The Dwight Schools celebrated 25 years of global music collaboration as over 140 students from around the world took the stage at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, with 700 in attendance, including many families from our campuses around the world.
For 25 years, Dwight’s global concerts have bridged traditions, backgrounds, and customs through music and friendship. This year’s performances, with an exciting new format, dazzled the audience.
Over 140 students from Dwight’s eight campuses — New York, London, Shanghai, Seoul, Dubai, Franklin School in Jersey City, Global Online, and, for the first time, Hanoi — created a beautiful and diverse show, “In Our Wildest Dreams.”
The first half focused on the musical talent of our global cohort of students, with solos, duets, and collaborations within and across schools. Then, the all-campus collaborations in the second-half stunned the audience with their “combined ensembles.” Each school had rehearsed their individual contributions to these numbers since November, and all finally met in New York a week before the concert to rehearse together.
The result, both on-stage and between peers, was nothing short of magic.
Creating Bonds
With Dwight School New York as the host, students spent a full week rehearsing, celebrating, and bonding. This rare opportunity for Dwight students worldwide to meet in person led to many meaningful connections.
For the students from Global Online, the concert presented a chance to meet people from the different Dwight Schools, and to work collaboratively with their own classmates.
Global Online student Shrivijaya Sivakumar ‘27, who performed a solo, “Reedaha,” elaborated on the unifying power of the concert. Despite coming from different countries and musical backgrounds, students found a sense of oneness in performing and socializing together: “It’s so cool how different we all are in terms of cultures, what instruments we play, what we’re going to do, what this concept is going to look like, but then when we’re just in a social situation, it’s like, we’re all the same.”
Franklin student Ruhie Mehendale ’26 added, “It’s nothing like I’ve ever experienced before. I really like meeting all the new people, and all the new connections being made with people from all over the world with all these amazing stories.”
Musical Partnership
In the second half of the concert, packed with combined ensembles from each campus, each musical number embodied the fusion of different cultures, surprising the audience with lively and energetic tones.
Dwight Dubai student Kareen Dastan ’30 elaborated on the power of music, saying, “For me, music is like an art. It’s a type of life. I believe music brings people together.”
Materializing a dream, students blended their distinctive musical talents into each cohesive performance. “The Water is Wide,” performed by the Dwight Schools Orchestra, exemplified the program’s collaborative nature. Dennis Lee (Dwight Seoul Music Director) who conducted the orchestra for the piece, noted, “They are interacting with each other live as they’re making music… It’s an exchange of languages. I think music is a language and they’re speaking the same language together.”
Eric Novod, Head of Performing Arts at Dwight School New York, highlighted “Shofukan,” a song by jazzy jam group Snarky Puppy, as a feat of global collaboration. As the first-ever combined Jazz/Rock ensemble gathered at a Dwight global network concert, its creation was remarkable.
“Mr. Gourav Biswas [Shanghai Qibao Dwight Music Director] had already started working on this piece in Shanghai, but did not have the full ensemble traveling to New York for the Global Concert.. After looking at who was attending from across many campuses, the music directors decided to do the piece as a global collaboration. And it worked great. Mr. Biswas and a talented Shanghai student [Cynthia Shi ’26] created a new arrangement specific to our global instrumentation, and then it came together during rehearsal week.”
Dwight School New York student Yona Nemirof ’25, who played the viola, reminds us of what makes these partnerships so extraordinary, “Music brings people together, which is the perfect example of what’s happening with the global concert – that all the Dwight campuses are coming together to play beautiful music together.”
Sharing Tradition
This year’s Dwight Global Concert was set apart not only because of the collaboration of students across seas, but the way in which traditions were woven in from across the world, including traditional instruments. Drummer Eric Wu’25, conductor of the opening piece, “On the Broad Northern Plain” performed by the Shanghai Folk Ensemble, infused the performance with authentic Chinese musical traditions in part by having a traditional drum purchased and shipped to New York from Shanghai.
To ensure the piece’s authenticity, this drum required a meticulous preparation process, involving treating the drumhead with water to muffle higher-pitched tones and properly stretch the drumheads for the desired sound. Eric’s aim was to honor and accurately represent Chinese music. He said, “As a Chinese music fan, I’m really passionate about this, and wanted to share Chinese culture. I have listened to hundreds of different Chinese orchestras and just tried to learn how the orchestra works. And finally we are here.”
Shanghai’s performance wasn’t the only one to feature drums that were specially flown in for the performance.
Dwight School Hanoi, joining the concert for the first time, introduced traditional Vietnamese drums to the performance. Hanh Chi Ha ’28, one of six students who played the drums in “Hào Khí Việt Nam,” said, “The piece that was chosen represents a lot. In it we talk about our heritage, our myths, legends, our different dynasties and different rulers and the richness of our traditions. It’s really amazing being able to represent our culture. And it was a really fun experience too, because it’s a new one for us.”
The Dwight Schools could not have envisioned a more meaningful way to celebrate 25 years of concerts that bring together Dwight students from around the world. This epic cross-cultural collaboration would not have been possible without the support, dedication, and hard work of each campus community, especially the host campus, New York, under the leadership of Eric Novod. As Dwight London Music Director Richard Deng noted, “It was amazing to see how Eric was supported by an extraordinary team, with the common goal of making the concert the best it could be.”
In our wildest dreams, we never imagined all our schools coming together so successfully. But thanks to communal devotion, the rhythms created on stage that night continue to reverberate throughout each school.
