Music is an integral part of the world, and that does not exclude our home away from home, UJ. One of the University of Jamestown’s strongest backgrounds can be found in the performing arts department, with its welcoming and guiding staff that make it their goal to support their students into becoming the best performers possible. The campus puts on amazing shows and concerts every year, but a common occurrence and traditional event that gets put on is music students’ very own recitals. To talk more about their experience with putting on a recital and the work that goes into it, I asked Ashley Turner, a student majoring in psychology and criminal justice, with minors in Character in Leadership and music. She also participates in wind ensemble, pep band, and drumline.

It is customary for music majors/minors to perform recitals. And it’s not just music students, you can catch the music professors putting on performances as well for the campus. How it works for students is that they begin picking out music with their professor(s) months before the actual recital, giving students a few months to half a year to practice and learn their music after they have a set list of music to perform. Ashley continues to say, “For our performance seminar class, we have to perform some pieces in front of the class, so this is where we practice our pieces.”

Ashley’s flute and vocal recital was back in February, in which she partnered with Music Education major Alivia Hoke. When asked if there is a difference in preparation between vocal and instrumental recitals, Ashley said that the biggest difference is that vocal recitalists need to be memorized while instrumental recitalists are allowed their music and read off of it still. “There is not much difference besides that.”

Here is what Ashley had to say about how she was feeling the day of her recital: “I [felt] extremely nervous but at the same time ready to get it over with. The people that came want[ed] me to do good and [will] still be happy for me if I mess up. So, while there is the pressure to do the best you can, I know that the people that [will] come to see you love to listen no matter what I play or how I do. After my recital, I felt a huge relief. All my work of almost a year paid off and I felt satisfied.”

To reiterate, what these students do for a single day’s performance is months and months of hard work, practice, and careful consideration of how to reach their best sound and produce meaningful and powerful results. When you see the next email and posters around campus advertising a student/faculty recital, please go and encourage your fellow Jimmies to appreciate all the hard work they did and support expressing their passion.