Torch - Spring/Summer 2019

A year of 125 celebrations (clockwise from right): a Grade 8 Art student creates her addition to the fused glass legacy project; Director of Performing Arts Cissy Goodridge (centre, left) and composer Marie-Claire Saindon (centre, right) rehearse the 125th anniversary song with a Grade 10 Band class; visiting artist Bonnie Thomson works with a Grade 10 student on her piece of fused glass.

Over the past three years, Grade 8 and Grade 10 art students, teachers and art club members have been working with fused glass artist Bonnie Thomson to create an enormous glass mural to be installed in the windows above and around the south-facing doors in Temerty Commons. Made up of hundreds of green, yellow, orange and red leaves arranged in 30 individual panels, the fused glass installation will form a tree that symbolizes growth and change, themes chosen by students. Among the colourful leaves, portions of clear glass will create a dappled effect, letting light through and partially revealing the school’s ivy-covered walls in the courtyard beyond. Each leaf was created by an individual student or teacher according to a plan drawn up by the Grade 10 art classes several years earlier. “Fused glass is a very involved technique, quite different from drawing and painting,” says Upper School Art teacher Kate Berchtold-Wall, who oversaw the project. Fused glass involves cutting and grinding glass, working with finely ground glass particles known as frit, using propane torches and squirt glass and even hair spray. Each piece is fired in a kiln at more than 1200°F.

Elsewhere in the school, students have been working for more than a year on the creation of the very piece of music that filled Roy Thomson Hall so beautifully this spring. The original, seven-minute composition, entitled Past, Present, Future: Havergal’s 125th Anniversary Song , was the brainchild of Havergal’s Director of Performing Arts Cissy Goodridge and Principal Helen-Kay Davy. Its creation was a collaboration among students across two school years in at least three different disciplines. Students from the Middle School and Senior Choirs and the Symphonic Band and Orchestra worked with Montreal-based composer Marie-Claire Saindon to develop the piece’s three themes: growth, reflected in the piece’s first movement “From the Dark”; community, as showcased in the second movement “The Towering Panes,” a reference to Havergal’s beloved stained-glass windows; and empowerment, as heard in the third movement “Wake the Embers.” Once the themes were established, Grade 12 Writer’s Craft students worked with their teacher Laura McRae, a published poet, to create the text for the piece. The bilingual composer also worked with Grade 11 French students, under teacher Stephanie Bryant, to establish the themes. At the performance on May 3, Ms. Goodridge conducted while 24 Old Girls joined members of the Junior School, Middle School and Senior Choirs, the Dance Troupe, Drama students and steel pan drumming group sang and the Orchestra and Symphonic Band accompanied them. The second movement, “The Towering Panes,” will be added to Havergal’s alternate hymnbook, known as the Green Book , so that it can live on for future generations of students to perform and enjoy.

The work will be unveiled during the 2019–20 school year.

Celebrations Throughout the Year In addition to these four major undertakings, the school has also integrated 125th anniversary celebrations throughout 2019.

TABLE OF CONTENTS | SPRING/SUMMER 2019 • TORCH 25