StuyFest Debuts with a Music Festival

StuyFest, a student-run annual musical festival, made its debut this summer as a new event to showcase Stuyvesant students’ involvement in the arts. Organized by head supervisor Gaven Nowak (‘24) and board members August Petry (‘24), Matthew Monge (‘24), seniors Zoey Marcus and Esayah Edghill, and sophomore Hilda Liang, the first StuyFest was held on June 21 at the performance venue the Church Street School of Music. The show featured over 40 performances and boasted a turnout of over 100 audience members.

StuyFest was created to give Stuyvesant musicians the opportunity to perform outside of their music classes. “We realize that there’s really only chorus and band, [and] both are teacher run. The dancers have StuySquad and the actors have SING!—what do the musicians get? [Musicians] have just classes, and sometimes they just want to show off their own bands and performances, so that was the idea,” Monge said. “We wanted to make a place for Stuyvesant’s musicians to show off what they can and want to do.” 

After making the decision to create StuyFest, Nowak, Monge, and Petry pitched the idea to Principal Seung Yu and Assistant Principal of Music, Biology, and Computer Science Marianne Prabhu in order to book the Murray Kahn Theater for the show. “At the end of the pitch, Principal Yu and Prabhu said that they needed to speak to the rest of [the] admin [...] so with our heads held high, we waited,” Nowak said. “By the end of the week, it was pretty obvious that the idea got disapproval from [the] admin—[perhaps] no one could oversee the event.”

Since StuyFest was not able to use the Murray Kahn Theater for the festival this year, Nowak thought of using the Church Street School of Music as the performance venue. “I emailed every place I could think of, but then it hit me. My band had played for this teen band program under the Church Street School For Music and Art. The venue was pretty spacious, had a nice atmosphere, and somewhat decent sound,” said Nowak.

On the day of the show, the board ran into problems with seating arrangements and space for both performers and the audience members at the venue. “Regrettably, we didn’t get the basement space of the venue, so performers had to wait outside while they weren’t performing,” said Edghill in an email interview. “I just think we weren’t prepared for the sheer volume of people that ended up coming, on top of the performers.”

Additionally, since there were no run-through days for StuyFest, the performers ran into problems with the lengths of each act. “[Monge] told me we were around 20 minutes over time,” Nowak said. “We looked at what was left and managed to negotiate with some performers who had two songs to cut it down to one.”

Despite these setbacks, board members ultimately felt that the show successfully presented the musical talent and passion of performers. “I really loved StuyFest, as much as I complain about how stressed out I was during it and how exhausted I was after it,” Edghill said. “The joy in people’s eyes, the effort they put in, the happiness they share—all of that was present in the music that I heard that day, and that made it worth everything.”

This positive sentiment toward the show was shared by many performers, who felt comfortable with putting themselves out there at StuyFest. “I remember going [on stage] not really caring whether or not I made a mistake or not because I knew [StuyFest] was such a loving and accepting environment,” said Unique Zhang (‘24). 

Thanks to high ticket sales this year, StuyFest generated profits that the board members plan to donate to the school. “From a resources standpoint, the event was a success simply because we made a bit over $160 in profit,” Edghill said. “We’re still discussing how to push the profits back into the school system […] we hope to be able to make more purchases in the future for the music department—like equipment or school instruments for students to borrow or rent.”

Going into his senior year, Edghill is working towards reinforcing StuyFest as an end-of-the-year tradition, accessible for all Stuyvesant students. “I hope to be able to take the reins of StuyFest, to expand it, and ask to use the theatre space,” he said. “With school winding down towards the end of June, it’s a great way to cap off the school year. The future of StuyFest is going to be amazing, and I hope it continues on.”