The end of March is an exciting time for music majors at Mt. A; it is a time where all their hard work can come together for a good old fashioned show.. From March 24 to April 14, the music department and its students will be busy putting on a number of recitals for students, families, and the public to watch free of charge. These recitals range in everything from classical, to Baroque, to contemporary jazz, and various other amazing genres and fusions. The students have been working hard to get the show on the road, and it is finally ready for everyone to see!
A shared experience among many third and fourth-year students, these recitals are a chance to showcase everything their studies have allowed them to hone over the past several years of university. For Emma Yee, a fourth-year voice major, planning for this recital began early on. “Before this school year even started, actually, was when I started choosing my repertoire and deciding that that was the route I wanted to go with,” she explained, detailing the application process and the work it had taken to get there. After applying, students were to present some of their desired pieces before a recital jury as part of an audition process. For Michaela Cabot, a third-year voice student, this recital has been a long time coming. “It makes you feel very vulnerable because it is just you on stage. But it is also very liberating for me, considering I have been working so hard to get here and it’s finally happening. It feels so real,” they added.
The themes and overall genres of individual recitals are up to the performer and what has been discussed with their mentors. This lends each recital a completely unique and fresh feeling, as none will be quite the same as any others, and all will have a deeply personal, and deeply emotive meaning and delivery. Michaela Cabot and Clare Lowe are planning to use their performances in a very unique way. “Me and Clare have both chosen a bunch of very intense, very dramatic but also very narratively driven pieces,” Michaela says. For Michaela and Clare, nothing is more important than what the pieces are able to evoke. “There is no explicit theme throughout. But every piece that we have tells a very distinct story, and we are just hoping that we can put together something that can be enjoyed by everyone”. Yee has planned her recital around many inspirations, stating that she looked to quite a few women composers and women poets. “I have some stuff that is Sappho, I have some settings of Emily Dickinson. So I guess there are kind of a couple of different threads that go throughout the recital. There is a bit of spirituality within it. But there is not one overarching theme.”
These performances are, above all, a showcase for the blood, sweat, and tears shed by music students over the course of their studies. Each of these students have been immensely skilled from the moment they set foot on campus, and they have only grown since, not only as performers but as people. “It is kind of …a celebration of the four years of my degree and the growth that I have had as an artist,” Yee explains. For Cabot, this is a moment well worth revelling in, and it is as surprising as it is deserved. “I went into the Conservatory and I saw the poster that I had made for me and Clare, displayed on the little television screen above our little corkboard,” she says. “It hit me all at once, like ‘Oh my God, this is happening!’”To spend so many years working up to something, it would only make sense for this to be an incredibly rewarding, but also incredibly nerve-wracking experience. It is truly a moment in time worth cherishing.
All recitals will be held in the Brunton Auditorium in the Marjorie Young Bell Conservatory of Music. The times vary for each performance, with recital dates falling on these dates: March 24, March 30, April 6, April 7, and April 14. There are no tickets required to attend, and some performances will have receptions afterward as well, where the audience will be able to meet with and speak to the performers. More details can be found at: mta.ca/current-students/department-music/calendar-events-music. Each recital will be entirely unique, and for every performance, the audience is sure to walk out with a full heart, and a thoughtful mind.
