ARKADELPHIA, Ark.—Ouachita Baptist University will host two student recitals Friday, Oct. 26, at 11 a.m. in Mabee Fine Arts Center’s McBeth Recital Hall. Alyssa Jones Koen will perform her senior voice recital and Bethany Gere will perform her sophomore musical theatre recital.
Koen, a senior music education major from White Hall, Ark., said she is excited about the recital, which serves as a culmination of her vocal studies at Ouachita, “because it has been fun preparing for it, and many people I love are coming to hear me.
“There is one song I am singing called ‘My Ship’ that talks about a woman waiting for her love to arrive on a ship,” Koen added. “This is very special to me because my husband is in the Navy and I only get to see him twice a year. When I found out he was coming to my recital, I made sure to add that song so I could sort of sing it for him.”
Koen is a member of Ouachita’s Women’s Chorus and Concert Choir as well as the Collegiate National Association for Music Education. She has received OBU’s Rachel Fuller scholarship as well as the Books Scholarship from Accurate Calibration and the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship. Her performance will include “Un moto di gioja” and “Ladute Dominum” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, “In Dem Schatten Meiner Locken” by Hugo Wolf, Jean-Baptiste Wekerlin’s arrangement of “L’Amour s’envole,” “Tout gai!” by Maurice Ravel, “Del cabello más sutil” by Fernando Obradors, “The Daisies” by Samuel Barber, “Two Little Flowers” by Charles Edward Ives, “My Ship” by Kurt Weill, and “Adelaide’s Lament” by Frank Loesser. Terri Lucas, accompanist for the Division of Music, will accompany her on piano.
Gere is a sophomore musical theatre major, also from White Hall, Ark. She is a member of Concert Choir and Women’s Chorus and has been involved in Ouachita’s theatre productions. She has placed second in the musical theatre and classical categories at Arkansas’s National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) auditions. Her performance will include: Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin’s “Legally Blonde” from Legally Blonde: The Musical, assisted by Ben Stidham, a sophomore musical theatre major from Dallas, Texas, and Meredith Wilson’s “My White Knight” from The Music Man. Stidham also will assist Gere in a performance of the scene “Driveway Lights” by David Dalton and Chad Schnackel. She will conclude with Harry Warren’s “42nd Street” from 42nd Street. John Alec Briggs, adjunct instructor of voice and staff accompanist, will accompany her on piano.
For more information, contact OBU’s School of Fine Arts at (870) 245-5129.
