HGC Foundation

HONORING THE PAST; FORGING THE FUTURE

Remarks of HGCF President William S. Reardon ‘68

To quote from T.S.Eliot’s Four Quartets “In our end is our beginning”. At the 125^th Anniversary Celebration in 1983, then Foundation President Loring Conant spoke passionately about the primacy of the music to our HGC experience and concluded: “the Glee Club’s maturation and creative process continue and we’ll have much to celebrate in 2008 at our 150^th.” His ending is our beginning and here we are tonight --Loring could not have been more accurate!

I wish to speak of three things with you this evening:

1) My own and our collective HGC experience

2) The Harvard Glee Club Foundation and its evolution as a support vehicle for HGC and

3) The Future and its impact on both of our organizations

              1) MY OWN AND OUR COLLECTIVE HGC EXPERIENCE

Though somewhat tied to a historical context I’ve always enjoyed the following quote from the January 10, 1926 Nashville Banner”

“…the glee clubs of the United States at the present might be divided musically ‘in partes tres.’ The first of these, ‘musica inferior,’ comprises those bunches of ‘rah-rah boys’ with fairly good voices and social ambitions who come to just enough rehearsals to learn their ‘honey-bee am hummin’ program and ‘make the trip’with the club. Into the second group fall those far fewer choirs in the largest universities where selected trained voices are gathered for serious study and rendering of real music. And the third class is…..Harvard!”

The quote clearly overstates the present case, but it was HGC’s choral superiority which in part led me to Harvard and to seek membership in this very special organization. The Freshman Glee Club and HGC were the major non-academic activity of my Harvard years, including the Global ’67 tour with RCS. I left Cambridge with a ‘Cliffie’ wife Kathy who enjoyed singing as much as I did, exercised with family and other choruses in each place we’ve lived ever since. With home close to Cambridge, I could get to Sanders concerts and have been thrilled to continue the international exchange by three times performing with our original Kyoto University hosts as a member of the HGC Alumni Chorus. At work, I became the go to musical partner at Certified Public Accountants PWC, serving clients like the BSO and New England Conservatory and have been a longtime board member and treasurer of the Music Conservatory on Boston’s South Shore.

But my personal story is not unique at all. In many of our morning panel discussions other alums told their stories of how what started in Sever 11 or Holden Chapel carried over into professional lives or as amateurs who ‘more than just dabble’ in choral singing outside of work. Baxter Churchville’s DVD eloquently captured the impact of the Glee Club experience and demonstrated the strength of our collective memories. Certainly one thing I’ve learned as your Foundation president over the last three years is the very real passion that alums bring to those memories. We all care very deeply about the experience. Some of the strongest emotional bonds we make with other human beings are through shared adversity. There’s an analogy in our singing from the early moments that we tackle a particularly challenging piece of music, wondering if we can really do it justice, to the concert moment when we actually pull it off and the glorious rapture that follows, that special ‘high’ from making beautiful music together.

             2) THE HARVARD GLEE CLUB FOUNDATION AND ITS EVOLUTION AS AN HGC SUPPORT ORGANIZATION

And what of the Foundation?

Founded in 1950, the HGC Foundation was created to assist HGC “in all ways deemed” proper by the Corporation. The Foundation has been in change mode since early 2005. Under my predecessor, President Dan Curll, the Foundation’s Executive Committee completed a thorough self assessment, did some benchmarking of Harvard’s choral program and alumni support organization compared to other leading US choral programs and set a number of new strategic directions. A spring 2007 alumni survey recommended significantly ‘raising the bar’ of the Foundation’s activity and visibility with the current club and with alumni. To enable the start of those new directions we launched a $1 million Sesquicentennial fund drive. I am thrilled to report to you tonight that, from more than 260 generous alumni, Development Chair Jim Rabb advises we have received gifts or pledges equal to 2/3 or our target. With those resources we’ve hired a full time professional Managing Director, Erica Hansen, who has opened our own street address at 1753 Mass. Ave. and built an office home for us, providing upgraded communications and systems to be more responsive to alumni inquiries. Only with Erica’s dedicated time and expertise could we have planned and executed the festivities of this weekend.

