Students and friends of Jeanne Belfy, professor of music, gathered in the Morrison Center Recital Hall on Oct. 12 for Belfy’s night at the Faculty Artist Series. Belfy said she enjoyed playing with her colleagues and her oboe student Taylor Vulgamore. She said they do the recital for the students’ benefit, since the music students have to perform in recitals before they are able to get their degree.
“It makes us better musicians,” Belfy said. “When we do that, when we go through this process and learn new literature and we rehearse it and work together, we learn things that we need to know for our teaching as well. So, it’s our research as well as it is a service to the students.”
Belfy was joined on stage by other faculty members as well as a student oboe player. The first piece played was a Sonata V for Two Oboes and Basso Continuo, the Basso Continuo being a cello and a piano, by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). The songs were smooth and relaxing, much different from Belfy’s second piece choice.
“Dr. Belfy is one of my favorite professors that’s here,” said Ashley Glover, senior music education major. “She’s always so musical and every class I’ve ever had with her, she’s just phenomenal. The music she plays is always very different and unique. I know that Dr. Belfy is a real big fan of Baroque music, personally I’m not the hugest fan, but for oboe it’s a really important era because there’s tons of music written for oboes back in the Baroque era. I thought, her and her student performed great. Taylor (Vulgamore) was great, like you can tell that she’s a student of Dr. Belfy.”
Suite for Oboe and Piano by Pavel Haas (1899-1944) had an eerily sad tone to it. Belfy attributed this to the time Haas spent in a concentration camp before World War II, where he wrote the piece. Haas was then moved to Auschwitz and executed, but the sound and rhythm of the songs were reflections of his time in the first
concentration camp.
“The Pavel Haas piece, out of context wouldn’t have made so much sense had she not told us that he was in a camp in that time,” said Daniel Wiley, senior music education major. “Dr. Belfy is a wonderful performer and she always has wonderful concerts with great music, and so far she’s proved that tonight.”
After intermission, Belfy was joined onstage by the Faculty Wind Quintet. They performed the Aires Tropicales for Woodwind Quintet by Paquito d’Rivera (b.1948). This collaboration was jazz-like and upbeat for the most part.
“I made the (song) choices. As a quintet we’ve been practicing this piece already and I asked the quintet, I said ‘I’m going to do a recital on such and such a date, could we do the d’Rivera piece on that?’ and they all said, ‘Yeah, great sure we’ll do it,’” Befly said http://www.boisestate.edu/music.
