Artist Profile: The Yard Bops Are in Full Swing

Student bands are a defining feature of many college experiences, bringing live music and energy to campuses — and at Harvard, The Yard Bops has become a centerpiece of that experience. In the past year, the band has performed in a variety of shows, including YardFest, Crimson Jam, and on Nov. 14, The Crimson’s newly launched concert series: Office Hours. Driven by pure passion, The Yard Bops produces a fun and vibrant live music space at Harvard for both their audience and themselves.

The Yard Bops — a title originated as a pun on Harvard’s Yard Operations department, colloquially known as Yard Ops — was initially founded in 2019 by Alexander K. Park ’23, Isabella E. Peña ’23, and Joshua C. Fang ’23 to compete at Yardfest’s Battle of the Bands — the annual competition that Harvard hosts to decide the lineup for Yardfest. The group continued to compete in following years’ Battles of the Bands and play for house formals. After graduating, the existing band has continued to bring in new members, currently composed of eight performers: Matthew Chen ’26, Weston H. Lewin ’26, Raghav Mehrotra ’26, Cam M. Miller ’26, Zeb B. Jewell-Alibhai ’27, Theodore W. Tobel ’27, Kaylor G. Toronto ’27, and Benjamin A. Lyczkowski ’28.

“This is the most active The Yard Bops has been, at least for my time, like senior year for sure,” said band leader and tenor saxophonist Chen in an interview with The Crimson. “Because four of us are seniors, I think we’ve got the mindset of, if there’s an opportunity to play, we should just do it, because once we leave college, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to have time to rehearse, have time to gig out, away from our working lives.”

The band, long a fixture at Yardfest and Crimson Jam, launched a new series in September at Somerville bar The Burren, performing there every third Thursday of the month — a residency that’s quickly expanding their audience well beyond Harvard and into the broader Boston scene.

“Our friends will come, and on top of that, a bunch of Tufts students will also come in,” Chen said.

Performing at The Burren has been a new opportunity for the band to experiment with their setlist, in comparison to their Harvard-affiliated gigs, where they are limited on time and have a shorter set.

“We can experiment a little more, we can bring out new arrangements, we can test music, see how the crowd reacts,” said alto saxophonist Lewin.

Beyond The Burren, the band puts thoughtful deliberation into the curation of the setlists for their other gigs. In general, they try to cater to their intended audiences.

“Like Crimson Jam and Yardfest, people are standing there, likely in a dancing mood. So we’ll play more upbeat stuff,” Chen said.

This attention to the crowd’s energy plays a major role in how the band builds each setlist.

“People love to sing, people love to dance too. And so we’ll try to select songs in our repertoire that people know the words to and also gets them moving on their feet. The feeling is the best part of the music,” Lewin said.

They also reveal more technical deliberation of their setlist, in regards to the holistic performance.

“You can’t have five songs that are all super loud, up tempo, back to back, because people get burnt out,” Lewin said.

On top of these answers, the band reinforced their primary focus on the quality of their music.

“I think we pride ourselves primarily on the quality of music that we can create together, because all of us are, without each other — as individuals — very talented musicians. And when we come together, we can create this amazing product,” Chen said.

Behind the scenes, the band contains another dimension to their talent: The arrangements of the songs, which are freely encouraged for anyone in the band with a vision. For Lewin, The Yard Bops has presented him with the opportunity to write his own arrangements again.

“I did a lot of arrangement in high school, and when I came to college, I joined lots of music groups, but I didn’t have an opportunity in any of them to write my own arrangements, and so The Yard Bops has provided me a platform to do that,” he said.

Since The Yard Bops is prominently a horn-focused group, which simultaneously plays popular songs that often don’t include horn parts, the band is provided with the unique opportunity to reimagine these songs.

“We play this one arrangement of ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa and if I’m being honest, I did not really like that song before we played it: I used to lifeguard at this pool, and they would play the song every single day, and so I got sick of it. But then Zeb wrote this killer arrangement, an awesome horn totally. And now I can’t get the song out of my head,” Lewin said.

Chen and Lewin were radiant with passion when talking about their band members — it’s clear that what drives this group is their shared passion for music and love for each other.

“The way we think about why we play is because we love music, just love music generally. It’s kind of cheesy to say that, but it’s true,” Lewin said.

Enthusiastic to perform, The Yard Bops look forward to their next gigs, including Battle For Yardfest in February and their routine third Thursdays at The Burren, starting again on March 26 after Harvard’s winter break.