A lucky audience of some two-hundred was treated to a smorgasbord of musical talent at the annual Faculty Showcase. There the staff of the department demonstrated why the School of Music is one of the most celebrated in the state!
A few of the individual performances are noted here.
The program opened with flutist Helen Blackburn, accompanied by Mila Abbasova on the piano, playing the profound Achat Sha’alti by Paul Schoenfield. This work is taken from the composer’s Suite of Six Improvisations on Hassidic Melodies, works composed for solo piano. At the request of Carol Winenc, two of the movments were rewritten for piano and flute.
The inspiration for the entire cycle arose from Hassidic gatherings in the 1980’s, with the text of this particular work taken from Psalms 27:4, “One thing I ask….”
Painfully poignant, haunting and melancholic, the work embraces the pathos of Jewry, along with the plea for justice and deliverance, hardly the sort of thing one expects to hear onstage in the Comancheria!
Rositza Goza, violin, and Vesselin Todorov, viola, played C. G. Wolff’s transcription of Franz Schubert’s Der Erlkonig, a lied which sets to music a poem of the same name by Goethe.
In this work the artists become raconteurs, their bows becoming the narrative means to recount the tragic events of that dark and stormy night. In the tale a young boy is carried in his father’s arms as they race on horseback through a forbidding forest. The boy is fearful of the Alder King, sometimes mistakingly referred to as the Elf King, whose threatening presence he keenly feels, although the father doesn’t.
The instruments alternate, the ominous tension building to a dirge-like finale that concludes with two swipes of the bows. This isn’t a happy piece, but is one that is definitely not for amateurs.
To think that we, on the Llano Estacado, were able to hear Rositza and Vesselin magicially bring this folktale to life!
Sarah Beckham-Turner, accompanied by Mila Abbasova, sang Fiodigi’s aria “I am like a rock!” The work is challenging to its extreme range: one story is that Mozart made this aria difficult because he didn’t like the singer. Mayhaps he influenced Beethoven, who allegedly had no love for any singers.
In the opera, which will be performed in late April at WTAMU, Guglielmo and Fernando dress up in costume and try to woo the other’s girfriends as part of a bet. Fiordiligi says nuttin’ doin’, albeit operatically. She asserts that she is a paragon of loyalty and won’t succumb to barbaric blandishments, so get lost!
As stated, the work is extremely challenging: octave jumps abound and then the vocal runs take over. It does make one think that there is something to the Mozartian anecdote.
Sarah Beckham-Turner, Assistant Professor of Voice and director of the opera program, sang this aria believably, with a delicate assertiveness, a woman who believed in herself and is offended by even the suggestion of infidelity.
Such examples of opera anomalously abound here in Cowboy Country, between Amarillo Opera, WTAMU, and the Met Live in HD. And, let’s remember the Opera Cowgirls who return to West Texas on the 28th!
And how about Rachmaninoff’s “Men’s Dance” from the opera Aleko performed by two accomplished artists, Sarah Rushing and Mia Abbasova, on Steinways! Rachmaninoff composed this opera, the first of three, in 1892 in just seventeen days!
The dance begins tentatively, then quickly accelerates to a frenzy before abruptly transitioning to gloomy triads which finally explodes into an arpeggiated frenzy. Then the sequence repeats.
There is no doubt towards the end as fiercely pounded six and seven note patterns answer a strong chordal statement. One can evnsion the stereotypical Russian male dancers in their bear skin hats kicking out from deep knee bends like it was the greatest fun in the world!
Four performances reveiwed out of the fourteen hardly does justice to the tremendous talent demonstrated by the WTAMUSOM faculty. That partially explains the existence of one of Texas premier fine arts schools on the High Plains where the only expected sounds are those of coyotes and cattle.
For this reason, among so many others, we proudly assert:
Keep Amarillo Artsy!
Keep Austin Weird!
Keep Lubbock in the Rear View Mirror!!!
Keep Amarillo Artsy 