Courtesy of Saratoga Foothill Club
The Saratoga Foothill Club’s elegant environment creates a peaceful and gracious place to connect the community.On Sept. 28, Saratoga Foothill Club Historic Landmark Foundation (SFCHLF) hosted their annual donor appreciation event, presenting fresh appetizers and wine set to music by a string quartet composed of sophomores Grace Ji and Isaac Ho and juniors Maahi Agarwal and Sarah Jiang, who played Bach Chorales and a variety of contemporary repertoire.
“I loved playing in a quartet with my friends, and it was really heart warming to see how much the people liked our playing,” Jiang said.
This event featured around 40 Saratoga Foothill Club donors who were there to socialize and develop new relationships. Donors walked around and talked to many others while snacking and enjoying the quartet, organized by band director Jason Shuian.
“[Performing at the Foothill Club] was a really cool opportunity, because it was a real life gig where we got to play our own set,” Shiuan said.
The Foothill Club presented a strong connection between the local community and the donor community.
“The feedback has been very positive. The attendees enjoy the food, music, friendship, viewing the various projects that have been funded and enjoy being invited to attend,” SFCHLF director Anne Hirokawa said.
The organization began to invite students to play live music at their events three years back when a leading pianist for earlier events moved to the East Coast. SFCHLF keeps close ties throughout the music department; the choir also sings at their annual December Tea event.
Shiuan mentioned their partnership with them from gigs bonded mainly after the pandemic, where he would gather the jazz band, which still gets invited for events, and chamber groups with past performers including award-winning senior cellist Nolan Woo, and graduated bassist Ian Kim, who now attends school at Stanford University.
Shiuan also noted that due to the medium yet echoey nature of the stage set within the building, he usually tends to gather smaller groupings of performers to organized events rather than large ensembles. The idea is to be pleasant background music without overwhelming the space.
SFCHLF was first established in 2003 as a non-profit, allowing people to donate to preserve the Foothill Club, built in 1914, and the surrounding land to maintain historical accuracy.
The building and landscape of the Club itself was designed by Julia Morgan — a San Francisco-born architect known for designing Hearst Castle over a century ago.
The Foothill Club housed the first women’s club of Saratoga, in which women would discuss and research current events and social projects that needed support. It has been essential to the creation of long-lasting institutions like the Saratoga Library.
The allocation of donors’ funds to projects is determined by a majority of both the Foothill Club’s Board of Directors and the SFCHLF Board of Directors at a joint meeting held every March. The annual donor appreciation event takes place around the same time SFCHLF sends letters of appreciation out to community members who contribute to supporting the maintenance of the historical landmark.
“My hope is that by creating an event to thank our donors and give them an opportunity to be present in the Foothill Club to view firsthand how their donations are being utilized, they will know how much we appreciate them and that all donations are so important,” Hirokawa said.
