In my first blog on the Admissions website, I wrote about how at home I felt with my freshman suite of science majors and musicians.
http://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/lamtharn/2011/10/14/housing-systems
A little later, I wrote about how the 7 of us decided to combine our passion for music and form an ensemble named “Suite Spot.”
http://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/lamtharn/2011/12/05/family-night-presents-suite-spot
Now, Suite Spot is an official ensemble!
At the start of spring semester, we applied for the Creative and Performing Arts Award (CPA) and received a grant of $500 to stage our own concert in the Crescent Underground Theatre at Morse College! The concert was a great success! Check out some of the highlights in the YouTube link below.
Yale puts a ton of focus into its undergraduates. The Creative and Performing Arts Award is given by the Council of Masters to fund student plays, publications, magazines, concerts, films, dance, and art. It is awarded every semester and is just one of the many ways Yale promotes independent projects and student pursuits like Suite Spot.We performed 3 ensemble pieces that we composed ourselves. We also performed a barbershop quartet arrangement, a solo guitar instrumental, a classical piano solo, a jazz ballad, folk music and electronic music…all played by members of the one suite! It was such an amazing feeling to stage our own concert and make music together as a suite!
Master Keil and Associate Master Lockhart told us at the concert how they remembered reading the words “jazz” everywhere in our Housing Application form. Before we came to Yale, they thought we would make a great suite and now we are performing and composing our own music! Thank you for making our Suite Spot concert possible, Master Keil!
Yale has the spaces (theatres, art exhibition rooms, recording studios built right into the residential colleges and reserved exclusively for undergraduates), the funding, and most importantly, a diverse and passionate student body of Yalies you can collaborate with to bring ideas to life!