Feurzeig performs concert to help School of Music
The Daily Vidette
Autumn McReynoldsSilver medalist of the 2001 World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and recipient of the 2003 Best New Rag competition of the Old-Time Music Preservation Association for Stride Rite, David Feurzeig, will be performing a solo concert in hopes to begin an endowment for the School of Music.
Feurzeig is an associate professor of composition and theory and says he is holding the Ragtime Stride: Minority Scholarship Benefit for numerous reasons.
"I am playing this music because I love it. It is very exciting. Also, I'm doing it because ragtime and stride piano have kind of gotten stereotyped as this sort of rinky-tink trivial ice cream truck music," he said.
"However, it has actually been the predominant form of instrumental music in the black culture for 20 years, so it has a whole range of happy, sad, serious, funny and tragic. It is a great show to put on. It is also very virtuosic, exciting, like going to the circus a little bit, seeing somebody try to play this stuff," he added.
The concert will be held Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall and ticket prices range from $7 to $10.
According to Feurzeig, the concert is being presented at an especially appropriate time of year.
"It is just part of taking advantage of the fact that it is Black History Month and it's black music. Also, we could always use more money, especially in the School of Music. We have a relatively small minority student population as compared with the state as a whole. I think that is partly because of our location. There are a lot of people closer to schools in the northern part of the state," he said.
Currently, the School of Music does not have any type of endowment and Janet Tulley, assistant to the director for the School of Music, said it is especially important for music students to have scholarship funds.
"Students majoring in music have parents that are already paying thousands of dollars before they get here, for instruments and lessons and when they do get here, the cost of their schooling because of those factors also ends up costing more than say a science major who does not have those expenses," Tulley said.
According to Feurzeig, the school does get some money for minority recruitment, but it ends up going to students who are already accepted and attending.
"It really is not recruitment money at all because it is in the annual budget. I would like to start an endowment so that we have our own little pile of money that we can have to use on what we want, when we want," he said.
Although it will be a long haul to get the scholarship fund off the ground, any and everything helps.
"I expect that this is just the first step in the right direction," Tulley said.
