by Aaron Butts
Coinciding with Homecoming and Phi Mu Alpha’s founder’s day is Phi Mu Alpha’s annual American Music Recital (AMR), which is an event to celebrate American musicians that will take place at 5:15 p.m. Saturday Oct. 6 in Huntington Recital Hall.
“All of the music performed is written or arranged by an American composer or songwriter,” Alex Knerem, a senior, and member of Phi Mu Alpha fraternity performing at this weekend’s AMR, said.
“It’s a part of our obligation as Phi Mu Alpha to advance music in America.”
The program is just the latest event held by Phi Mu Alpha, which has performed numerous annual AMR performances since their founding a little over 60 years ago.
For Phi Mu Alpha’s John McClain, who is the music director for the fraternity, timing has always been a complicated thing to coordinate in order to allow alumni to attend.
This year’s AMR happens to coincide with homecoming as a way for current Phi Mu Alphas to reach out to alumni.
“It hasn’t always been scheduled with homecoming,” McClain said.
“It started last year with the showcase recital in the spring where we wanted to have an annual event every alumni weekend.”
The AMR also works in with the festivities that take place for homecoming.
The performance itself will follow the founder’s day celebration which follows the day’s homecoming activities, and as McClain describes “That evening was not taken up by anything.”
This year’s AMR will include many varied performances with many different pieces performed.
“The only requirement is that it has to be something that has been arranged or composed by an American; those are the only stipulations,” McClain said. “We’ll be performing anything from Samuel Barber to ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ and everyone knows brown eyed girl.”
According to Doug Gugel-Bryant, a senior member of Phi Mu Alpha, “Performances are both instrumental and vocal in nature and are performed by either current members, alumni members, or faculty members.”
“We have a couple good group numbers that we are doing as well as individuals that are performing, along with a wide range of music,” Knerem said.
“We have some instrumentalists; Doug Gugel-Bryant is playing guitar and that alone is enough to make people come. Dr. Bryant is performing as well, actually; he’s playing piano and he’s a fantastic musician so that’ll be a lot of fun.”
John McClain described the performances as largely focused on vocal performance due to the fact that “We’re a very vocal-heavy chapter.”
Everyone in Phi Mu Alpha seems to be very excited about the whole day, with both founders day and the AMR going on, it is a big night for them, and a very important time for them to showcase their skills.
An added plus for Alex Knerem is that “It’s always been a big thing for us to play music that was written by American composers. It’s going to be a good time.”
This whole event is just another way that Phi Mu Alpha is trying to be more apparent on campus.
“We would like to see a great turnout of people to support Phi Mu Alpha.” McClain said. “We want to become better known around campus.
We are working on projects to become more well-known, and I think this is a great way to do that.”
abutts@capital.edu
