Jam Sessions, led by arts teacher Chris Kapica, are small music events new to the 2025-2026 school year. At each session, student musicians play a set, either with their bands or by themselves. There have been six Jam Sessions so far, and Kapica said he hopes there will be plenty more so people can come together as a community.
“I wanted to have an opportunity for Archer artists to meet each other,” Kapica said, “to share music that they’re passionate about, try things, take stuff out of their solitary practice and bring it with them to collaboration with other people.”
Senior Caroline Collis, pianist of the band Sanz Guitar, said she usually shows up to Jam Sessions to play and watch other performers. Collis said she feels nervous performing, but after participating in Jam Sessions, she feels more confident to perform. Jam Sessions have also helped her gain more experience with performing.
“Jam sessions give me more confidence performing and being seen by others,” Collis said. “I get a little nervous when performing, so Jam Sessions just really take out the stress around it.”
Serenity Jones (’26), a musician who is a part of the orchestra and plays bass, created the Sanz Guitar band with her group of friends because of her Rock Band elective. She performed with them at Jam Sessions a couple of months back. Jones said the support of audience members, including teachers, led her to continue performing at Jam Session.
“The first time I played in a Jam Sesh was in the very beginning of the year and I wasn’t necessarily nervous because I’ve performed in front of people before because of the orchestra, but it was more just like performing with my friends in front of a bunch of teachers,” Jones said. “Kapica was there and just saying ‘It’s okay if we mess up, this is not for a grade or anything like that.'”
Kapica and his colleagues in the language department had the idea of including songs in different languages in Jam Sessions. He knows students take world language classes, so he would like to incorporate French, Spanish or Mandarin songs into Jam Sessions.
“Maybe we do an all Spanish language Jam Session or an all French jam session, all Chinese Jam Session,” Kapica said, “which I think would be really cool for students to apply what they’re learning in that space to a new arena.”
Kapica wants to make Jam Sessions more inclusive and a space where students are comfortable sharing a song they have been working on or a song they just really want to perform.
“Hopefully, this is an opportunity for people to not only show others their multifaceted nature, but also these other sides of themselves, and also get a chance to maybe pursue a new side of themselves that they maybe didn’t even realize that they wanted to,” Kapica said. “If they see a student get up and absolutely wails on the drums and they’re really floored by that experience, maybe they say, ‘Wow, maybe I’ll give that a shot.’ And maybe not at this Jam Session, but maybe the next one, I’ll just get emboldened to get up there and try something new.”
