The SOU Music Recital Hall, photo credit to Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University
The Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University is a big destination for music talent, whether it’s coming in to perform in chamber music concerts and the Tutunov piano series, or in the form of students looking for the right place to nurture their gifts. Due to the Oregon Center for the Arts’s reputation, there’s no shortage of new students looking to nurture and grow their music talents. On May 8th, the Oregon Center for the Arts put on a Junior Recital, in the Music Building’s Recital Hall, where some of the best student artists the University has to offer performed live.
The Recital went on for a little under a half an hour. All performances were nonvocal, and leaned on instruments like the marimba, which channel the whole body in a noticeably physical way and make it seem like sound is pouring in from everywhere in the room, or the drums. All performers demonstrated clear mastery of their craft.
Going to watch these recitals, from undergraduate students just like me, was fascinating and sobering because you could see how much work each artist put into it. Every movement had been memorized and practiced, and the performers were so in tune with their they understood everything they could do. No stone was left unturned preparing these impressive performances. Even everything on stage was carefully choreographed, with super heavy and cumbersome instruments like the marimba set up exactly where the artists wanted them to be.
Even though all pieces were nonvocal and therefore didn’t have any lyrics, they all communicated a clear mood anyone in the audience could pick up on and appreciate. You could feel the camaraderie coming off of To Build a Bond So Strong, performed by Nolan Pierson and Olivia Johnson. A Series of Accidents, performed by Clara Kidd, Shannon Jackson, and Jared Roundtree, was bouncy and deceptively haphazard. Virginia Tate, performed by Nolan Pierson, felt happy and peaceful, but not homeostatic. Meanwhile, something about The Traveling Carnival II: The Sad Clown was miserable and stop-starty, like the sad clown being forced to smile. That was performed by an ensemble in colorful whigs, including Nolan Pierson, Shannon Jackson, Jared Roundtree, Shakia Teague-Perry, Kyllian LeCours, Kyle Smith, Clara Kidd, Olivia Johnson, and Professor of Percussion Terry Longshore.
The music program at Southern Oregon University is in good hands. While this very brief summary can’t capture it, there was, like always, energy in the room that made me want to learn more about what I was hearing and everything behind it.
