December 15, 2007
A crowd of students, alumni, friends, and parents turned out en masse for the first open mic of the 2007-2008 school year. The addition of a few lamps, a small PA system, some card tables, a string or two of Christmas lights, and a whole lot of good atmosphere transformed the Richards Room from HS classroom to beautiful performance space for the event. Due to the limited number of chairs around the card tables, which quickly filled up with guests, later arrivals had to utilize bookshelves, benches and floor space just to find a place to sit down (and even then some people were still standing!). Hot apple cider and homemade banana bread were sold on a couple of tables in the back of the room, as was the requisite coffee and sugar-y goodies of various sorts and sizes.
Now the risk of any open mic is a shortage of performers (or a shortage of talent and an abundance of performers), but on Friday neither of these potential pitfalls befell us.
From 7:15 to 9:30, an array of multi-talented musicians and singers graced the stage, playing everything from electric bass to saxophone. The night started off with the premier performance of Selenium Cocktail, a rock band made up of entirely of EWHS students. They played three funk-rock songs driven on the bottom by the passionate slap-bass playing of Gabe Matza (’09) and the rock-steady drumming of Evan Jonson (’10) and filled out on top by the synchronized electric guitars of Karsten Rabe (’09) and Bo Marchman (’10). Standing in front of it all with newly-written lyrics in hand was the singer and songwriter Mitchell Metz (’09), who also dropped microphone and lyrics at the end of the hard rock song “America” to pick up a second bass guitar on which he played a dizzying line of delayed, reverb-ed bass noise that added nicely to the down-tuned bar chords of the electric guitars.
The rest of night was quieter by far, but no less energetic. Kimani Hall (’11) played a few old Christmas standards on the sax, which rang out beautifully over the hushed crowd. Rory Bradley (EWHS Admin. Asst. and German teacher) played two of his own compositions on the acoustic guitar before Emily Frachtling (’10) and Anna Long (’10) took the stage to play several humorous numbers on the acoustic guitar and the piano. 
EWHS Alumnus Aiden Dale (’07) returned to the school to play some beautiful acoustic guitar instrumentals that involved drumming on the neck and body of his guitar in a style that was at times dizzying and at times beautifully introspective (and in several very special moments, a combination of both). Nori Diesel-Potts (’08) took the stage to improvise a tune on her saxophone, followed by Nathaniel Williams (EWHS Art teacher), who played a few acoustic guitar songs, including Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” where he was joined by Karsten Rabe (’10). After that it was time for a hand-clapping rendition of “Wade in the Water” that had the whole audience on its feet and singing along, performed by a trio of folk musicians led by Whitney McDonald (EWS P.E. teacher). Nancy Moore (P’08) then sang a couple folk songs with some of the members of that trio, and after that the whole EWHS String Band took the stage to play. Their concluding number was a rendition of “Wagon Wheel,” for which several other audience members joined them on stage, singing and playing drums and piano. The crowd began to thin after that – Emily and Anna returned to the stage to play Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and some of the members of Selenium Cocktail continued to jam even after the clean-up began, reluctant to leave the stage.
In short, it was an absolutely wonderful evening, and we’d like to thank everyone who turned out for it! Thanks especially to Robert Long for the use of the PA system, and to all the parents and students who stayed after the performance to help clean-up. Hopefully this kind of event can become a regular tradition at EWHS!