Hear Here! Launches Spring 2019 Edition

The Spring 2019 edition, Volume IX of Hear Here!, was unveiled on April 25, 2019 in Elfers Commons. Edited by a board of students and faculty, Hear Here! offers access to the exciting work NEC students complete in conjunction with or in addition to their musical studies, and it provides a public forum for interdisciplinary intellectual and artistic conversation.

At the launch of the Spring 2019 edition, prizes were awarded to two essay submissions and one visual submission. After a record number of submissions, the student editorial board and faculty editor Daphne Strassmann selected these students' submissions to win the prizes:

Daisy Chesler '22 – "Chess"

"Chess" features two students from NEC playing a game of Chess at four in the morning. I painted this to encapsulate and cherish the small pastimes we have in the dorms as well as to appreciate my classmates. I’ve always wanted to create art of student life at NEC especially with how much diversity there is in our school. I also paint to just hang out with people. I hear so much from friends about others, and I hear more from people about what they think of me, so I thought: “Hey, let me just hang out with this person and get to know them as we get to know each other.”

Barbara (Barbie) Matthews '20 – “The Lottery” and The Story of Jesús

I wrote this essay as an assignment for a short story class with Professor Patrick Keppel. One of the stories we read was “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. This story takes place in rural America where each year a barbaric ritual is held in blind tradition. When I read this story, I was reminded of an event in my own life. During high school, one of my guitar students was deported from the US with his mother. In addition to the horror I felt about the injustice of this act, I was also surprised about the lack of outrage from the faculty and students at our high school. This too was part of a barbaric ritual that is held in blind tradition in our country. The story I read in Professor Keppel’s class made me realize the relevance of this issue and how a story can be directly related to our everyday lives.

Daniel Rosenberg '22 – Perpetuated Privilege in Conceptualized Success

The stress of a future career in the arts dominates much of our lives at conservatory. The arts are competitive like few other fields. The anxiety is everywhere… I’ve seen sticky notes in dorm rooms that read, “when you’re not practicing, someone else is,” and have overheard many a conversation about people that, “just couldn’t make it.” Malcolm Gladwell offered a mediocre answer to the question of success. “Outliers" became popular because it took every side of the argument. He reassured audiences that privilege and practice have equal weight in the matter of success. I wanted to have some fun tearing apart his thesis and offered a different thesis.

The student editors for Volume IX were Liana Branscome '19, Marie Fujimoto '21, Alexander Garde '20, Adrian Liao '20, and Yi-Mei Templeman '22.