Schools that dominate in both academic and athletic fields often leave the performing arts to not get their deserved recognitions. However, year after year Hackley students showcase their multifaceted talents with the beloved Hackley tradition, Coffeehouse. Once again, our performer talents shone, leaving the audience captivated.
A return of the “Coffeehouse goddess” senior Cara Minello to the stage and heated dance-offs between freshman Desi Cabanillas and reigning champ senior PJ McCaffery kept the audience on the edges of their seats throughout the night.
To start the night off, the senior hosts of the night, Zion Bennett and Annika Duggan, clad in bedazzled zip-ups, started with some jokes that would keep everyone entertained throughout the night before each performer would take the stage.
Starting on a strong note, freshman Norah Mott, and juniors Finn Fisher and Mai Malkiel took the stage to sing an acapella of Boygenius’s The Parting Glass. What truly made this performance so resonant was how well everybody’s voices blended, bringing our hosts to chills.
Following this performance was junior Riya Monday’s cover of Ain’t it Fun by Paramore, who, along with the house band, captivated the audience with an impressive vocal range and adaptiveness to singing such a dynamic song.
Quickly after this sensational performance, our hosts introduced a new Coffeehouse event to the audience. For the first time, opening the Coffeehouse floor beyond the student body with a Faculty Masked Singer.
In the first audiotrack played, the audience listened to a vocal cover of Sinatra’s Theme from New York, New York, followed by another track covering Miley Cyrus’s hit single Flowers, and ending with the crowd favorite, Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond.
Shouting out names of suspected singers, the crowd correctly identified sophomore dean and history teacher Thomas Fritz as the masked singer who won the competition.
After the competition, junior Ace Perez took the stage to perform Bruno Mars’s Lazy Song with just his electric guitar and vocals. Playing the electric guitar is a talent that Ace has shared with the Upper School on numerous occasions, based off of prior performances and Coffeehouse, he has an eclectic music taste and can play just about anything.
Soon after, sophomore Kubrick Croce garnered much audience attention with his performance of Blue Moon by Rogers and Hart, at one point having the audience wave the flashlights on their phones in concert tradition.
Following this performance, our hosts introduced the famous dance battle, ending in a head-to-head match-up with PJ McCaffery and Desi Cabanillas.
PJ did a one-handed cartwheel, and at one point even brokedanced.
Cartwheeling across the length of the Diller Hall stage, the audience watched in awe as Desi competed, ending his performance with a split. By the end of the performance, the crowd gave a standing ovation.
After the dance off, freshman Annabelle Romano, who made her Coffeehouse debut just this past fall, gave a breathtaking performance of ABBA’s, The Winner Takes It All.
Picking up the guitar for the first time only a few months before her performance, Annbelle practiced not only the complex vocals for the song but also spent time having to learn a brand new instrument.
“It is such a thrill to go up on stage. It just gives me such an adrenaline rush.” Annabelle said, “When I’m on the stage, I kind of black out, where the only thing I can feel is the moment and how much fun I am having performing.”
For sophomore Farah Goods, she describes the anxiety of performing in front of her peers as important to reminding her why she loves what she is doing so much.
“There is always a lot of fear going up on stage, but the more I perform, the less scary it is. I feel more comfortable with myself knowing that I worked hard on what I am doing, and that I love what I am doing. Allowing myself to actually have fun within this stress allows me to be in control, more relaxed, and have more of a presence on stage,” said Farah.
Farah sang Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone, ending the winter Coffeehouse on a strong note with her amazing performance of such a technical song.
This year, the winter Coffeehouse saw so much of the Hackley community come together to celebrate and commend the young talents within our Upper School student body.
Together, the audience and the performers made the night a highlight for many and a great way to go off into exam season and the start of spring sports.
