Michael Szeto’s Violin Sonata to Brunswick By Anne Adler
When we think of music in our midst, we immediately think of Michael Szeto ’06, a concert violin-
ist of a caliber seldom found among students in an independent day school that is not a performing arts conservatory. How incredibly fortunate for the Brunswick community that Michael chose to spend his high school years on Maher Avenue. He has brought to the School classical performances, both formal
Times of Brunswick
and informal, from Lower to Upper School, with even a bit of blue grass fiddling thrown in.
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This fall, an audience of two hundred first through fourth graders arrived one morning to hear Michael as the featured musician for “Music in the Atrium,” a new BPA assembly program. The boys filled the balcony and grand stairway in the center of the Lower School, and listened attentively to our resident maestro play Bach, Elgar, Puccini, and Leoncavallo. After the concert, Michael gave a brief talk about his love for the violin and the music he has worked so hard to honor these past four years. He conveyed this in a way that was both inspiring and approachable to the young boys, responded to their questions with poise and humor, and even took a request for “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Believe me, you have never heard it played quite that way! Last year, Michael proposed an idea to Paul Raaen, Upper School music teacher: a concert on behalf of “the teachers, students, and administrators at Brunswick and Greenwich Academy, who make up our wonderful high school community.” That thank you took the form of a Sunday afternoon concert at Massey Theater at Greenwich Academy. The program had something for everyone’s musical taste: the structure and discipline of Bach, the impressionist brushstrokes of Ravel and Debussy, the romantic line of Liszt and Tchaikovsky, and the dark passion of Sibelius. Performing on-stage in the “Michael Szeto & Friends Concert” were Greenwich Academy students, Midori Tanaka ’08, Rachel Caplan ’06, and Michael’s sister Katie ’08, along with other musician colleagues—Gabe Beckerman (cello), Andrew Knebel (viola), Jonathan Payne (cello), Andrew Thomson (violin), and Vivian Zhang (piano). Katie is a classical ballerina who danced the beautiful Tchaikovsky pas de deux from Act II with Darren McIntyre, a principal dancer with the Ajkun Ballet Company, as Midori, on piano, and Michael accompanied. The performance ended with a standing ovation and calls for an encore.