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Shakespeare’s Songs Take Center Stage

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Shakespeare’s Songs Take Center Stage
Shakespeare’s Songs Take Center Stage
For students in the Advanced Shakespeare Studies class, there are no shortage of ways to examine the nuances of the Bard’s work. During a presentation of “Shakespeare’s Songs” from singer-storyteller Jack DesBois ’10 and pianist Joe Mulholland, a professor of Harmony and Jazz Composition at Berklee College of Music, students got to experience music’s role in Shakespeare’s plays with historical insights and moving performances.
 
“Advanced Shakespeare Studies is all about taking the plays of William Shakespeare and putting them into their proper context: artistically, historically, and culturally,” said Matt Conway who designed and teaches the course. “Shakespeare's plays existed within a society teeming with all sorts of seductive entertainments, from tavern singers to bear baiting (a blood sport) to dancing to gambling to circuses. This program did a wonderful job of explaining how the music of Elizabethan England--already enormously popular on the streets of London--found its way into the plays, helping to describe character, provide atmosphere, and advance plot.”
 
As a Belmont Hill student, Mr. DesBois immersed himself in the theatre program, sung with the B-Flats, and studied Shakespeare with former faculty member Doc Fast. Since then, he’s earned his B.A. in music from Middlebury College and spent a year studying in Mary Baldwin University’s MLitt Shakespeare and Performance program affiliated with the American Shakespeare Center. Mr. DeBois has developed several educational enrichment programs, which he presents to schools, homeschool groups, and other organizations as part of his family’s educational service DesBois Tutoring & Enrichment.  
 
Following the performance in the Chapel, the students gathered with Mr. DesBois and Mr. Mulholland for lunch and further discussion. The question and answer session culminated with a chance for the boys to try their hands at singing a three-part “catch,” delivering a spirited rendition in their own right while gaining an even greater understanding of Shakespeare’s world. 
 

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