The Emporia State music program held the 16th annual Honors Recital on Feb. 8. Each year, the recital showcases a number of instrumentalists, vocalists, and/or composers who are selected from an audition process to perform a solo piece or present an original composition.
This year, eight musicians were selected out of the eleven who auditioned on Feb. 2: Elizabeth Schaefer, David Medrano, Zach Younie, Xinyi Lin, Josh Woolverton, Beau Throckmorton, Jade Potter, and Adrie Powell.
“For the audition, we brought in three judges from outside [Emporia State],” said Dr. Scott Wichael, new director of the Honors Recital and associate professor of music. “They listened to our eleven contestants, then wrote down some notes so they could give feedback, and then they had a deliberation.”
The judges, hailing from Kansas State University, Baker University, and Wichita, decided that eight would go on to perform at the recital the following week. During their deliberation, they also chose the three scholarship winners that would be announced at the recital.
The requirements for the competition are that students must be taking music lessons with ESU faculty, songs must be between 2 and 12 minutes long, and solos must be memorized. According to Wichael, performers are judged based on things like intonation, articulation, musicality, and more.
“It’s not about who can play the hardest music, but who can play the music the best or with the most nuance,” he said.
After all eight performances at the recital, Wichael announced the three winners. In 3rd place and receiving a $400 scholarship was Younie who performed a tuba solo entitled ‘New Kid’ by Anna Baadvik. Receiving a $500 scholarship was Wolverton, who placed 2nd with a Marimba solo called ‘Memories of the Seashore’ by Keiko Abe. Finally, Jade Potter, who played ‘Mirror From Another’by David Friedman on the vibraphone, won an $800 scholarship for placing 1st.
“When I heard [that I had won] I was like: uhh… super exciting!” said Potter, a senior music major.
This was Potter’s second year auditioning for the Honors Recital and first year performing.
“Initially I wasn’t planning on doing it,” she said. “But [Professor of Percussion Studies] Dr. Freeze told [his students] ‘You should try it, it will at least get you through the motions for future gigs,’ so I decided to do it.”
Potter, having not been selected the year prior, believed that would once again be the case, and this made her “stress-free” during her audition.
“I think that really helped me out in the long run,” she said. “I wasn’t stressed out in the audition, and then when I heard I made it past auditions, I thought ‘That’s cool, but I’m not gonna place or anything so I’ll just do it again stress-free.’”
‘Mirror From Another’ is a jazz-style four-mallet vibraphone solo from David Friedmen’s solo collection also entitled Mirror From Another. Potter described it as a “minimalistic ostinato based piece.”
“It was kinda jazzy but it made me feel like I was floating in space,” she said. “One of the most challenging parts was the vibrant, exciting part in the middle of the piece. That section alone probably took me about two weeks to learn and get it up to tempo.”