The Exeter Bulletin, Fall 2021

The Exeter Bulletin

Finding joy

The Exeter Bulletin

Academics afield

The Exeter Bulletin

Post from the past

The Exeter Bulletin

A shared experience

The Exeter Bulletin

My radical school

The sky's the limit

This fall brought Ursa Major’s Big Dipper to the night sky surrounding the Grainger Observatory — along with the first public invitation to the facility since the dawn of the pandemic. The Academy’s Astronomy Club invited the community for International Observe the Moon Night (part of NASA’s annual Global Moon Party) and offer citizen scientists a personal glimpse of the celestial body through a telescope. 

Beyond this event, club Adviser and Director of the Grainger Observatory John Blackwell has charted a year of activities for the club’s 100-plus members. “The group will take on astrophotography and telescope mirror grinding and polishing,” he says. “And hopefully welcome visiting speakers.”

Keyed in: David Goodall '24

In front of a small, socially distanced audience, David Goodall ’24 takes a seat on the piano bench poised center stage in the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center.

For more than four minutes, his fingers dance along the black-and-white keys and the notes of “Malagueña” from Ernesto Lecuona’s Andalucía fill the room. In a final, commanding crescendo, Goodall completes his first solo program as an Exonian.

Goodall was one of 11 musicians who performed in the May soloist concert, which celebrated the work students and teachers accomplished together over winter and spring terms. The evening was especially exciting because Goodall played his piece on a handcrafted Bösdendorfer piano, recently gifted to the Academy by Caroline Levine in memory of Tommy Gallant, an Exeter music instructor from 1967 to 1998.

Chair of the Music Department Kristofer Johnson calls the piano, now part of Exeter’s permanent collection, “remarkable.” The students agree. “Before coming to Exeter I had no idea pianos were capable of producing such intimate experiences,” says Goodall, who has been studying piano since age 5. “Playing the Bösdendorfer was unlike any piano I had previously played. It was capable of bringing forth stunning emotion that filled the entire Bowld with beautiful tones. I felt that I could play better than I ever had.”