The Path November 2023

Diwali Celebrated on Campus

The Albuquerque Academy Asian American Parent Council hosted a parade during the school day and an all-community Diwali Celebration event November 18 featuring cultural performances.

Diwali, India's biggest and most important holiday of the year, is a festival of lights that celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, and the human ability to overcome. In the very old Indian language Sanskrit, Diwali (or Deepavali) means "row of lamps." People light lamps at Diwali to show that light is more powerful than darkness and good is more powerful than evil. Diwali also celebrates new beginnings.

Admission Open House Welcomed Families to Campus

Hundreds of families joined us for an exciting day of exploration and discovery at the Academy’s admission open house in October. Self- and student-guided tours allowed parents and prospective students to experience our vibrant community, top-notch facilities, and outstanding academic programs.

Our visitors:

• Enjoyed performances – guitar, band, chorus, strings, and dance.
• Visited academic departments, saw classrooms, and met teachers.
• Learned about student activities and school services such as clubs, student organizations, auxiliary programs, college guidance, health office, community service and more.
• Met school administrators, including our head of school, associate heads of school, and division heads.
• Explored ways to get involved through the Albuquerque Academy Parents' Association and the parent councils.
• Toured our awe-inspiring facilities – Simms Center for the Performing Arts, Common Grounds Café, Bookstore, Simms Library, and the Science Building.
• Got an insider’s view from an Academy Charger.
• Learned about admission and tuition assistance.

We are proud of our school and our mission, and we are honored to be recognized by Niche as the #1 Private High School and STEM school in the Albuquerque area.

We hope you will recommend us to your friends, family, and neighbors with a student who you believe would make a valuable addition to the Academy's student body. Learn more.

'89 Grad's Love for Piano Guides Her Life

In honor of 50 years of coeducation at Albuquerque Academy, Alumni Council member Ted Alcorn '01 is telling the stories of women alumni.

By Ted Alcorn ’01

Jocelyn Swigger ’89 can hardly remember a moment of her childhood when the radio wasn’t on. Her dad liked to tune into the classical music of Albuquerque’s KHFM right after the morning news. “That's just what the house sounded like,” she said.

Jocelyn ultimately made that music the soundtrack of her life, finding her way to a career as a concert pianist and professor at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music at Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg College and piano instructor at Interlochen Arts Camp. The pleasure of playing the piano is so fundamental that she struggles to explain it, comparing it to eating. “I don't really feel like I can live without it.”

She’d dreamed of a career in music since entering the Academy in ninth grade, where she arranged her free periods at the end of the day so she could travel to UNM for piano lessons and practice sessions. But she loved her other classes, too, gravitating toward teachers who challenged and sometimes outright scared her friends, including Charles Wong for precalculus and John O’Connor for English. At the Academy, she said, “I could be a nerd who wanted to do well in school” without fear of criticism. “I felt really safe.”

That didn’t protect Jocelyn from occasional crises of self-doubt. But she held on to her love for the piano, first as a student at Oberlin College and Conservatory and later earning master’s and doctoral degrees at the Eastman School of Music.

Over time, she came to appreciate the dimensions of her own abilities. Memorizing music comes more easily to her than improvising. She is also keenly aware of the ways her whole body contributes to her playing. “Put your hands in front of yourself and wiggle your fingers,” she instructed me, as a demonstration of how, when a person lowers their head until their chin is at their chest, that motion becomes harder to sustain. “A lot of the time, what I need to do to make my sound better, really, might be to lift my head up, or feel my feet on the floor, or breathe.”

Playing the piano is far more physical than many people realize, and Jocelyn has been drawn to its biggest challenges. During maternity leave after the birth of her son, she decided to learn and record Frederic Chopin’s 27 etudes. “It's sort of the Mount Everest of the piano repertoire,” she said. “Most pianists, if I tell them that I did that, their eyes get kind of wide.” Its difficulty caught even her off-guard; she thought she’d finish in two years but ultimately took more than seven.

That was good training for her next goal – reviving the difficult compositions of a little-known female composer, Agnes Tyrrell, whom Jocelyn came across in her scholarship. “I have spent my life as a pianist in conversation with geniuses,” Jocelyn said on a podcast recorded by her high school classmates, ticking off the composers who have guided her fingertips across the keys. “And when I play this music, it absolutely feels on that level.”

Tyrrell, who was born in what is now the Czech Republic and composed prolifically throughout the 1860s and 1870s, could never have known her music would be so inspiring to another pianist 150 years later, a continent away. And that gives Jocelyn hope.

“I’m playing this music in a spirit of radical optimism because its existence proves that what is possible is way more than we imagined.”

All of Swigger’s albums are available on streaming services, and readers can follow her discoveries of Agnes Tyrrell’s music at https://jocelynswigger.com/agnesblog.

Alumni Gather in New York City

In November, Head of School Julianne Puente, 10-12 Division Head David Kim, former faculty member Leslie Kim, and school leadership reconnected with over 80 NYC-area alumni and friends and shared the exciting strategic initiatives at Albuquerque Academy.

Ramo Lecture Series Hosts Leading Expert on Voting and Political Process

Through the support of the Ramo Lecture Series, students had the opportunity to hear from scholar and award-winning teacher Pamela S. Karlan, co-director of Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where students litigate live cases before the court. One of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process, she has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and (twice) as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1998, Karlan was a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law and served as a law clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Abraham D. Sofaer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Karlan is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute.

About the Ramo Lecture on the U.S. Constitution and the Responsibilities of American Citizenship

The lecture series, established by Albuquerque lawyer Roberta Cooper Ramo, the first female president of the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute, is funded by a gift in honor of Cooper Ramo from the ECMC Group, a family of companies that provide financial tools and services, nonprofit career education, and job placement services to help students succeed and achieve their academic and professional goals.

Guitar Students Participate in District VII Festival

Several students in grades 6-12 were chosen to participate in the District VII Honor Group Guitar Festival, putting in many extra hours of individual practice to prepare for the event as well as rehearsing with guitarists from other schools. The performance on Saturday, November 4 included improvised solos by Quinn Ross ’25 and Andreas Hofer ’27.

See the news story for more.

Upcoming Events

Young Alumni Gathering | Classes 2018-2024 | November 22, 5:30-7 p.m. | Simms Library, Common Grounds Cafe | Register here.

Academy Alight | Saturday, December 2, 6-8 p.m. | Please enter at the Academy and Moon Gate and proceed one way through campus, exiting at the Harper Gate; the main entrance on Wyoming will be closed. For best viewing, turn off your headlights and use only your parking lights as you drive through campus.

Levanta Concert: A Night of Brazilian Music | December 9, 7 p.m. | Simms Center for the Performing Arts | Purchase your tickets now.

Alumni Holiday Gathering | December 15, 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Hollow Spirits Distillery | Register here.

Alumni XC Run | December 27, 10 a.m. | Register here.

Alumni Swim & Dive Reunion | December 30, 9 a.m. | Register here.