Opera, hair and tolerance were among the subjects professional singer and independent school administrator Derrick Gay covered in early January when he spent two days at Foxcroft School in Middleburg, courtesy of the Helen Cudahy Niblack '42 Arts Lecture Series. The visit, which included a "master class" with Foxcroft's voice students, visits to several English and History classes, and a two-hour workshop on diversity, culminated in a splendid concert that featured Foxcroft voice teacher Susan Merriman, several students and Gay.

A graduate of the Oberlin Music Conservatory and College, Gay demonstrated great versatility by singing arias, art songs, Broadway show tunes and spirituals. The baritone sang selections from Mozart and Handel operas and "art songs" by Schubert, Faure and Tosti, before performing a beautiful duet from Phantom of the Opera with Merriman. Merriman, a brilliant soprano, also thrilled the audience with several pieces by Kurt Weill.

Four Foxcroft students, who were all among the students in Gay's master class the previous day, also performed, quite impressively. Sophomore Luisa Brown of Wellington, FL, junior Michelle Lee of Seoul and Jamie Kai of Taipei sang classical pieces impeccably. Jessa Hurst of Bluemont, VA, wowed the audience with "Home" from Beauty and the Beast.

Earlier Saturday, students and faculty had gathered in the School's Currier Library to take advantage of another of Gay's many talents: his ability to address and engage his audience on matters of diversity, tolerance and related social, economic and political issues. The two-hour workshop, entitled "Tolerance and Hair," presented some stunning statistics demonstrating persisting inequities among men and women and different races. Gay then used the teen-friendly subject of hair types, styles and fashions to illustrate how often we make assumptions about others based on things we see.

"Hair helps us determine age, socioeconomics, intelligence, marital status and sometimes religious affiliation," he noted. "It can signify conformity (think about men in the military) or it can signify rebellion -- Joan of Arc, punksters . . ." Clips from the new documentary film Good Hair by actor/comedian Chris Rock and exercises in which everyone contemplated her own hair and that of others engaged the girls and sent them away with an increased awareness of the need for understanding and accepting each others' differences.

Gay recently sang the role of Balthasar in English and Melchior in Spanish in Chelsea Opera's production of Amahl and The Night's Visitors. He currently serves as the Director of Community Life and Diversity at the Nightingale Bamford School, a girls school in New York City.

The Helen Cudahy Niblack '42 Arts Lecture Series established by Austi Brown '73 in 2007 to honor her mother, brings a variety of literary, performing and fine artists to Foxcroft to share their work and the nature of the creative process.