Teachers, students and faculty walking by slowed down to peer inside and many of them stayed to listen. This was exactly Nancy Jo Snider's goal when, as Music Program Director of the Department of Performing Arts, she designed the "Four Fridays at Noon: Bringing Music to the People" performance series in the Battelle Atrium.
"I want to bring music to the people as part of the normal course of their day without them having to make that Herculean effort to fight the traffic and make it to the concert hall," Snider said. "I want it to be part of their everyday life."
She said that she chose the atrium for the performances because she wanted Kay Mussell, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, to hear their music.
"Her support of us filters into the entire university to show that the arts are a big part of higher education. She believes, like us, that we need to keep the arts in liberal arts," Snider said. "We have support and we are grateful for that support. We wouldn't be here at all without it."
This Friday's performances focused on classical piano, with two student performances followed by an appearance by their professor, the internationally renowned pianist and AU faculty member Yuliya Gorenman.
The performance began with Yui Enomoto, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and an international student from Japan, playing "Allegro" from Mozart Sonata No.457. She has been playing the piano for 17 years and still left the stage beaming at the huge round of applause she received. Enomoto said she really likes working with Gorenman because she learns something new each time they work together.
Second was Ignat Drozdov, who performed the "Allegro ma non troppo" from Beethoven's piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57 and Chopin's Prelude in E Minor, Op. 28, No. 4. His performance was emotional and captivating, and really drew in the audience. Drozdov has been playing the piano for 12 years and said that "working with Yuliya is great. She requires you to have a goal. She's a demanding professor, especially with the piano, and if you haven't done the work it clearly shows."
Drosdov also said he was battling stage fright.
"I have to perform more. Before I came to college I was performing all the time, and that sort of cured it, but now it's back again," he said.
Snider said that curing stage fright was another major goal of the performance series.
"We need more opportunities to perform, because the only way you get comfortable with performing is performing," she said.
Snider also said people need to become more accustomed to listening to classical music.
"Especially in today's world where music education is often cut, it's a really positive communication," she said. "You bring music to people and they feel it."
Gorenman took the stage for the grand finale, performing all four movements of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 2, No. 1. When she plays, Gorenman almost dances along to the music. She plays the piano with everything, not just her hands, and the emotion is almost palpable in the room. Even more impressive is that she can do it all by memory.
"You could sit her down and plug her in and she could play for hours," Snider said.
After the performance Gorenman took questions and requests, also performing an intermezzo piece by Brahms in A minor as well as a piece of Argentine tango music.
Gorenman said that the source of her talent was her willingness to practice both performing and sight reading music every day. It is also important for performers to find out as much as they can "about the composer, the time and the style."
"You have to listen to everything that was composed around that time... and get a feel for the patterns," she said. "Think about what story you are going to tell, because this is all about storytelling."
Gorenman's next performance will be this Friday in the Katzen Arts Center at 8 p.m.
The next performance of the "Four Fridays at Noon: Bringing Music to the People" series will be Nov. 10. It will feature members of the Spinoza Practice Club, an official AU club that allows musicians of all types to get together to practice and raise money for arts endeavors. It will also feature members of the AU chamber ensembles. The Dec. 1 performance will feature the Saxophone Quartet directed by Noah Getz.
