Students and Faculty Continue 25 Years of Koch Friday Night Concert

When he was 15 years old, former Art Teacher David Dickinson planned to become a professional musician. Instead, he and his wife, former French Teacher Claudia Lyons, ended up founding the Koch Friday Concert at the beginning of an almost four-decades-long career at the Academy. 

Inspired by talk shows like David Letterman’s, Mr. Dickinson and Ms. Lyons brought in Josh Binswanger ’80, who worked in comedy at the time, to MC the event. Originally a once-a-year event in 2007, by 2008, the concert expanded into a twice-yearly tradition. Now, it’s held every term. 

After introducing the concert in 2004 and taking a brief sabbatical, Ms. Lyons and Mr. Dickinson came back to resume KFC in 2007. “I had no clue there would be such a groundswell of interest from students,” Mr. Dickinson said, adding, “I guess it got out there that everyone is supportive, and you don't have to be professional … everyone was applauding [the] people who just gave it a try.”

As Spanish Teacher and KFC organizer Cheri Karbon described, the couple truly dedicated themselves to the Deerfield community. “They married but never had kids, deciding the students of Deerfield would be their kids,” she said. In addition to founding KFC, Ms. Lyons and Mr. Dickinson began the DeNunzio Disco. 

Mr. Dickinson remembered that students would come into his apartment in Mather to practice their performances for him before the concert. At the time, KFC would start at 7:30 P.M. and often last until nearly midnight, and the class deans would extend curfew hours. 

When the concert first started, the majority of performers were part of the Academy’s music program. “We would get singers and musicians … [but] little by little—this is the best thing about it—it started opening up. And little by little, the novices started showing up,” Mr. Dickinson said. In 2010, he and Ms. Lyons chose a small group of the top KFC performers to perform at a New York City dinner for Deerfield trustees and donors.

Today, KFC enters its 25th year. Ms. Karbon, who came to the Academy in 1999, said the concert has stayed quite true to the original vision of Ms. Lyons and Mr. Dickinson. She and student co-hosts Will Wichern ’27 and Reagan Warren ’27 have experienced firsthand the challenge the event demands; Warren joked that each concert takes “five tons of manpower and three hours of coordination each week.” 

The organization of this year's concerts began last spring, as Ms. Karbon and the student hosts slotted the three concerts for 2025-2026 into the calendar. Yet despite the countless hours of planning poured into the event, the concert is always a little bit different. The team has learned to predict last-minute act changes, tech malfunctions, and other unpredictable disasters. “There’s just so much that can go wrong—and so much that will,” Warren admitted. 

However, the organizers, and especially the student MCs up on stage have learned to handle all sorts of issues—Ms. Karbon described the process as “knowing something's going to not go as planned, counting on that. And then we have such a kind audience.” 

Now, the spirit behind the concert never fades, she said, and for her, this is one of the most special aspects. “Even if a group gets up and doesn't do very well, the community is still going to support them,” she said. As Mr. Dickinson put it, KFC “never would have happened without students being willing to get up there and try, and that's what it was all about.”