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On February 11, I got a call from Gayle Gallagher, MIT’s executive director of Institute events and protocol. President Reif had just announced that MIT would be launching online again, and to open the ceremony we needed a compelling piece of music to evoke renewal as we emerge from the pandemic.
After nearly a year of social distancing teaching, learning and living, I envisioned music that not only reflects on the losses and challenges we face, but embraces optimism about how we can come back from the dark as a better and more thoughtful society. Involving the many music students and highlighting MIT’s iconic campus quickly became priorities. And the sincerity of the voice was essential.
But what was possible given MIT’s covid protocols? With a few exceptions, students were not allowed to play or sing together in the same venues. And who – in a short time – can compose a composition with such special intent and for the extraordinary combined strength of orchestra, wind ensemble, jazz ensemble, Senegalese drum ensemble, and multiple choirs? We needed a composer with the technical and professional skills to tackle such a daunting task, and the heart and humanity to understand why time was needed for this moment.
I knew right away that you were a Tony Award-winning graduate. Jamshied Sharif ’83With his long history of working with MIT students and his willingness to take on large-scale projects, he was the only one for the job. Broadway has always been in high demand as an arranger, producer, and composer for film and artists in many genres – even during the pandemic – he agreed to do so right away.
Since this project would involve singers, we knew we had to find a suitable text, unlike the instrumental collaborations we’ve had over the years. At Gayle’s suggestion, I contacted MIT poet Erica Funkhouser, who is compiling some of her students’ recent poems about the epidemic. His vision became clear when Jamshied read them. “The emotional openness, simplicity, and at times painful sadness of his writing was my guiding light,” he says, “informing all of his compositional decisions.”
Perform from inbox
Although I coordinated other complex, large-scale concerts, this project was uncharted territory. It included organizing recording sessions for five communities, hosting off-campus students, rehearsing in-person and online, and configuring a 10-hour film shoot at five locations on campus. The logistical challenges were mind-blowing – the transported 77 Mass. We even had to take a giant crane to the pavement off Ave.
On May 3—a month and a day before the kickoff premiere—Jamshied’s score and midi file Pandemic Diary of the Year It arrived in my inbox. I knew perfectly well what he was capable of, but what he sent brought me to tears. The flow, the tone, the way he handled the text, and the way he shaped this five-and-a-half-minute sonic journey from dark to light – it was all perfect. He also took on the difficult task of recording them all for the audio file, as he wanted the vocalists to hear their tracks with real sounds.
My colleagues and I were running to bring the piece to life. Luis “Cuco” Daglio, multimedia expert who helped the Music and Theater Arts musical performances continue for 15 months, again donned the superhero cape, recording seven sessions for groups of MIT musicians.
so how did it happen ultimate virtual performance get together? First, all the instrumentalists and vocalists recorded themselves playing or singing to Jamshied’s midi file. Jamshied then mixed and mastered all these tracks – over 200 – Pandemic Diary of the Year It has become a living, breathing music.
“As I read selected lines from the MIT poets, I began to get a sense of the pandemic’s impact on young people—more important given their fewer years on the planet, its limiting power at a time that should have been exploratory for them.”
— Jamshied Sharif ’83
On the epic shooting day, directed by MIT Video Productions (MVP) director Clayton Hainsworth, the original file was amplified via speakers for all the actors and singers to perform live. Despite the restriction of playing or singing the midi track, it still felt revealing. Emmy Award-winning MVP producer and editor Jean Dunoyer ’87 He led the video team, which beautifully captured the emotional scope of the composition and the expressiveness of the students’ performance.
“After a year and a half meeting to make music over Zoom and in separate practice rooms, shooting the music video gave us the chance to perform together in person in a very meaningful way,” says MIT Wind Ensemble saxophonist Rachel. Morgan is a graduate student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “It was so meaningful to see what MIT music could do!”
While Jamshied was working on the audio mixing magic, Jean, whom I saw as the other magician of the project, was turning the music into film creatively. “I wanted the piece to be an invitation to the community to come back to campus unmasked and in person,” he explains. “What our students missed the most in the past months was the joy of togetherness, and the longing for reunion was felt when the signal that the vaccine was working was felt.”
Strong messages for the future
The work everyone undertakes to achieve Pandemic Diary of the Year It symbolized the central role that music, and the arts in general, played in the lives of many MIT students. It has proven how committed students, faculty and staff have been to ensure continued musical performance under very challenging conditions since the start of the pandemic.
As Erica said, “Pandemic Diary of the Year Even though it was created only at MIT, The World felt like a musical postcard to graduates.”
Days before the premiere, Jamshied pondered the track’s universality and central message. “As I read selected lines from MIT poets and the longer poems in which they were drawn, I began to get a sense of the impact of the pandemic on young people – its greater significance as they spent fewer years on the planet, its limiting power in the world. A time that must have been exploratory and expansive for them, and its disturbing place in the matrix of disasters that have arisen primarily caused by human carelessness and arrogance,” he wrote. “It’s promising right now; the birds sing the song of new life. But I sense a warning in the pandemic and a vague suggestion that we should not ‘go back to normal’ and seek an improved, equitable and holistic way to structure our world. Our young people know this to the bone. We should listen.”
Frederick Harris Jr. He is a faculty member of the Faculty of Music and Theater Arts and the music director of the MIT Wind Ensemble and the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble.
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