Mt. A Music Department presents student recitals

Student recitals celebrate a year of performance success

The student music recitals: it is my favourite part of the year, filled with celebration for the hard work of other music students. I remember last year when the student recitals were the first performances to be back in-person for the music department and how happy we were to experience live music again. The department rallies around student recitals, happy to cheer on our peers as they showcase their beautiful music.

 

This year, there are three credited hour-long solo recitals and five credited half-hour shared recitals. The recitals are options for third and fourth-year music students, particularly for those looking to pursue a career in performance. “I’m pursuing a Master of Music degree in Performance in the fall, and I’d like to get as much performance experience in as I can!” said fourth-year piano student Caitlin Strong. “I want to go into performance and have more performance experience, and I wanted to continue after my recital last year,” added fourth-year voice student Mélanie Dupuis. 

 

Kristopher Williams, Amanda Godin, Mélanie Dupuis, Gabriel Theriault, Noah Batten, Caitlin Strong, Isaac Stepaniak, and Emma Cameron are presenting recitals this year. Additionally, there are three uncredited recitals, with either students in lower years or a more unconventional structure. Christina Acton, Jackson Higgins, and Charles Gagné will be in recital, while Annika Williams will give a lecture recital. 

 

Third-year voice student Annika Williams chose an uncredited recital because it gives her “the freedom to combine academic and performance.” Additionally, Williams, Acton, Higgins, and Gagné chose to combine their recitals into a recital series “so that people aren’t turned off from doing uncredited recitals,” said fourth-year voice student Christina Acton. 

 

These recitals truly are a labour of love, and prep starts extremely early. “I started prepping for my recital in August [when] I started getting my rep under my fingers,” said Strong. “Before my recital was done last year in April, I started picking my pieces for this year,” said fourth-year piano student Emma Cameron. 

 

The first step for these students is choosing a set of repertoire. “I chose my recital rep in May based on composers I liked and really wanted to play. Being able to practice different styles from various time periods at one time is really important and usually required for rep choice, as is ensuring you’re not playing dead white men and dead white men only,” said Strong. “It was mostly looking at guidelines for grad school auditions, but I tried to pick repertoire that I was interested in and made sure to include at least one woman with Libby Larsen,” said Dupuis.  

 

Recital season kicked off on March 20 with fourth-year flute student Kristopher Williams. It continued March 27 with performances from Dupuis and Godin. “It felt good, kind of sad to see a whole year of work put into 30 minutes and gone now, but overall a really good experience,” said third-year voice student Amanda Godin. 

 

Recitals will continue through the next few weeks: April 3, April 9, April 10, April 11, and April 13. The remaining credited recitals are available to attend in-person as well as on live stream via the Mount Allison Music YouTube page, while the uncredited recitals will be available in-person.

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