Sunday was a night filled with family and friends coming together to celebrate two student musicians and their musical accomplishments. It featured Sebastian Swartout, a music composition major, and Maxamillian Orio, a music education major, for their senior music recitals on November 9 at Alumni Recital Hall in the Redfern Arts Center.
“Preparing for a recital is the ultimate expression of your art as a college student,” said Morgan Bothwell, professor of voice, expanding on the intensity of the process. “You have to prepare program notes, you have to do translations, you have to get the music in your body to be able to convey, whatever [the composer] means.”
Orio had been working for “months and months” to prepare for the performance, said Bothwell. Orio’s performance featured a range of art songs by Johannes Brahms, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Claude Debussy and William Bolcom.
Swartout premiered multiple piano pieces and more involved works, including a three-movement piece for solo piano and a six-movement piece for woodwinds. He worked on these pieces as part of the music composition major requirements, where students work with Heather Gilligan, professor of music.
He closed out the evening’s performances with his six-movement piece for woodwind called “Enchanted Forest.” Swartout describes the piece in his program notes as “five varied trios and one quartet,” adding, “[this is a] work that inspired me to continue writing music.”
Cody Simoneau, a friend of Swartout, said it was his first recital he had attended. He added it was “nice listening to more classical pieces again,” saying he was a musician in his high school band.
“Admittedly, I’m a little biased, since I came here for Sebastian’s pieces,” said Simoneau about his thoughts on the performance. However, there was a particular piece sung by Orio that he enjoyed. “I actually kind of liked “Black Max” [piece by Bolcom] a bit,” added Simoneau.
Korben Robinson, a senior and music major, spoke about his enjoyment of performing in the recital.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Robinson. “It’s always an honor to perform composers’ concerts and play the music of people today and to learn more about the students going into the world of music.” Swartout and Orio were pleased with the performance as well.
“[Orio]’s pieces were all beautifully performed. His range and his musicality he brings to his pieces are always phenomenal,” said Swartout. “For all the pieces I wrote, I was very impressed with the players. For a lot of the pieces, we met maybe once or twice before the performance.”
Orio spoke highly of Swartout’s works; “[Swartout] absolutely tore it up. Rondeau and woodwind pieces just absolutely blew me out of the water when I first heard them and they were even better tonight.”
“For myself, I think all four sets went really well,” said Orio. “I just feel like I put some more dynamics in that I never really have done.”
Timothy Fitzpatrick can be contacted at
tfitzpatrick@kscequinox.com
