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The Arts

Milton students say that one of their favorite activities is watching their friends perform. Whether it’s harmonizing with the Miltones or Octet a capella groups, choreographing for one of the dance concerts, exhibiting self-portraits in Pieh Commons, or playing the title role in Antigone, Milton students are engaged in their art, and art energizes the campus every day.

The foundational work in music, performance and visual arts happens in the classroom, guided by caring and talented faculty. Milton art also extends beyond the classroom walls to many venues both on and off-campus.

Milton arts faculty believe that all students can be artists. They believe art is about personal growth and process, and that creative thinking, self-expression, and encountering the challenges of an art form empower students to be creative and confident in all areas of life.

In Milton’s arts program, students experience intense individual attention and coaching along with exhilarating team experiences. They spend hours with dedicated adults who use a wide range of teaching and directing skills, who bring to bear diverse and respected talents, who set the highest standards for students’ performance, and who honor each student’s contribution.


In the News

Divine Melody Meets Ethereal Drama in Milton’s City of Angels

City of AngelsEach year, Milton’s performing arts and music departments collaborate on a challenge that becomes the ultimate crowd pleaser: a full-scale musical, created from start to finish in just two months. This year’s production, City of Angels, will not disappoint.  

“The play includes a great script and a fun and challenging score,” says director and performing arts faculty member Kelli Edwards. “Everything is a double entendre—all very clever and funny.”  

Premiering on Broadway in 1989, the play is set in Hollywood in the 1940s. The production unfolds as two stories happening simultaneously: a comedy revolving around the filmmaking industry of the time, centered on the screenwriter Stine; and the fictional film world of Stine’s creation—a detective drama and murder mystery.  

The show’s cast comprises about 30 students—representatives from all four classes. Staging a musical “takes a village,” as Kelli puts it. Nearly every member of the performing arts and music faculty has a role in creating the magic, from music to choreography, film elements, lights and costumes.

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The Spray Can and the Brush in Nesto Gallery

Percy Fortini-WrightThe Spray Can and the Brush, an exhibition of new paintings by Percy Fortini-Wright, will be on view in Milton’s Nesto Gallery from May 3 through May 31. Through a wide array of schemes within representational painting and graffiti vernacular, Fortini-Wright interprets, depicts and deciphers the world around and within. This recent work—created from memory and direct observation, as well as sampling imagery—embodies chaos and clarity while not limiting how images operate, and blurs the lines between practices, styles and subjects.
 
Percy Fortini-Wright holds both BFA and MFA degrees from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, where he now teaches as an adjunct. Mr. Fortini-Wright is described as a major force in the re-emergence of graffiti as an art form, particularly in the greater-Boston area.

 The Nesto Gallery is located on the lower level of the Art and Media Center. The exhibit is free and open to the public. 

View photos of the exhibit.

Lovers' Quarrels Play Out in Wigg Hall

Lovers' QuarrelsThis weekend’s 1212 play, Lovers’ Quarrels, was Moliere’s first successful comedy, originally published in 1656. Fourteen Milton actors will perform the English translation by Richard Wilbur. The script is challenging: The entire play is written in rhyming couplets. Performing arts department chair and director, Peter Parisi, says that the play is a light and fun story, though with a complicated plot: A girl disguises her gender to obtain an inheritance, all while loving the boy who is due the inheritance and is courting her sister.

The tradition of Milton’s 1212 Plays began over 30 years ago in room 1212 of Warren Hall. The performances evolved from play readings to fully-staged productions under the direction of late faculty member Nina Seidenman. When Warren Hall was renovated, and room 1212 became an English classroom, the productions relocated to Wigg Hall. The space may have changed, but the philosophy is the same: intimate productions with small casts, minimal technical demands, and challenging material for both actors and audience.

Performances of Lovers’ Quarrels begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, May 2 and 3; and 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 4.

Sweet Music This Spring Weekend

Spring ConcertsTwo concerts entertained audiences this past weekend in the Kellner Performing Arts Center. On Friday, April 26, the sounds of Gilbert and Sullivan filled King Theatre as the Glee Club sang sections of Pirates of Penzance. The chamber singers took the stage, joined by the Wellesley Choral Society (WCS), to perform three movements of Ludwig Beethoven’s Mass in C Major. Ted Whalen of the music department is music director of WCS, and the Milton singers will join them in a full performance of Beethoven’s Mass on June 5 in Wellesley.

On Sunday, April 28, the second concert event opened with three separate chamber music performances—a percussion ensemble, a flute quartet, and a cello quartet. The chamber orchestra performed a baroque Vivaldi flute concerto with Natasha Zuzarte (I) as the featured flute soloist. The second piece was Georg Phillipp Telemann’s Viola Concerto in G Major featuring Brittany Lee (I) on viola. Vocalist Alé Gianino (I) joined the chamber orchestra to sing Franz Shubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel). The full orchestra whirled the audience through Europe as they performed a Czech march, a Viennese Polka, an Elizabethan dance, and then closed with a selection of music from Les Misérables.