The Collegian

Issue date: 3/5/09 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Andrew Dodson A bassist plays along with the orchestra during rehearsals earlier this week. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: Andrew Dodson Community members and college students prepare for this week's concert, when they will perform with concerto competition winners. [Click to enlarge]

For junior Monica Way, her solo aria performances with the Hillsdale College and Community Symphony Orchestra this weekend will be a way to stretch as a musician. For senior Jonathan Chesson and sophomore Melissa Stewart, their concerto solos will be more steps toward careers in music.

Mezzo-soprano Way, pianist Chesson and violinist Stewart are three of the five winners of this year's Hillsdale College Annual Concerto Competition and will perform Saturday and Sunday in the orchestra's performances in Markel Auditorium.

Competition judges select top contenders of all instruments to play a concerto movement with the orchestra. Typically, the winners play at one of two spring concerts - either in March or May.

This week's featured performers love their pieces for different reasons.


That Tchaikovsky's Aria from the opera about Joan of Arc, "The Maid of New Orleans," perfectly showcases her voice's strengths and increases her range excites Way.

"It's very difficult to find mezzo-soprano repertoire," Way said. "Frequently they write mezzo roles for older women, mothers, prostitutes, the secondary characters or pant roles. It's a beautiful story - about Joan of Arc, this saint who says good-bye to everything she loves. And I love singing in French."

The fast and furious few pages of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev's second piano concerto has Chesson, who was a finalist in 1997 in the Horowitz Competition in Ukraine, drilling acrobatic leaps in anticipation of the concert.

"The beginning is the worst - it really scares me," Chesson said. "There are many frantic long jumps. Once I get through the first few pages, I'll be able to relax."

Stewart loves the technical difficulty of the piece layered against the melodic backdrop of the first movement of Wieniawski's "Concerto No. 2 in d minor."

"It has a bow staccato - it can be very difficult to control the bow," she said. "It has double stops - multiple strings played at the same time. It has glissandos - sliding down one finger on one string. It has some really beautiful melodies, it has some flashy parts."

Chairman and Associate Professor of Music James Holleman said although the concert is a recognition of accomplishment, it is not by itself necessarily significant for budding music careers.

"I don't know that it's going to open a lot of doors - but it will look good on a graduate resume," he said.

For Way, winning the competition was an honor, even if it doesn't further her career.

"Performance is a way of pushing me to achieve as much as I can as a singer," Way said. "It helps me to learn the music, the composition and the beauty of the music."

Chesson, who wants to be a piano teacher at the university level, says the competition offers him the chance to play more extensively with an orchestra, an experience he said helps him both musically and psychologically.

"I would just like to get some performance experience," he said. "I really enjoy playing with an orchestra. I have to be more consistent with my rhythm. I tend to rush on the extra-scary parts."

For Stewart, who wants to be a concert violinist, winning the competition was another step to breaking into the music world.

"This is one thing that I can check off my list, a step in the right direction," she said. "Something I can definitely put on my resume."

The second half of this weekend's program will feature the ballet suite from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet."

"It's ballet music so its character changes," Holleman said. "That's what makes it challenging - changing for each quickly."

At the end of the day, Stewart said, you can practice all you want in your room but it's your ability to play music for an audience that gives it significance. To that end, she hopes audience members get the message loud and clear.

"Music is performance," she said. "I hope I'll be able to accurately convey to the audience my musical interpretation - that they'll hear not just notes, not just technical [mastery], but they'll be able to appreciate it as art."

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