Three of Cal Poly’s faculty members will perform a concert for a mixed crowd at the Alex and Faye Spanos Theatre Friday. The concert will blur the line between classical and modern music, ranging from songs by Johannes Brahms to John Williams.
The performance, dubbed “Strings, Cords and Keys,” will feature music faculty members Brynn Albanese, Katherine Arthur and Susan Davies. They will play selected pieces showcasing their talents as professional musicians.
“Someone may be going through something awful in their life and music can take them out of their personal hell,” Albanese, the concert’s violinist, said. “Music soothes the savage beast.”
Albanese, who calls herself a musical “gypsy,” has played different kinds of venues, from large concert halls to crowded shopping malls and even street corners all over the world. She has performed and toured with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, The Concertgebouw, the Monterey Symphony and the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague, Netherlands. It doesn’t matter what the venue is; performing music gives people the opportunity to change others’ lives for the better, she said.
“We’ll be playing classical music, but we’ll also be playing songs by the person that did the music for Star Wars,” Albanese said. “I think there’s something for everyone.”
Amy Lebetsamer, a business administration senior and the president of Take It SLO, Cal Poly’s a capella singing group, has seen all three of Friday’s performers at work, whether on, or off, stage. This quarter, she’s taking Davies’ piano class and said she enjoys Davies’ personal touch to teaching.
“There’s a real mix of playing ability in that class,” Lebetsamer said. “When we started class, (Davies) took a survey of us and where we were in our playing. She formulates a personal program for you based on where you’re at specifically. I’m sure that’s a very difficult thing to do.”
Cal Poly’s music department is made up of 12 full-time faculty members, four part-time lecturers and more than 20 private instructors. With that many faculty on hand, it is not uncommon for members of the music department to frequently perform with Cal Poly music ensembles.
“Davies and Albanese accompanied the choirs last year for a song that Dr. Russel wrote,” Lebetsamer said. “It was beautiful.”
Arthur, the concert’s vocalist, received her Master of Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara and has been teaching at Cal Poly since 2002. She has performed with the Southwest Chamber Music Ensemble, Santa Barbara Oratorio Society, Pacific Repertory Opera and has appeared as a musical guest in Europe where she recorded for the Austrian Radio. At Cal Poly, she works individually with students studying voice, meeting weekly to teach them in private lessons.
Arthur is very comfortable with performing and focuses specifically on the songs while she is on stage. Some of the pieces she’ll play sound odd to the ear and are not built in typical western music fashion, Arthur said. She called many of the texts to the songs political.
“It’s not like these songs are contemporary, but for our time, the poems themselves are very fitting,” Arthur said. “The songs are odd to hear, not built on the eight-tone scale people are used to hearing, but they are quite wonderful.”
Eric Wallace, a mechanical engineering senior, has attended concerts put on by the music department such as this one as a requirement for some of his music classes. This is an opportunity for students and community members to broaden their scopes of musical knowledge and observe art, Wallace said.
“There’s obviously a big difference in going to a concert like this and going to see one of your favorite bands,” Wallace said. “You don’t make noise during songs, you wait to applaud until the end of a movement and you dress a little nicer than you would going to go see a band you like. There’s a different type of culture involved; it’s more educated.”
Other April performances the music department has put on include jazz, wind ensembles and vocal recitals. Friday’s concert will give three of the faculty members responsible for Cal Poly music students’ educations a chance to showcase their talent. Tickets for the concert can be purchased from the Performing Arts ticket office. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m.