Twelve students will perform in this year’s honors recital, out of dozens who were nominated. The annual recital – in its 31st year – features the USM School of Music’s most talented students in solo performance. They’re nominated by faculty and then chosen by a panel of judges made up by faculty and outside guests. Here are a handful of those chosen.
Maya Chapman
Maya Chapman already holds a degree from USM – in social work. Her concerns for humanity lend drive to the second degree she’s now perusing in piano.
Unlike her fellow music education majors, she is a piano pedagogy major, which means that rather than wanting to teach general music and learning many instruments, she will master her own instrument in the hopes of one day owning her own private studio.
The twist, stemming from her social work degree, is that she dreams of teaching special-needs children.
She took a year after her first graduation to retrain her own piano chops before coming back in full force to master the craft.
She has already started down the path toward a full teaching studio, and she’ll be working with her second special-needs student this month.
Piano, she hopes, will help improve his fine motor skills.
Besides also working in the School of Music Box Office, she earns her keep as a waitress in Falmouth.
To relieve stress from a jam-packed schedule? She jogs, when it fits in.
As for the stress of auditioning for the honors recital, “it’s kind of scary-I mean, (the judges) are nice, but you walk in, say hello, and start playing in this huge hall. Sometimes they cut you off. I prepared two pieces, and after the first piece they smiled and said ‘that’s all the time we have today.'”
A couple days after walking off the stage, her piano teacher called to tell her she had made the cut.
It was same woman who nominated her, and the tight-knit pair rejoiced over the phone at the accomplishment.
Alexis Handy
Alexis Handy sells vodka. She also works in a costume shop. On school breaks she takes care of kids at a daycare.
Despite her various jobs at Cold River Vodka, the USM theatre department, and the Portland YMCA, this 22-year-old simply wants a career in musical theatre. Which is what she is going to be performing at Saturday’s recital.
She initially saw herself getting a degree in English. However, doing musicals in high school, her love for musical theater grew with each show, and today she is working towards a bachelors degree in music with a minor in theater.
With the help of a voice teacher and musical theatre coach, the Lewiston native has risen to the top of the heap and made her way into this year’s Honors Recital.
Her audition, she said, was perhaps the most nerve-wracking, and she didn’t even perform in front of the judges.
“I had to do my auditions via videotape,” she said, “and I wasn’t allowed to stop the tape. You know, if you mess up in person you can just ask to start over, but on video, I couldn’t do this. I was nervous, it is completely different, there is no leeway.”
She had another audition that same day, in Massachusetts, for the New England Theater Conference.
In front of paid professionals, “you have three minutes to sing or dance or act, or do whatever you want, basically,” Handy said. In her three minutes, she sang the piece she will perform at the Honors Recital, along with another selection, and has gotten a few call-backs so far. In her industry, this is a great sign.
It is also a good sign that Handy has been in every single musical theater production USM has put on in the four years she has been here. From “Titanic” to “Spirit of the Reindeer,” she has graced every show.
Handy said that it’s different to perform musical theatre for an honors recital that only showcases up to 12 students, with judges looking for proper technique like you’d have in opera or classical music; she had to show her technique through the theatre numbers.
But, she noted, they were also looking for individuality and commitment to the song, which were probably quite apparent after her audition.
She will perform a song called Sixteen Bars, from the off-Broadway “Taxi Cabaret,” about starry-eyed youth going to New York with dreams of fame.
Coincidentally, Handy has planned for the summer of 2009 to include a move to New York City, a furry of auditioning, and her first attempts at stardom in the world of musical theatre.
Cassie Gray
Proud to be unique, Cassie Gray represents a minority of performers at USM. In a department that is dominated by classical vocalists, she sings jazz.
“I’d say I’m breaking through tradition,” says Gray. “As far as I know, I’m the first jazz vocalist ever to make the honors recital.”
Generally, she explains, its classical voice included in the recital, and the attitude is that that should be the focus of the vocals in the show.
The jazz vocalist has been hopping around between schools for some time, looking for the right place for her talent and needs.
She began college at Stonehill in Massachusetts, but there was no music concentration, she went on to Washington D.C. to the Catholic University of America, where there was a great music program, but no music education major.
She arrived at USM in the spring of 2006, and says with a tone of relief that it is here she will stay.
This year’s audition was scheduled for March 1, but when a snowstorm closed campus that day, the try-outs were postponed for two weeks, and rescheduled for March 15.
Cassie’s junior recital was on the night of March 14.
Because she’d been so concentrated on her work for that show, the two extra weeks to prepare for the honors audition seemed a welcome gift.
The morning after a night performance to showcase her talent, she got up and showcased it again.
You’d think that might be a conflict, but not for Gray.
“I enjoyed it,” she says. “I felt like I was getting a taste of a ‘real’ musician’s schedule. Really, whether you have one day or five days to prepare for something like this, if you’re not ready in one, you wouldn’t be in five. It’s about how much you’ve cumulatively prepared.”
It can be assumed that this woman was quite prepared. To break into a recital as old as this one, within a traditional department, showcasing a different kind of sound – well, it must’ve been quite an audition. (And should make for quite a performance on Saturday).