Christopher Bade will bring the God-gifted music of Composer Rick Sowash to life in the Butz Carruth Recital Hall.
On Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m., Bade, professor of music and director of the Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra, will perform several clarinet pieces by Sowash for the Faculty Recital.
The pieces he will be performing include “College Town Diary,” “Gelato per Dio” and “Full Circle Suite.” They are united by the theme of “Wintry Dawn,” the title of the album Bade’s performance will be recorded for.
Sowash chose this theme to call to mind images of a landscape, beautiful in a gray, snowy and bleak way. He posed the question, “What would wintry dawn sound like if it was expressed in music?”
Sowash’s individual pieces also have intentionality and stories behind them, offering a unique, expressive and emotional experience to listeners, Bade said. “College Town Diary,” in particular, is a chronicle of his perception of an academic year. Bade said it is his favorite piece because it elicits many emotions, including laughter.
This recital will not have been the first time Bade and Sowash have worked together. Around 2017, Sowash wrote pieces incorporating both clarinet and cello for Bade.
Bade is excited to bring Sowash’s music to life for this recital because it offers the audience the unique experience of hearing music by a living composer who will be in attendance himself.
Music has an emotional impact, Bade said. He encourages people to sit in on the recital so that they can experience it.
“[The audience] will hear the human condition,” he said. “I hope they’re moved, in whatever way that is.”
Recitals like this are wonderful opportunities students should take advantage of due to the lack of opportunity to do so after graduation, Bade said. Unlike other performances, those at TU are often free, as is the case for this recital, and attending is a way of supporting both faculty and students, he said.
A composer makes a map and the musician makes the journey, Sowash said, but it is the listener who gives it significance. Music is unfulfilled and incomplete without all three components: Composer, musician and audience.
Just as the audience is important to a recital, so is the musician. Bade said he has been preparing for this recital for his whole life. Every practice, rehearsal and lesson learned has led him to and prepared him for this recital.
Also important is the source of the music performed, both earthly and heavenly. Bade and Sowash said their music is a gift from and a reflection of God.
“If Jesus isn’t in it and I’m not having fun, I don’t want to do it,” Bade said. “We’re here, I hope, to glorify the Lord by sharing the talents, abilities, dispositions and attitudes that He has given us.”
Sowash provided the analogy that all potential ideas which have not come to reality yet are on the opposite side of a curtain from us humans. The way we receive ideas, he said, is by God parting the curtain and allowing some of the potential stored there to pass over to us.
It is not just those personally invested in performances like the Faculty Recital who look forward to them: Students also enjoy watching and listening to their professors perform.
Sophie Sterken, a music major with a focus in piano, enjoys attending recitals and performances to listen to instruments she does not play because it is interesting to see and hear what unique things others are doing.
Getting to listen to her professors play their respective instruments is also an exciting part of going to faculty recitals for Sterken.
“I think it’s a really cool way to see what all of them have been working on,” Sterken said. “It’s really inspiring for me, especially seeing them out on the stage.”
Recitals are opportunities for people to support others in their community through attendance. Bade said that attending performances and offering a word of praise is another means of affirming the body of Christ.
“That one comment can make somebody’s week,” Bade said.
