Every year, Mr. Henkin’s junior Music classes complete a final project called a “fugue,” and each group presents their fugue to an audience. Programs were placed on each seat with the order of performers for the night and a definition on the back: “Fugue: “a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.””

This year’s juniors had a range of topics for the fugue and were able to perform about topics like food, math tests, and even other fellow students! This performance wasn’t easy to pull off; Mr. Henkin was consistently meeting with students almost every night to perfect their pieces and make sure the show would live up to its expectations. 

As the night progressed, the excitement built up, and by the end of the performance, the audience was no longer able to contain itself and gave a standing ovation for the last group.

David Rabiei ’23 explained what he thought was the biggest takeaway from his fugue, “The fugue project gave us the ability to use our creativity and to make a musical fugue on any topic we wanted.” He then elaborated on the process, “The process started with creating your subject and then a countersubject. We wrote our fugues on note flight which is an app to write music lyrics and notes. It needed to be 2 minutes long. We had to use different ways to change up our subject, by slowing it down, breaking it up, or creating variations.” He explained how involved Mr. Henkin was in the process. “Mr. Henkin helped us throughout the process with building up our piece and helping with creating transitions. We would meet him for a few hours and he would sit and help us with all the notes, getting the right beat and practicing how to pronounce our fugue.” For Rabiei ’23, “Fugue night was amazing. It was fun and interesting to listen to everyone’s fugues.”

Overall, with all the hard work put in by the juniors, Mr. Henkin, and the love from the audience, the atmosphere of the night exceeded all expectations. The refreshments served after the event allowed for everyone to converse and discuss the success of the night. The juniors are just waiting to see if next year’s music class will be able to live up to its legacy.