Hometown Heroes

I didn’t attend the premiere of Pasatieri’s magnum opus over the past weekend. Instead, I spent my Friday night convalescing from a sinus infection that rendered me a festering mess of concentrated contagium for much of last week. I felt better by Monday—so much better, in fact, that I was able to sing as part of Asbury University’s annual alumni recital.

As small, privately funded, Christian liberal arts institutions go, Asbury University (formerly Asbury College) has a striking collection of performers and career musicians within its ranks of alumni and alumnae. Their strong suits have always been their brass, vocal, and keyboard departments: one recent organist alumnus went on a performance tour of Italy and was offered a full ride to Eastman for his DMA before playing his second senior recital. Another, a classmate of mine and a pianist, is now studying at Indiana University at Bloomington for her master’s in piano performance—she turned Juilliard down to come to Asbury as an undergrad. Another alumnus, a vocalist, is the director of the Pauls Foundation, while yet another wound up as the assistant principal trumpet for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

But last night’s program was void of those. Instead, it gave an opportunity for the other Asbury music alumni to shine, those alumni who are working in the musical world unnoticed: educators, grad students, and restaurateurs—people for whom music forms such a vital facet of life. These are people whose talent and determination are just as enfleshed and fiery, but who don’t have prestigious titles appended to their names in concert programs.

And last evening’s performance showed that. The usual shows of talent, heart, and sweat present in any departmental recital were just as present last night, and just as enjoyable as usual. Kristi Nevill offered a careful, if tentative, Alla Pollacca from Weber’s second clarinet concerto with virtuoso accompaniment by Mary Ann Wilder. Flautists Amanda Bailey and Courtney Jespersen together presented a flawless Kuhnau duo brillant from his op. 81 set. Todd Montgomery shared a spirited (and brave) Weiss guitar sonata, pinched frets and all, and Lisa Hall finished the program with the obligatory organ piece on Akers Auditorium’s baroque-flavored organ, Danza del Espiritu Santo by Robert J. Greene.

Not a bad program at all. But it was too safe.

The selections as a whole lacked élan—with the exception of one piece, the composer’s offering. Enoch Jacobus (a Ph.D. candidate in theory at UK nowadays) presented a Latin setting of Isaiah 9:2 (“the people walking in darkness have seen a great light…”). I did know this piece the best, considering I was the solo bass 1 for its premiere last night. Beyond that, however, the piece had a certain spark that was absent from the other interpretations on the program.

The piece was risky, and that’s what made it.

We’d only had three hours of rehearsal to perfect the subtly shifting chromatic harmonies and Whitacre-scented tone clusters in it (you can smell his hair product from here). But Enoch writes in his own idiom beyond a wholesale imitation of Whitacre’s style and adapts certain elements of Whitacre’s tonal language and transforms them into something different, a challenge virtually all up-and-coming choral composers face. As savory as some of these sonorities are, they still don’t sit in the singers’ throats easily, so Enoch’s premiere had the added kick of being performed by an ensemble vibrating with adrenaline. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing remains yet to be seen: we made it to the end of the piece holding onto our folders for dear life.

It’s just a shame that this was the first number on the program, as if the challenging material was something to be endured quickly and set aside. Granted, the staging informed that more than anything (moving a choir on and offstage), but the side effects were unfortunate. And as for Enoch, as with any developing composer, I fully expect Enoch’s musical language to mature and rarify further: he already understands how to stretch both the listeners and the performers without resorting to compositional kitsch. And, perhaps in experiencing this, Asbury’s other music alumni will be reminded to recapture their élan, take risks, and continue astonishing us.

At the reception, the organizer of the event invited me to be the featured composer for next year's recital. Perhaps I'll write safe music. But I probably won't.