Clark Art Presents Music in the Manton Concert Series

08:07AM / Sunday, March 02, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — This spring, the Clark Art Institute presents Music in the Manton, a series of concerts in the Manton Research Center auditorium.

The lineup includes:

Friday, March 21, 7 pm
Flore Laurentienne
Canadian Mathieu David Gagnon's incomparable musical project Flore Laurentienne comes from a happy marriage between electronic and classically influenced music. The project is committed to constantly pushing the boundaries between various genres, including ambient, experimental, and progressive rock. Flore Laurentienne has recently released a new album, 8 tableaus, available on Secret City Records. The composer, orchestrator, and musician draws inspiration from the works of Canadian painter and sculptor Jean Paul Riopelle with this new offering.

This program is presented in collaboration with Belltower Records, North Adams, Massachusetts.

Sunday, April 27, 2 pm
Umi Garrett
New York-based pianist Umi Garrett performs works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sergei Prokofiev, J.S. Bach, Frédéric Chopin, Florence Price, Gabriel Kahane, and works composed by Williamstown resident and established classical composer Stephen Dankner. Garrett recently released her debut chamber album of Ludwig van Beethoven's Five Sonatas for Piano and Cello with Emily Mantone. She is currently studying for her Artist Diploma at the Juilliard School with Hung- Kuan Chen and Shai Wosner and is a Collaborative Piano Fellow at the Yale School of Music. In the summers, she is a staff collaborative pianist at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute in Chicago.

Friday, May 2, 6 pm
Benjamin Hochman
Benjamin Hochman presents a solo piano recital centered around brilliant American composer Matthew Aucoin's The tracks have vanished, a work inspired by Aucoin's forthcoming opera Demons, itself based on Dostoyevsky's eponymous novel. The recital program draws on an intricate web of interconnected themes, including nihilism and life under Russian totalitarianism (including Ustvolskaya's Preludes) and the genre of opera transcriptions (including from operas by Wagner and Gluck).

Tickets for all concerts $10 ($8 members, $7 students, $5 children 15 and under). Advance registration encouraged. Capacity is limited. Accessible seats available. For more information, visit clarkart.edu/events.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Letter: Incomplete Picture from Greylock School Committee

Letter to the Editor06:30PM / Wednesday, October 28, 2026

To the Editor:

At the October Mount Greylock School Committee meeting, there was much celebration over the student growth percentiles (SGP) from last year's MCAS test data (Spring 2026). Growth is worth celebrating. But I worry the meeting, and the coverage of it, left families and our community with an incomplete picture of how our students are doing in math.

"Growth" sounds like it means scores went up, but that isn’t quite what SGP measures. SGP compares each student to students in the state who scored about the same the year before, then ranks how they did this year against that group. If a whole group of similar students decreases, the student who decreases the least can still earn a high growth percentile. A strong SGP tells us our students did better than their peers who scored similarly the year before. It doesn't tell us whether they are at grade level.

For example, the current 6th grade class at Williamstown Elementary School (WES) has decreased in their grade-level math proficiency every year since their 3rd grade MCAS. In 2024, 64 percent of the class was meeting expectations; in 2025 48 percent were at grade level, and in 2026 only 33 percent of their class met grade-level expectations. Our current WES 5th grade class follows a similar trend, with 48 percent meeting grade-level math expectations last year vs 56 percent meeting expectations in 2025 when they were in 3rd grade.

Not every class follows this pattern; our current 7th graders gained to 62 percent last year. But seeing entire classes decrease is something that deserves our attention.

Growth comparisons across the state provide useful information, but they do not tell the complete story. We also need to look at where our students are in terms of grade-level proficiency and how those numbers are changing from year to year within the Mt. Greylock school district. This will be our first year with the math interventionist role filled at WES and our second year with the new i-Ready curriculum.

As we watch whether these changes are working, I hope the School Committee will discuss proficiency alongside growth in its public meetings, so our community can see the full picture. Growth matters, but it isn’t enough if fewer of our kids are reaching grade level each year.

Sincerely,

Jenna Hasenkampf
Williamstown, Mass.

Hasenkampf is a parent of WES students in Grades 2 and 4.

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