A quartet of student recitals featuring piano, voice and bass trombone are on the schedule for another busy weekend of senior recitals at Gustavus Adolphus College. Ashley Tibbetts, piano and mezzo soprano, Kirsten Bouma, mezzo soprano, and Azra Halilovic, piano and soprano fill Saturday’s calendar. Scott Simpkins, bass trombone, concludes the weekend with a recital on Sunday evening. The four senior recitals will be presented in Jussi Björling Recital Hall and are free and open to the public.
Senior music major and Mankato native Ashley Tibbetts opens the weekend with her recital of works for solo piano and for voice on Saturday, May 8 at 1:30 p.m. The program opens with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C-Sharp Major on piano and Handel’s Frondi tenere…ombra mai fu. She continues with another work for piano, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E Major, Op. 90, No. 27. The recital concludes with Schubert’s Heidenroslein, Chopin’s Etude in F minor and Philip Glass’ The Hours. Ashley is the daughter of Ryan and Heidi Tibbetts and a 2006 graduate of Mankato West High School. She studies voice with Rebecca McConnaughey and piano with Yumiko Oshima-Ryan.
At 3:30 p.m., Kirsten Bouma, a music major from Lincoln, Neb., enters Björling Recital Hall to begin her senior voice recital. Accompanied by pianist Samuel Grace, Kirsten opens with O thou that tellest from Handel’s Messiah, and continues with works by Brahms, Schubert, Fauré, Hahn, Hageman, Haydn and Quilter. She is the daughter of Richard and Ann Bouma of Lincoln and a graduate of Lincoln East High School. She studies voice at Gustavus with Rebecca McConnaughey.
Pianist Azra Halilovic completes Saturday’s schedule with her senior piano recital at 7:30 p.m. Azra is a graduate of the Internation School of Minnesota and the daughter of Edin and Dzeudeta Halilovic of Minnetonka. She studies piano with Esther Wang. The recital opens with the 6 movements of Bach’s Partita No. 1 in C minor and continues with Mozart’s Als Luise die Briefe, the Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor by Frederic Chopin and Brahms’ Von ewiger Liebe. Azra, an English major with minors in music and Spanish, concludes her recital with Alexander Scriabin’s Poème Op. 32, No. 1 in F sharp minor.
Scott Simpkins, a senior biochemistry and chemistry major with a minor in music from Ames, Iowa, presents his senior recital on bass trombone with Brenda Moore, pianist, at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 9. Scott, who studies trombone with Scott Moore, will open his program with the four-movement work, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen by Gustav Mahler. His performance continues with Eric Culver’s Suite for Unaccompanied Bass Trombone and the Sonata for Bass Trombone by Alec Wilder. Joined by the Christ Chapel Brass Quintet, Simpkins will perform the Quintet No. 2 by Victor Ewald and, with the Gustavus ex-tet, concludes the recital with Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life. Scott is the son of Bill and Cathy Simpkins of Ames and a 2006 graduate of Ames High School.
This weekend of recitals in Jussi Björling Recital Hall is free and open to the public. Receptions honoring the musicians are scheduled following the recitals.
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