Three senior performances showcasing compositional, vocal, and instrumental talents will be featured this week in Rieth Recital Hall. Performers include violinist Greta Breckbill, music composition major Patrick Ressler and music/piano pedagogy major Ana Yoder.
On Saturday, April 2, Breckbill will perform both solo violin and ensemble string pieces at 4 p.m. in Rieth Recital Hall. The performance will include a Bach piece in which she will demonstrate her individual talent by performing unaccompanied. Three fellow music students—Elspeth Stalter, Chelsea Wimmer and Justin Yoder—will be joining Breckbill on stage for the first movement of a Borodin piece. Work by Tchaikovsky and Shubert will also be featured throughout the show. Breckbill’s experience with the music department at Goshen College has equipped her with the personal attention that formed her into a capable and independent musician.“Being in a small, nurturing musical community like the one at Goshen has helped me really get in touch with my own musical voice,” said Breckbill.
Yoder will showcase her solo piano repertoire on Sunday, April 3 at 4 p.m. in Rieth Recital Hall. Styles will range widely with a baroque period piece by Bach, classical Beethoven movements and more expressive, contemporary pieces like a nocturne composed by Samuel Barber. The performance will not include any additional musical performers, allowing for Yoder’s solo work to be the primary focus.
“It’s just me and a piano on stage, that’s it,” said Yoder.
Though the performance will showcase simply Ana and her piano, she acknowledges that her motivation to study and pursue music is actually relationally motivated.
“I enjoy connecting with other people through music. Music is also a way for me to express myself and I think to also experience a connection with God and with other people,” she said.
Later in the day on April 3, Ressler’s senior recital with be held in at 7:30 p.m., also in Rieth Recital Hall. As a music education major with a composition focus, all of the music being showcased on Sunday night will have been composed entirely by the Ressler himself. The show will include fourteen choral, solo and instrumental pieces that will incorporate a variety voices, harp, flute, strings and piano. Many of the pieces being performed were composed by Ressler with strong messages behind them because of the context in which they were written. One particular piece, entitled “Song of the Silenced,” is meant to shine light on the civil war in Guatemala, in which Ressler wrote after spending time there.
This song, as well as many of the others being performed, will have “a powerful faith-based message,” said Ressler. The show will last approximately an hour, with performances that seek, according to Ressler, to “take you on a journey through the familiar, the foreign, the mundane and the mystical.”
