Recital Videos

Here are the videos from my Senior Recital on May 24th, 2013. All of the performance videos were filmed and edited by Josh Hilton. The promotional video was filmed and edited by myself. I hope you enjoy and can take something positive away from the experience, because I definitely did.

Promo - 

Lonely City Suite -

Concerto for Marimba - 

Wicca - 

Monte Nido - 

Mental Separation - 

White Knuckle Stroll - 

I would like to offer a huge thank you to Professor Doug Wolf, George Brown, and Dr. Mike Sammons for all of the support, input, and direction.

Completion

Now almost two days after the date, I am still recovering from exhaustion. Glad to be done with my recital but can't wait for the next opportunity to perform which, of course, is right around the bend. Can honestly say as terrified as I was to play a solo performance, it felt soooooo good at the same time. I can  feel the addiction welling up inside of me. Kind of like getting a good tattoo, once you get your first out of the way you instantly want more (or at least I did).

A few days before the performance I found myself burning out on the repertoire and couldn't push myself to practice anymore, so instead I went up to the music building late at night and shot some video. I put this little ditty together just for fun, tis not perfect in anyway but its mine nonetheless.

You can see the video here: (Senior Recital Promo Video)


Thank you to all for your support, guidance, and yes even and more especially to those who said it wasn't possible or that I couldn't do it, for the motivation to meet my goals and continue to create music.

Trimming the Fat

I have come to realize, at 4 a.m. of course, that to pull off the recital that I want to within the time frame and budget that I can afford changes will need to be made. First order of business was deciding whether or not to push hard through the stress and do the recital I originally planned and have it in Libby Gardner Concert Hall. There are so many hoops to jump through, logistically, to make this happen. I would have to write an exception to policy again just to get approved to use the space much less having to write a second exception to policy to not have to pay more than necessary for something that should be made accessibly free to all students. Regardless, the solution to this is one of two options. One, book my recital in the choral rehearsal room which is informal, inappropriate, and just does not serve the space necessary for a percussion recital. Two, book the recital in Dumke Recital Hall on the fourth floor which in turn will create a bit more headache logistically because all of the equipment needs to be taken upstairs and in some cases, with the marimba, need to be taken apart and reassembled completely.

Both of these options will allow me to schedule my recital at an appropriate time and price point. Now the issue becomes how to fit all of the equipment into either of these spaces. Because the choral rehearsal room is just that, a rehearsal room, it is inappropriate for what should be the best performance of my college career. I will book my time in the Dumke Recital Hall. 

To cut down on the space issue I will be cutting two pieces, one of which requires the largest of my setup, Timpani. I will cut Challenge #2 by Delacluse as well as Prelude/Hotdog by Benny Greb. This cut will trim roughly 10-12 minutes out of the entire performance time. 

Here is the tentative program order:

Lonely City Suite - Baker

Marimba Concerto Movement III - Koppel

Wicca - Cangelosi

Monte Nido - Lee

Mental Separation - Barnum

White Knuckle Stroll - Cangelosi

I have all of the Koppel imaged (minus the cadenza). It is now time to begin imaging the cadenza as well as the remainder of Monte Nido on vibraphone. Not having to keep up with two additional pieces I will have the time focus my energy on imaging the remaining pieces and setting up a proper rehearsal routine. 

Yet another late night

The best way to combat the cold is to stay inside. I opted to stay inside, well at least for part of the night, and practice. I was able to play through my entire audition tonight. Even though it happened at a slow speed, I feel good about the end result.

The Koppel Concerto is now fully imaged I just need to work out the transitions and get a good solid tempo. I will not be at full tempo for the audition but my aim is to be comfortable as to play. I read through both of my Timpani excerpts, Brahms' Symphony no. 4 and Stravinksy's The Rite of Spring as well as the Delacluse etude. I also played through my snare drum excerpts and etude and my xylophone excerpts.

My plan for the next few practice sessions is to completely work through every single excerpt and etude, building up to the audition day. Basically, I will treat each practice session as the audition. The only piece left to brush up is the Cangelosi - White Knuckle Stroll. As I have traditionally performed this piece on a 4.3 octave marimba the next few days will test my accuracy as I put this onto our 5 octave marimba. The best way to do this is to lay a towel down below the A2 so that it creates a visual barrier for my peripheral as I am screaming down the scales.

Dare to Dance the Tides

Today began yet another process along the path. Back into the saddle of practicing. This time, not only for my recital but for graduate school auditions.

Tonight was a bit of a late night session, beginning at 11pm.  But I've found that my best work happens in these late night practice sessions. A throw back to the days, nights rather, recording/sleeping in the studio while Greg Downs mixed. Along with practice sessions throughout the day I will be getting most of my work done 10pm or later between now and my recital.

The recital had to be rescheduled from my original date last semester simply because there just was not enough time to practice as much as I needed to and pass two music history courses at the same time. No one in their right mind would do this normally, much less in the middle of a recital preparation. As was the same course of action during Fall semester I will have to wait to schedule my recital. I am aiming for end of March or early April.

During my preparation for grad school auditions I have accomplished a lot of a headway in these pieces for my recital: Lonely City Suite, White Knuckle Stroll, and Concerto for Marimba movement III. All I have left on the Concerto is to finish learning the cadenza section. I'm sure I'll eat my words, as I have on the rest of the concerto, but the cadenza shouldn't take too much time to learn because the bulk of it is made up of embellished themes from earlier in the piece.

Work to be done; put the concerto with my accompanist, finish imaging Monte Nido, put Challenge together with my accompanist, brush up Wicca, and put the finishing touches on Mental Separation. This list makes it seem like so little to do but in fact this is a mountain of work to accomplish in just 8 weeks of time along with a few more auditions and my regular school work/rehearsal time.

As soon as I have a recital date I will post it here along with a proper poster to pass around.

Magic

It's amazing how just a little bit of work (really a shit ton of work) can pay off. Had a break through tonight in the practice room. All of a sudden working through page five and six of the Koppel Concerto  I was able to get through to page 9 in a matter of no time. It's a beautiful thing when the hard work begins to pay off.

Still lots to do for the rest of the recital but the Concerto is going quite well at this point in time.

Date and Time

No, I don't yet have a date or a time for my recital. I've been patiently waiting until the proper scheduling date as determined by the School of Music. But as of today, I just realized that I may have overlooked a major step in the process. Email has been sent to see if I can salvage this ordeal. Depending on the reply,  I might have to wait longer than I ever wanted to to perform my recital.

The work on the Concerto has been going well the last few days/weeks. Although I haven't updated recently I've been hard at work on all the pieces of my recital. On top of everything else, found out last week that our Concerto competition that I've been working toward is now going to be a month earlier than previous years. That really just means it's time to dig in and forget about the rest of the world for a bit.

The positive to this whole situation is that I've never felt so good about being so busy. Although I'm superbly overwhelmed with things to do everyday. It seems do-able as long as I keep moving. In the past I've always felt that if I just kept moving that I would end up on the other side of a mountain that I didn't intend to go over and have to back track or start over. As of now this train is steadily gaining momentum, just constantly at the helm changing tracks to keep me where I'm headed.

Posters are well on their way, the lovely Miranda Whitlock-Downs was gracious enough to help me with photos and Greg Downs is working on the design/layout of the posters. Although he can't properly finish the posters until I have a date/time for recital.

Band members have been found, charts have been printed, stickings are changing, accompanists have been confirmed, every day is leaning toward the completion of this process. The hardest part is the collection of the details and and the administrative duties, where's a manager when you need one.

Until next time,
Mahola P. Willikers