At 7:30 p.m. tonight in Heath Recital Hall, Dawn McConkie Courtney, professor of music education and single reeds, and Tracy Freeze, professor of percussion, will be playing their respective instruments in a faculty recital.
“It’s kind of a way for us, beyond being a teacher at the school, to get to show our creative side and show things that got us interested in music to begin with,” Freeze said.
McConkie said the two professors played a recital together in 2008 and that during the concert space on stage was limited due to the many percussion instruments Freeze used. She said many of the pieces in this performance will include the same instruments to allow for more room on stage.
“With this one, we tried to stick with a grouping of similar idioms, so it wasn’t so crazy, so maybe there’s a little bit more room for me to stand there and play the clarinet or the saxophone,” McConkie said.
Senior percussion performance major Karsten Burns said he has heard the duo play a piece entitled “Dual Monologue” for clarinet and a hand drum called a djembe. Burns said there are many different sounds that can be produced from both instruments.
“They really bring opposite ends of the spectrum with each instrument,” Burns said.
Freeze said that not all music department faculty members have recitals. He said he tries to have one every year, as does McConkie, because the two happen to be interested in using performance as a creative outlet. He said he and McConkie collaborated because they have similar musical interests and they had many options as far as duets for percussion and clarinet.
“We decided that it would be really fun to collaborate on this project and do some music that isn’t often done, and to just kind of delve into something that we don’t typically get to do,” Freeze said.
McConkie said the two musicians began discussing a recital together at the end of last school year. She said she went to the Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium in June and got some ideas of pieces to play there, and then the two talked about other things they might want to perform.
“I had been gathering music and he had been gathering ideas so we just decided to just go ahead and schedule one,” McConkie said.
McConkie said that the performance gives students an opportunity to hear music they might not usually hear in class.
“This will give them an opportunity to hear late twentieth century music and of course from the twenty- first century since we’ve got a 2008 piece,” McConkie said.
Burns has Freeze as a professor and said he pushes his students hard to be prepared and ready.
“That’s what he’s going to show us in his recital, is whatever he expects of us basically. He’s going to show us how to do it professionally when he does the recital,” Burns said.
Freeze said the concert serves more than one purpose- he said it gives the community an opportunity to see live music, it gives music students an opportunity to learn and it is a way for professors to show their creativity.
“For teaching, it’s kind of to show the students by example what performing is all about and to teach them about new repertoire and things like that,” Freeze said.
General admission to the faculty recital is $5, but Emporia State students get in for $4.
Lauren Walbridge/The Bulletin
