Senior Simon Furze is leaving Keene State with a bang after his senior recital on Sunday, April 21, in the Redfern Arts Center Alumni Recital Hall.
Furze composed the entire recital and was joined on stage by students and faculty of the Keene State Music Department. In addition, every performer had their own microphone.
The performance began with a piece called “Hands,” which was written about the cyclical nature of life, according to the program notes. The second piece, titled “Lost After Sorrow,” had themes of grief leading to acceptance. Furze also composed a piece entitled “A Very Short Song,” originally written for composition class with a Dorothy Parker poem as inspiration and later turned into a song.
Furze, a double major in music composition and music tech, said musicians should feel comfortable teaching music.
“A lot of people think that your major defies your path, and that’s not true,” Furze said. “I think that any good musician should be able to write music and be able to teach it in some way.”
“He Yearns for Joy” and “Great Kingdom Fallen” were written and performed together, both of which center on a person looking for happiness and comfort, yet being unable to find it, according to the program notes.
The final three pieces displayed Furze’s ability to write for small ensembles. “May the Sun Shine” was performed by a chorus and written with the inspiration of a Celtic luck prayer. It was intended to be a piece to sing to others when they need good fortune, according to the program notes “Roxie” was performed by a brass quintet and written as an ode to his dog, according to the program. “Stable Instability” was performed by a percussion ensemble and an exercise in pushing his compositional boundaries, as stated by Dr. Heather Gilligan, coordinator for Music Composition and Furze’s advisor.
“I tried to write the opposite of what my compositional voice said,” Furze states in the program notes.
“I got to teach Simon every year, all four years. So I’ve been part of the journey the entire time. It’s exciting to see him have these culminating events at the end of his time here,” Gilligan stated.
Regarding how Furze has improved since his first year at Keene State, Gilligan said, “In terms of his writing, he has really developed. He’s started to uncover his own compositional voice and not be afraid to take chances.“
Former music professor Joy Flemming was in attendance at the recital and said she liked it. She said she was particularly impressed by his range, stating, “The most amazing thing is the breadth of what he was able to do … He really wrote well for everything.”
First-year Lucas Parhiala said he liked the modern sound in the guitar pieces. “It still kind of embraced a lot of the songwriter techniques that you see a lot of modern music, particularly the guitar,” Parhiala said.
Regarding how he has improved since his first year at Keene State, Furze said, “I went from being a troubled high school student, first-generation college student to this … educational pillar that people look up to.”
Dexter Keegan can be contacted at
Dexter.Keegan@keene.edu
