Students
vie for music honors
By Aubrey Lombardo
Old Gold and Black Review
>
February 8, 2001
Spetition
during this basketball season may come from a completely unexpected
place: the music department, which is sponsoring in this year’s
annual Giles Harris Music Competition Feb. 17.
The Giles
Harris Competition, which is directed by Kathryn Levy, an instructor
of music, and Louis Goldstein, a music professor, is unique in that
it is both a competition and a performance. Broken up into two sections,
the competition’s first part features piano; the second is an open
competition in which contestants are allowed to perform any instrument,
including voice.
This year
13 students will be featured in each section. Judges will evaluate student
performances, awarding cash prizes of $500, $300 and $200 for the top
three places. Though the prizes and judges encourage competition, it
is important, according to senior contestant Emily Orser, to recognize
that it is essentially a “judged performance.”
In order to keep the program entertaining and fluid, the rules ensure
each contestant’s music stays within a certain theme. This year
that theme is post -World War I pieces. Students such as Orser appreciate
the competition is also a good opportunity to see the music department
perform. “I’m going into it as another performance opportunity,
another way to share music,” she said.
However,
Levy emphasizes the importance of the competitive element. “Preparation
for these competitions is above and beyond the normal expectation of
a student studying an instrument or voice at Wake Forest,” Levy
said. “The benefit to the students is that they will take the preparation
of the music to a higher level than they ever thought possible.”
Fortune appreciates the importance of competition. With a third place
victory in last year’s open competition to his credit, he is looking
forward to an even better showing this year. “This is a competition
between all the music students, I just want to go out for it and try
to win,” Fortune said. He has been diligently preparing his saxophone
piece for some time and feels he is finally near ready for competition.
“When I started learning my piece, I played it, worked out problems
and asked for advice, then I started memorizing it section by section.”
This rigorous process should help Fortune in his quest to take the first
prize in the open section of competition. However, he recognizes that
winning will not be easy for anyone because “most people are very
serious about this right now; I need to just stay calm and play.”
One student who is also caught up in the spirit of competition that
is blazing through the music department is sophomore flutist Cassie
Anderson. Anderson, in the competition for the first time this year,
is admittedly a little nervous, but extremely anxious for the competition
to start. “Everyone is really excited,” she says. “People
in the competition have been in rehearsal rooms 24 - 7, working as much
as they can.”
Anderson’s own preparation for the competition has been extremely
time consuming. “I heard about Giles Harris last year and thought
it sounded fun,” she says. After talking it over with her flute
teacher and deciding to enter the competition, “I prepared all
last semester, went to meetings and worked with an accompanist.”
{Part of the reason Anderson’s preparation has been so arduous
is the fact that she, as a flute player, is not used to having to memorize
music. “Flute players don’t traditionally play from memory,
they are trained more to learn quickly so they can play in an orchestral
setting.” Despite this change, she has been feeling positive about
her performance in recent rehearsals and looks at this as a “great
source of experience.”}
Music students here have participated in the event since its inception
in 1977 when Mr. and Mrs. Paul Sinal suggested and began funding The
Christopher Giles and Lucille S. Harris Competitions in Musical Performance.
Over the years, many other important donors have joined the Sinals in
their support of the competition. In 1987, Patricia Mize endowed the
Sloan Prize to honor her late parents, Joseph Pleasant and Marguerite
Nutt Sloan. Another prize was added to the top three in 1994, by Dr.
and Mrs. Henry Virts who funded a new prize in memory of their son,
Ward, who graduated in 1985 and was a first prize winner of the 1985
piano competition. This prize is designated the Award for Pianistic
Expressiveness. The latest prize was added in 1997, as the first prize
for the piano competition in honor of the Paul Sinal family on the 20th
anniversary of the competition.
The culmination
of the faculty, donors and student competitors’ hard work will
begin at 11 a.m. on Feb. 17 and will last throughout the day. Admission
is free, and more information is available by calling Ext. 5026.