Other recent alumni engagement events have included a luncheon after President Faust’s presence at the Harvard Club of Chicago’s 100^th Anniversary celebration, a sing and dinner in NYC for Manhattan area alums, and a recent grad management group get-together at John Harvard’s Brew House in Cambridge. And many more events are planned, particularly in conjunction with HGC’s triumphal US tour this summer to key cities and concert venues. Of course, these activities only supplement the major reunion sings now regularly scheduled for commencement week each June.

Another significant initiative is being led by former manager Nick Webster ’59 to review the Foundation’s mission, operations and governance structure. Partly in response to some survey perceptions that the Executive Committee is a bit too Cambridge-centric, Nick has reached out in telephonic meetings to a cross section of alums from around the country to address this important series of issues and questions. The end result will be recommended governance, by-law and operations changes to be voted on at a future Annual Meeting of the Foundation.

It’s early days still but some directions are clear. Our revitalized Foundation will be more geographically diverse, more transparent in its operations and more representative of the interests and objectives of the membership, you our alumni. One other thing, we will communicate more frequently and respond more quickly to alumni questions or requests using 21^st century technology.

              3) THE FUTURE OF HGC AND HGCF

And why do all that?? Because both HGC and the Foundation go forward into a future filled with significant challenge and tremendous opportunity. Let’s not be complacent or smug with our 150 year traditions—HGC as we know it faces major challenges in continuing its prominent position as the leading US male collegiate chorus. Jim Marvin and student leadership have made it crystal clear that it’s more and more difficult first to attract quality singers to Harvard. And, even when Harvard does attract them, the competition of the many more vocal groups and shows on campus, and the explosion of extra-curricular activities more broadly, creates an ever more challenging environment to attract and keep an appropriate ‘share of voice’ for HGC and the other Holden Choruses. We’ve seen pictures of a 150 plus member HGC among the memorabilia but let’s be clear—those days are truly gone forever. Add the complexity of the College’s new curriculum and academic schedule, together with the deemed imperative of significant study abroad and HGC faces some serious challenges to the kind of singer continuity and commitment necessary to forge a high quality choral program. In a cultural world exploding with alternative offerings, the other challenge is building an audience appreciative of the product HGC delivers.

Yet there are also significant opportunities. In Drew Faust, Harvard has a new President truly devoted to the arts and performance; witness her early formation of the Arts Task Force to review the place of the arts at Harvard and bring forth recommendations. The leadership of all three Holden choruses and Foundations has weighed in to that Committee with collective ideas and priorities. Most fortunately, with Jack Meghan leading the Office for the Arts, we have an individual who truly ‘gets it’, loves choral music and has been most supportive and understanding of the challenges facing the future of choral music at Harvard. The new campus planned for Allston, with additional residential housing and a Performing Arts Center at its hub, presents fascinating new possibilities for performance venues beyond our tried and true Payne and Lowell Halls and Sanders Theatre. Imagine a Yale football concert directly across from the Stadium! How to play effectively in the this new Arts scene, and to flourish, is really the opportunity and the challenge!

HGC’s student leadership is also exploring a worldwide tour in 2010 that extends beyond the traditional boundaries of Glee Club travel and experience. The serious consideration being given to concerts in Latin and sub-Saharan Africa present an exciting opportunity for the club to learn from and interact with wholly new choirs and cultures. And we certainly have a model from our very well heeled Yale brethren in New Haven of a completely separate alumni organization totally focused on just the value of singing and touring together with universal choral expansion as an organizational goal.

The point of laying all this out for you tonight is just to consider the strategic possibilities ahead for HGC. The Foundation needs to be resourced, vibrant, current and connected to assist student leadership, as we always have, in keeping this beloved institution at the forefront of its peers so that we too will have much to celebrate in 2033 at our 175^th.

In closing I just want to say what a privilege it has been during my tenure as your President to be at the fulcrum of all the changes and challenges I’ve described this evening. It’s the passion and commitment of many of you to HGC that makes it all worthwhile. THANK YOU!