Listen in on the 2026 Upper School Composer’s Assembly

The annual Upper School Composer’s Assembly provides a forum for students to share their musical creations with their peers at the end of each school year. There are a few composition classes offered through the Upper School music department—Songwriting and Digital Music, both taught by Shawn Hennessey, and Music Theory and Composition taught by Andrew Westerhaus—and many of the songs shared in the assembly were from those classes. 

In the Digital Music courses, students learn how to make beats, write chord progressions, create melodies, and record and produce full songs using Logic Pro and Ableton Live software. In the Songwriting class, students make songs with software called Soundtrap, and also spend time writing lyrics, listening to and analyzing popular music, and studying melodic and chordal relationships. 

The Music Theory and Composition classes focus on writing notated music. For the performance, they also formed ensembles and rehearsed to prepare.

Students enrolled in any music class are eligible to submit a piece for the Composer’s Assembly, and there were compositions shared that were also created in Directed Independent Studies, in J-Term courses, and independently.

Throughout the assembly, students in the audience were quiet and attentive as music from a range of genres filled the space.

James Hoveland ’27 kicked the assembly off with a live performance of “Tango”, a chamber piece he composed for a piano quintet, which was made up of Tanya Lu ’26 and Ellis Fast ’26 on violin, Andrew Li ’26 on cello, and music teacher Miku Shiota on viola.

Other live performances included Pavan Mangalmurti’s ’28 piece for solo piano “Spring Nocturne”; “Live It,” an original rap by Mkpouto (Precious) Eshiet ’27; and “Record Player,” a duet written and performed by Sadie Spiker ’26 (voice and guitar) and Zoe Anderman ’28 (voice).

The Digital Music classes shared video captures of their songs edited into medleys. The videos show the interface of the software the students learned to use: