Composition Recital to break convention

For most musicians, the Senior Recital is an opportunity for them to show the world what they've learned in their four years at the Conservatory - it is their moment to shine. This Saturday, composition major Andrew Shapiro's Senior Recital promises to be different. The program includes an art installation, a short film and a poetic monologue all bound together by Shapiro's music.

Inscriptions, a 30 minute piece written for soprano, saxophone, synthesizer, percussion and electric bass will be played to accompany the movement of the audience through the installation by artists and college seniors Jill Davis, Susan Fauman and Tolya Pfeffer-Bacon. Based on four poems from the Holocaust, the music and the art attempt to portray their own feelings about the events that happened during that time.

Instead of focusing on the tragic elements of the Holocaust, the creators of Inscriptions wanted to convey not only the capacity that humanity has for inflicting cruelty and suffering on itself, but also on the converse, positive qualities that get people through such of pain and tragedy. The attempt here is to explore the multi-dimensionality of the human spirit through the combination of art and music.

Shapiro's recital follows a definite theme of the loss of youth and the consequent struggle to discover the mature artistic self. The Tormented Artist, a film by Haakon and Trybve Faste with music by Shapiro, is a darkly comic look at the interior world of the artistic mind. I'm With You in Rockland, a monologue written by a longtime friend of Shapiro's and set to music is a sort of farewell to the past at the same time as it emphasizes the importance of never forgetting where you come from and who your friends are.

Inscriptions and Others promises to showcase some of the great student talent that so often goes unnoticed or under-appreciated here in Oberlin. The event should be unlike anything that's been done on a Senior Recital here before, providing a treat for the ears, eyes and the intellect.

Inscriptions and Others will be performed Saturday, May 2 at 2 p.m. in Warner Concert Hall.