The Department of Music at Gustavus Adolphus College presents three events Sunday, May 4 in Jussi Bjorling Recital Hall. The Gustaus Percussion Ensemble and Director Paul Hill opens the afternoon at 1:30 p.m., followed by Annika Torkelson’s Senior Tuba Recital at 3:30 p.m. Senior pianist Joel Beachey concludes Sunday’s schedule with his senior piano recital at 7:30 p.m. All three events are free and open to the public.
The Gustavus Percussion Ensemble Concert at 1:30 p.m. features students from across the campus with a love of percussion and music. Director Paul Hill has developed a program to showcase the variety of music written for percussion or compositions which have been arranged for percussion ensemble. In addition to the Gustavus students in ensemble and solo performance Sunday, a number of special guests from the Janus Percussion Group will be featured throughout the concert. Janus Percussion is a percussion group based in Minneapolis and founded by Erik Barsness and Brian Duffy.
St. James native, Annika Torkelson, will present her senior tuba and flute recital at 3:30 p.m. Torkelson, a student of Paul Budde, will be accompanied by pianist Autumn Zander and assisted by the Gustavus Tuba-Euphonium Quartet and friends in the Department of Music. She opens with the Suite for Tuba by Don Haddad and Sonata No. 3 in A minor by Antonio Vivaldi. She continues with the Six Studies in English Folksong by Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Serenade No. 12 for Solo Tuba by Vincent Persichetti. Then, joined by the members of the quartet, Annika will perform the Keith Mehlan arrangement of Londonderry Air. To complete her program, Annika will be joined by flutists Sarah Komperud and Brinti Jansen and pianist Krista Nelson and perform her own arrangement of the first movement of Nancy Faber’s Chinese Dragons, the “Dragon Dance.”
At 7:30, pianist Joel Beachey will present his senior piano recital in Bjorling Recital Hall. A student of Professor Yumiko Oshima-Ryan and a native of Bismarck, North Dakota, Joel will open his recital with Mozart’s Sonata No. 12 in F. Major, K. 332 and Frederic Chopin’s Nocturne No. 7 in C. sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 1. He continues the recital with Johannes Brahms’ Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 118, No. 2 and concludes his recital with three Preludes for Piano by George Gershwin.
Sunday’s performances in Bjorling Recital Hall are free and open to the public. Following the senior recitals, a reception will be held in the performers’ honor in the recital hall lobby.