SFCM's Moonlight Society has long been one of the student body's favorite events. It's an opportunity for the Conservatory's musicians to showcase original music and collaborations that fall outside of traditional performance opportunities, in a setting curated by, and for those musicians.

"The reason that I got into music in the first place and wanted to pursue this was just playing stuff with my friends," organizer Neil Advant said. "That stuff is something that can get lost very easily when you're just going from practice room to lesson to classroom and keeping your head down, but the Moonlight Society is such a great way to look up and see what everyone's doing. Fostering this sense of community has been very rewarding and empowering for all of us to be a part of."

SFCM's Moonlight Society concert.

Now in its second year of falling under the Professional Development department's curriculum, as part of the Intro to Festivals course, the Society provides a contrast to the other student-run festival that's part of the course, the contemporary-focused Hot Air Festival. Far more free-ranging in its programming, the Moonlight Society's Feb. 29 performance offered, as this year's organizers explained, a consistent way for students to expand and reinforce their community at the school.

Most of this year's organizers—Advant, Audrey Giancaterino, Leora Gilgur, and Stacee Firestone—are veterans of the Society and emphasize the way it builds connections in the student body.

SFCM's Moonlight Society.

The structure now provided to the students by having the Society operate under a class has been helpful, Gilgur said. "We're learning about how to run a festival. We're learning the components. We are learning about fundraising on a grand scale, looking at case studies of different, successful companies and organizations."

Programming the show helped the organizers learn new things about their classmates from the outset. "When we first started the semester, it was 'Just go talk to everyone you know and see who has something that they want to showcase,'" Giancaterino said. "Talking to other people and seeing like, 'I never thought this composition student would have a math rock band.'"

SFCM's Moonlight Society.

The Moonlight Society is a different experience visually—and collaboratively—as Firestone, who handled much of the design, learned. "I created the theme 'Under the moonlight madness' because I wanted it to be like this jungle-rave type of energy," she laughed. "I bought a bunch of vines, hanging flowers, to go from the ceilings." A last-minute venue switch had the organizers pivoting as well: "I had to figure out how I was going to make this humongous space feel smaller, more like a community where people can dance." In the past, Moonlight Society performances were held outdoors, on the 6th-floor terrace of the Ann Getty Center, but weather concerns moved it to the Bowes Center's Barbro Osher Recital Hall.

While previously, the Society had largely been the work of just one student, this year's organizers want to see it continue, emphasizing the values they most loved from it. "I learned how much I value a community like this," Firestone added. "You don't really realize how important something is until you're actually in it and you understand the ins and outs of everything. So I just hope that we can keep Moonlight going as long as we possibly can. Because people need it."

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