Page 8 University Daily Kansan, April 29. 1982
Senior recital concludes college musical career
By LISAGUTIERREZ
Staff Reporter
A once-in-a-lifetime shot
From the beginning of their college careers, music performance majors at the University of Kansas look forward to this day with dread and anticipation.
It is a requirement for a bachelor's degree. Music in front of them. No second chance. Just one hour of performance...
"Some get so nervous it's all they can do to walk out on the stage." Richard Angeloet, professor of music, said recently.
"But most of them do all right."
At least 20 undergraduate students give senior recitals a year at KU, he said.
Angeletti said the seniors gave a preview performance for the music faculty about four weeks before the actual recital. They play their proposed program and the instructor assembles Angelotti called his a checkpoint.
point
The grade the seniors receive for their senior recital is the grade they receive for the entire semester.
"I don't think it has ever happened that they don't pass," Angelaeli said. "It's never happened since I've been here."
what happens if the student should do poorly at the checkpoint performance?
"They would either have to wait for their recital or change their major," Angelaetti said. "I don't think they'd want to change it so late, though."
A certain amount of pressure is involved in the senior recital performance.
SENIOR RECITALS are harder for piano majors, Angelietti said. Voice majors or flutists can at least share the moment with an accompanist.
Do both impacts go on. One performance on stage. In front of KU music faculty, parents, friends and fellow music students.
Friday night was Kristi Hoffman's turn. It was a culmination of 14 years of piano lessons, the last four under the tutelage of Angelaetti at KU.
Mug night was clear, with just a hint of left-over winter still hanging in the April evening air. Activity was Friday-night feverish.
Life went on around her, Kristi,
Bartlesville, Oka., senior, thought, as
she and her parents suck out the back
door of Bellas Hall at 7 p.m.
The men of Pearson Hall and the
women of Sellards Hall were engaged in counter-assaults of water balloons and raw eggs on Sellards' front lawn.
It would be been silly, Kristi's mother, Barbara, said later, to try to go out the front door with Kristi wearing her zown.
Swarthout Hall was hers from 8 to 9 p.m., the appointed time for the performance.
"I don't look at it as the end of the road," Kristi said two days earlier, as she walked across the campus in Murphy Hall. "I think it's the culmination of four years of work.
"I have to prove to myself and to others that I can do it."
The pressure, Kristi said, was almost nonexistent.
SHE KNEW WELL the pieces she was to perform.
"I performed them at home during spring break in a nursing home, and I've played some of them since last year," she said.
"Actually, I try not to think of being nervous because if I do, then I will be
"I just think about the music."
She's been thinking about music since childhood. She grew up in an environment rich in musical background. Her mother had 11 years of piano lessons, and her father in second grade, a bassoonist, taught her piano and Orchestra. Kristi's mother said the Hoffman family was very musically oriented.
"She has a sister, Heidi, who was in
Kristi Hoffman
kZR106
ballet and her sister, Sara, plays the piano and the cello," Mrs. Hoffman said.
"If you want to see hands, you sit on the left," Kristi's mother replied knowingly.
"Kristi always said she could not live without her music."
"Where do you want to sit, Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman?" one of Kristi's friends asked her parents.
The Sellards delegation seated itself behind her parents. They waited.
Kristi made the move from playing at family Christmas gatherings to performing in chamber music concerts at KU with ease.
They had stopped to hear her play on their way to the Sellards formal.
Kristi rehearsed until almost five minutes before show time.
About a dozen of the women were from Sellards. They, like Kristi, were dressed in formal wear.
BUT FRIDAY NIGHT was piano night.
Kristi plays the flute, also.
Her father took pictures of Kristi as she sat on the stage at 7:30. The hall was empty, except for a light-and-dashed setting up mikes in front of the stage.
While Kristi was warming up, the rectal hair slowly filled with friends, fellow music students and loved ones.
The impromptu photo session ended as Kristi walked to her music teacher's studio for a few minutes of practice—and praver.
"The next picture the camera's going to crack," Kristi said, laughing.
"Kristi, I think you only have two pictures left on this camera," her father told her as the camera went CLICK and the smile left her face.
From behind the solid-oak door of Richard Angellet's studio came a rush of last-minute music laid out on the keyboard as she went over the music,
Angletti knocked on the door at 7:54. The music stopped. The door opened quickly.
the music she knew so well, one last time.
"IkHi Kristi, I bet you're anxious to angeletti said as he entered the room.
Kristi smiled. "Yeah, oh dear."
AS THEY WALKED toward the recital hall, Angelaetti thanked Kristi for the flowers she had sent him earlier in the afternoon.
"Oh, you deserve them for having to put up with me for four years," she
"I know a secret way to get to the hall." Angelaetti told her as they approached Swarthout Hall and the 60 or so people waiting there for her.
"I don't think you want to walk in front of all those people."
Three minutes later, Kristi walked on stage.
They climbed the stairs, side by side, like a coach prepping his athlete for the big game.
The house lights dimmed. She adjusted the knobs of the piano bench.
Warm applause greeted her as she acknowledged the audience before sitting at the piano.
Back straight, fingers silently
caressing the keys, Kristi prayed,
loved.
She played four pieces, Scarlati,
Beethoven, Brahms and Debusy. Her
musica was like a sweet labyrinth. It
would be music of a silent-screen meltdrama.
"Lord, help me to do this to glorify you," she prayed.
Kristi sighed. Then she played.
When she lifted her fingers from the keys to go to another movement, the silence in the hall was deafening. All eyes were on Kristi, her hands and arms as they charm the music from the wooden box.
Each time her fingers left the keys, a vacuum silenced the hall.
HER MOTHER cried.
Her performance, broken into two segments by a short, breath-catching intermission, ended with a traditional bang of chords.
"It was a battle the whole way," she said afterward. "It's very easy for me to want to play for the sake of playing well." [11]
well.
"It's really hard not to do it just for myself."
The tears flowed freely after the performance, from relief and from happiness.
Tears shone on everyone's cheeks.
Krist's, her mom's and her best friend's.
"On, you played beautifully," Angeletti boasted as he hugged Kristi backstage.
The 'entourage took Kristi to a reception on the upper floors of Mur
"You can tell she's been practicing a lot," a proud mother told Angelietti.
ply.
More hugs, more tears. On Kristi's part, relief.
"I play it hone through that I was playing for God," she said. "And if they did enjoy the recital, it's because the light shone through."
Her father said that Kristi's enthusiasm for music tends to spill over into everything she does.
"Yes, she certainly does like to play. It's her life and she's told us that that's all she really wants."
Kristi said she would like to teach music. She is receiving a degree in music education, a move her mother made after she finally more than music performance.
"She's in love with her music and it's an expression, it fulfills a need to ex-
Friday night's recital was the last piano performance Kristi would give at KU.
"The first thing I thought of when she finished playing was that I was going to miss her," said Shannon Zenoter, Hays junior, and Kristi's roommate.
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