By Kalena Reynolds | Staff Writer
Get your spook on and join the School of Music for a night of music, costumes and fun at their Halloween Organ Concert on Thursday. Nine students will perform pieces centered around Halloween, and the event will double as CAE credit.
Wichita, Kan., senior Laura Smith has been heavily involved in organizing the concert and ensuring that the performances all run smoothly. She has also been working on her own organ pieces and matching themed costumes for the show.
Smith is incredibly excited for the organ concert because it will highlight the instrument in a unique way through modern-day arrangements rather than the usual classical music that people might think of.
“I love it when people realize that there’s so much the organ can do,” Smith said. “I think a lot of people only really encounter the organ in the context of a church, playing hymns or doing classical music, but it’s such a versatile instrument — especially the organ that we have in Jones concert hall is a really huge instrument.”
Jens Korndörfer, associate professor of organ, said Smith spent a large amount of time planning this event. She said the student deserves an abundance of credit for organizing the concert while still preparing her own piece and crafting her costume.
“She’s [Laura’s] the one who really put the program together, and she’s really the one who’s masterminding this,” Korndörfer said. “I’m very grateful to her.”
While some students have been preparing their arrangements for over a year and a half in advance, others started the process in the spring. Most of the pieces that will be showcased in the concert will be taken from movies or musicals such as “How to Train Your Dragon” and “WALL-E,” Smith said.
“I can tell you, we’re going to have ‘Star Wars,’ some ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ and we’re going to do some of the classic organ music, Halloween stuff, like Bach D minor,” Smith said. “We’ll also have a few collaborative numbers where we bring in vocalists and other instrumentalists.”
To create their arrangements, students must go through a detailed process of choosing each note they want to play in order to translate the song to the organ.
“It’s not just learning the notes and making it work on the organ, but first you have to actually decide which notes you are going to play because there is no organ version,” Korndörfer said. “So they use either the orchestral score or a piano reduction and then they see what they can make happen on the organ.”
This is usually a long process that the students spend a lot of time on and utilize lots of guidance from their professors in order to craft the arrangements successfully. After this process is done, the students shift their focus to practicing and mastering their pieces for the performance.
The concert will have nine different organ major students performing, and a mix of four vocalists, percussionists and string bass will accompany the students. The performers are also creating their own costumes to coordinate with the pieces they are playing.
“We all try to dress up in a costume that matches the theme of our piece. So, last year, I played “How to Train Your Dragon,” and I dressed up in all black and got some little wings, and was Toothless,” Smith said. “And, if we have ‘Phantom of The Opera,’ somebody’s going to come in the iconic mask and just really 100% commit to the bit.”
Smith said the performers also invite the attendees to come in their own costumes. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 31 at Jones Hall.
