The University School of Music and Dance’s first annual Emerging Artist Series@@Emerging Artist Series@@ will host its first free winter concert tonight at 8 p.m. in Beall Hall. The series serves as a showcase of top student performers from the school, featuring a diverse array of undergraduate and graduate students. The concert will feature one performance each of voice, dance, percussion, piano and flute as well as a saxophone quartet and a brass quintet.
In the past, the school had held a recital series for performance students.
“It was kind of drying up. It was primarily for students to watch and listen to,” said trumpet associate professor Brian McWhorter, who coordinated the new Emerging Artist Series. “We decided to rebrand this series and make it very selective.”
Finals at the school consist of juries of professors judging live student performers. From the fall term juries came the winning nominations for the series. McWhorter gathered the nominations from performance faculty at the school and put together the series.
“This is going to be more than likely how we’ll go on to honor the performers at the School of Music and Dance,” he said.
The performers in the winter and upcoming spring concerts were chosen because of their talent and current level of proficiency in their chosen performance pieces.
“What they’re working on is hitting a high note that deserves to be recognized,” McWhorter said. “Generally in performance we look for virtuosity, fabulous stage presence; we look for rigorous interpretation of the pieces and general creativity.”
Not only is performing in the series a distinguishing honor, it is also an important step down the path to a musician or dancer’s future.
“(The series is) the sort of thing that a university that wants a good program needs to cultivate,” said Harry Baechtel,@@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/Harry%2ABaechtel@@ a musical arts doctoral student who will perform the voice piece in the winter concert. “The University of Oregon has traditionally weighed a little bit more toward being a research school in terms of music. And I think these sorts of things are very important to build a viable performing tradition.”
McWhorter noted that the position of the School of Music and Dance’s building, nestled off from the main University campus, has led in the past to some isolation.
“Sometimes our great performers don’t get shown around to the broader campus community,” he said.
He hopes the Emerging Artist Series will attract more attention and be an opportunity for performers to get their names out into the community.
“It’s good to get that kind of exposure and put it on your resume,” Baechtel said. “It can light a fire under people who want to get that honor.”
A baritone voice student, Baechtel will perform four selections from Gabriel Faure’s “La Bonne Chanson,”@@http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/piece-detail.cfm?id=574@@ a song cycle of melodies for voice and piano based on the poems by French surrealist Paul Verlaine.@@http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/paul-verlaine@@ Both Verlaine and Faure wrote while in love.
“They’re very ecstatic love poems,” he said. “What’s interesting about them is in most cases like this, you have four or so positive, adoring love poems and at least two or three that are sadder or have that note of melancholy or longing. This cycle is — they’re all super affirmative. There’s not really one with negative aspects or doubt.”
Aside from the tone and excitement of the vocal piece, he said he chose the songs because they are complicated.
“They have really very unusual harmonic movements,” he said. “It’s brilliant music.”
Melanie Meenan,@@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/Melanie%2AMeenan@@ a second-year dance MFA candidate, was selected in the series as a choreographer for her original dance piece “Nexus Points,” which will be performed by an ensemble of five dancers.
As the only representative from the dance department in the series, Meenan said she wanted to show more of the dance community.
“I decided I would like to show group work,” she said. “It’s nice to see more than one dancer.” The intimate space of Beall Hall will have a much different feel for the dancers, but Meenan says they’re excited for the new performance.
“Nexus Points” was performed at the Hult Center Friday, Jan. 27, as part of “Dance for a Reason.” The title of the dance piece stems from the meaning of “nexus”: a connected group or series. When she started creating the piece in the spring, sections of it were disjointed, but practice and work linked the sections of the dance together.
The title also reflects the team building and clear communication needed in dance.
“The group of dancers has to be very aware of each other in space and time,” Meenan said.
@@all names, pieces checked@@In addition to Baechtel and Meenan, percussionist Matt Keown will perform Pius Cheung’s “Etude in E Minor” on marimba; flutist Esther Fredrickson and pianist Evan C. Paul will perform “Jeux” by Jacques Ibert; the Haller Saxophone Quartet of Katherine Haller, Alyssa Tamayo, Soren Hamm and Sean Fredenburg will perform “Eugene Andante et Scherzo” by Eugene Bozza; and the UO Scholarship Brass Quintet@@official title     http://music.uoregon.edu/ears/120203.html@@ of Casey Riley, Tony Tunzat, Kelsi McGlothin, John Church, and Joe Ready will perform the first and second movements of Vagn Holmboe’s “Quintet for Brass No. 1.”
“It looks like a very nice variety and a great atmosphere to see a show in,” Meenan said of the concert.
“The main thing that audiences can expect is … to see an incredible diverse array of expressive modalities that the School of Music and Dance is cultivating right now,” McWhorter said. “The variety is probably something that would be difficult to catch in any single concert in Eugene.”