The holiday culture season got off to a bright start with a package of weekend presentations that included a seemingly minor one that deserves some major consideration.
The event was Trenton Arts at Princeton’s “Saturday Morning Arts Winter Showcase” at the Lewis Arts Complex Forum and featured performances by the Trenton Youth Dancers, Orchestra, Singers, and Theater.
Active for the past several years, Trenton Arts at Princeton (TAP) is a Princeton University co-curricular arts engagement project with Trenton Public Schools.
“Our mission is to build a multidisciplinary community of artists across Trenton and Princeton University through student leadership and volunteer opportunities, youth programming, community performances, and more,” coordinators say in a written statement.
The project hinges on its aptly named Saturday Morning Arts Program — aka SMArts. Each week students arrive at the Lewis Arts Complex to work on their chosen discipline. Workshops and other programs are also included.
The Trenton schools currently participating in the project are the Hedgepeth-Williams Intermediate School, Holland Middle School, Trenton Central High School, and Trenton Ninth Grade Academy.
The major campus partners are the Princeton University Department of Music, Lewis Center for the Arts, and Pace Center for Civic Engagement.
The program is managed by Lou Chen, a Princeton University graduate with a degree in music and certificate in conducting.
The above mentioned presentation was performed in the Lewis Center Forum where the mall-like space required an informal approach that seemed to ease the students who performed a five-part program.
The event opened rousingly with the Trenton Youth Singers mixing traditional carols from the Dominican Republic and England with soul, American spirituals, and songs from Japanese films. They were followed by the Trenton Youth Orchestra, a singalong with the orchestra and singers, the Trenton Youth Theater performing movement and voice works inspired by the work of the late internationally known Trenton playwright Ntozake Shange, and, finally, the Trenton Youth Dancers performing their self-choreographed “The Museum After Hours” (with statues coming alive). As is the case with such a presentation, some efforts were more realized than others.
Yet, a good way to highlight the work that Chen and his Princeton collaborators — theater director Jamie Goodwin, dancer Rachel Schwartz, and youth singers director Solon Snider Sway — are creating with TAP is to reference the orchestra’s presentation of American composer Florence Price’s “Nimble Feet.”
One of Price’s final works, it is part of her 1953 three-section composition “Dances in the Canebrakes” — a work that mixes classical European music and early 20th century African-American dance.
Originally written for piano, the work was arranged for orchestra by a fellow American composer of African heritage, William Grant Still, with additional orchestration for the presentation by Princeton University-connected musicians Robin Park and Edward Zhang.
But never mind the background, it was the then and now presentation that mattered, and under Chen’s baton the orchestra showed its own nimbleness with the spritely musical patterns and provided the audience with a polished, confident, and satisfying presentation — something that showed the muscle of both the young musicians and the program.
Those interested in seeing the fruit of such a program and encourage future artists can do so when TAP presents its “Side-By-Side Concert,” featuring the Trenton Central High School Orchestra and Princeton University Musicians, on March 29 in the Rockefeller College Common Room, Princeton University, and the “Saturday Morning Arts Spring Showcase,” April 29, at the Lewis Arts Complex Forum, also at Princeton University. Events are free.
For more information, visit trentonarts.princeton.edu.
