Printer Friendly Version - Faculty Recital at Community Music School Sunday, Nov. 20

Tom Briggs, Music Director of CMS and a retired member of the United States Coast Guard Band, will play in three different musical settings in the upcoming concert. Photo by Rita Christopher/The Courier

It’s true! Music teachers get butterflies when they perform at recitals, just as their students do.

Instructors at the Community Music School (CMS) in Centerbrook will perform at the Faculty Concert on Sunday, Nov. 20 at 3 p.m. at the Centerbrook Meeting House.

“An amount of nervousness is part of performing,” according to trumpet teacher Patricia Hurley, one of the musicians involved.

Hurley will be playing six songs by Charles Ives, who was born in 1874 in Danbury. Ives spend his professional life as an insurance executive but was a prolific composer in his spare time. He is regarded among the foremost of American early modernist composers.

For string instructor Martha Herrle, the recital will provide a particularly satisfying moment, the opportunity to perform with Bridget Haines, a former student of hers.

“Bridget was my student from the time she was eight until she graduated from high school,” Herrle noted.

Now Haines, who has a music education degree, is a string teacher at Farmington High School and a new instructor at CMS.

Herrle and Haines will play "Midnight at El Sido’s Zydeco and Blues Bar" by Dave Remilis, a piece for two violas.

“The piece is pretty funky,” Herrle admitted, adding she hopes it gives the audience a chance to appreciate there are “lots of kinds of music in the world.”

Herrle nearly did not become a musician at all. She had intended to major in chemistry in college but spent the summer before freshman year as a nanny in Salzburg, Austria, taking care of the two children of an opera singer. She took music lessons herself, heard music all around her, and decided to change majors.

She has no regrets as she looks back on her career. “At this point of my life, getting to work with children, collaborate with talented faculty, and to feel creative constantly, I know I made the right choice,” she said.

Tom Briggs, Music Director of CMS and a retired member of the United States Coast Guard Band, will play in three different musical settings in the upcoming concert.

He will perform an original composition called "Duettino for Vibraphone and Flute", with flute instructor Helene Rosenblatt. He will also play in a faculty jazz trio, again on vibraphone, with guitar teacher Kevin O’Neal and bass instructor Matt McCauley.

Briggs has also arranged four pieces by Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla for a 15-member ensemble of CMS faculty.

Other performers on the upcoming program include Tom Hudson on cello, Emilio Garcia on classical guitar, Ling-Fei King on oboe as well Audrey Estelle, and Patrice Newman on piano.

Additional musicians performing in the 15-member ensemble include Adam Meyers on trombone, Jonathan Thomas on keyboard, and Richard Wyman on alto saxophone.

Wyman, who retired from the Coast Guard band as assistant director, is the Executive Director of the Community Music School.

“The faculty concert gives the community a chance to appreciate the excellence of our music teachers,” he said. “We have an outstanding faculty and our students benefit from their excellence.”

And yes, the faculty at the upcoming concert has a suggestion for dealing with the nerves that accompany a performance. They know it and their students have heard it before: practice.