Gabe is a Wooster sophomore who has many passions and hobbies, including reading and solving jigsaw puzzles. However, his greatest passion of all is playing and writing music; a skill he put to work when he composed the music for our Fall play, Little Women. His mentor and teacher inspired this love of music, Wooster’s very own Mr. Johnston. When Gabe came to Wooster in fifth grade, Mr. Johnston almost immediately took him under his wing in musical studies.
“Anything I have to say about Gabe Simard and his journey in music is likely to be perceived as hyperbole,” Mr. Johnston said. “Be that as it may, I maintain that he possesses a singularly transcendent talent, with a work ethic that supercharges it.”
He explained that throughout music history, the common trait among great musicians is that they all had one-on-one mentorship with a teacher.
“If I’ve provided even a shadow of that for Gabe, I assure you, it’s my honor,” Mr. Johnston said.
He recalled how Gabe had always looked for the next great thing in music-making. and how “[Gabe has] come to the idea, all on his own, that composition – the actual creation of music – is perhaps the ultimate pursuit of meaning in [the] field,” Mr. Johnston said.
He described Gabe’s work as “both effortless and meticulous, spontaneous, and well planned.”
He feels that his role as Gabe’s mentor has “been akin to that of ‘spirit guide’, providing structure, context, and sometimes shiny, sometimes murky surface to reflect his ideas off of.”
He made sure to note that none of this happens in a vacuum. Gabe is majorly supported by his “supremely gifted and nurturing mother” and his “talented and serene sister,” but significantly by this school.
“Wooster makes all of this not only possible, but encourages it in every way imaginable!” Mr. Johnston said.
The directors of Little Women approached Gabe and asked him to create music that would accompany the play through scene transitions and underscoring.
“They gave me around 23 scene transitions to write, guiding me through the direction that they wanted the music to go,” Gabe said. “At first, I thought it was a long shot that I would complete all the music for the show [with] one and a half months' notice, but I was able to prevail through diligent and focused work.”
To begin, he created a Google Sheet with the directors so he could better understand the lengths of the scene transitions, the context of the scenes, and what type of sound the directors wanted.
“I wrote all of the music for a string quartet (two violins, viola, cello) and piano,” Gabe said. “I started with writing the scene transitions that already had music assigned to them - I just had to arrange them for string quartet and piano. After finishing that, it was time to write original music.”
For inspiration, Gabe listened to Civil War-era American music, the music that the fictional March family of Little Women would have listened to. This research helped him create the appropriate sound before the show, especially because he wasn’t very familiar with it when he took on the project.
“When I started working on the show, I watched a fairly recent movie adaptation, including Emma Watson and Meryl Streep, for inspiration,” Gabe said.
Finally, with all of his hard work complete, his music hit the big stage! He believed his music helped bring the show together. The audience reaction was overwhelmingly positive, which he explained opened up new compositional opportunities for him in the future.
But like every artist, he had notes.
“One thing that I wish I could have done if I had more time was to record all of the music in the studio,” he said. “Since I didn't have enough time to record everything, most of the music…was played back by the computer. This sometimes creates a robotic sound…I would have preferred to record all of the music in our studio here at Wooster.”
Even with the music of Little Women under his belt, Gabe isn’t sure of his future in music because anything could change his course. As of now, he would like to “pursue a composition career, writing music for movies, video games, commercials, and playing and teaching violin on the side.”
Like most of Wooster’s students over the past one hundred years, Gabe has big dreams! No matter what happens, the Blackbox Community will be rooting for him!
Hannah '26
Advanced Journalism Student
