This week my life is full of music!
Yesterday, I had the privilege of hearing two of the Senior Music Major recitals. Christy Hopkins, a voice major, and a Friend of mine, did something really cool. She traced this one piece of music written by Hans Leo Hassler in 1601 all the way up to the present. Bach had a go at the tune and Mendelssohn and even Brahms! But the most interesting one for me was that this tune showed up in Paul Simon's song "American Tune." It was a beautiful recital and an amazing mix of Christy singing and wonderful recordings. I was so glad that I went.
The other recital I went to was Jesse Freedman's. Jesse is a double major in Music and Philosophy with a musical focus on classical guitar. I know him from choir where he has a lovely tenor voice. In his recital, though, he was just playing the guitar. He opened with Allie Faulkner, a voice major, singing along while he played the guitar. They did four Hispanic pieces that Allie blew out of the water and Jesse did amazing at. After that piece Jesse's music stand was taken away and he did the rest of his recital FROM MEMORY! He played a 7 movement "Suite for Lute" by Bach, from memory. He played 3 etudes by Heitor Villa-Lobos, from memory. And several other pieces. It was amazing. It was not just that all of the pieces were from memory, but that they were perfectly executed. Every note appeared to be right, to my untrained ear, but even those who are musically trained were blown away by Jesse's recital. I was so glad I went.
The rest of the week, though, is musically about me.
On Wednesday the 21st around 5:30 the Oom-Pah Band (Quakerhosen AKA Jeff Jeske and the Dave Parade) will be playing for the German Club's Aprilfest down by the lake. We are a group that gets together every year to play some polka, some waltzes and generally have a grand old time while people eat from Bratwursts and Pretzels. It's awesome and a huge amount of fun.
On Friday the 23rd at 6:30 the Jazz Ensemble (Big Band AKA The Drew Hayes Experience (he hasn't signed off on that band name yet...)) will be playing our end of semester concert in the Choir Room. We're playing a couple of great standards as well as some cool non-traditional tunes. We're playing an arrangement of Miles Davis' "All Blues" that Drew wrote and a Count Basie-like that Drew came up with. It's going to be a lot of fun and shouldn't last more than an hour. Come on out!
On Sunday the 25th at 7:30 the Guilford College Choir (dir. Wendy Looker) will be having our end of semester concert in Dana Auditorium. Our practice performance at New Garden Friends Meeting went well and I have high hopes for the concert. It should be good. Ryan Furlough has a solo, which is always spectacular. We're doing a repertoire that is almost solely love songs but from all around the world. It's a lot of fun. I like singing in foreign languages.
That's what my week looks like. Oh yeah, on top of all that i have to write two research papers by Friday and continue to work on my research paper for HIST 300, my research seminar. The glories of college life. I love it.
P.S. The picture here is one of my Senior portraits from high school. I chose it because it's a great picture of me holding my Euphonium. The best brass instrument in the world. :-D
