Last Friday afternoon I found myself seated in McNeir Hall amidst a sea of grey hair, staring expectantly at a stage filled with nothing but a grand piano. For a brief moment, I felt like I was back in my piano recital days, since the scene before me contained the two images still in my mind from my youth: rows of past-middle-aged folks holding pamphlets and an ominous piano beckoning to me. These thoughts, however, quickly dissipated when the wonderful Ralitza Patcheva took the stage and began pounding classical classics on the waiting ivories. The performance was the first of Georgetown University’s Friday Music Series of this year. If you have neither attended nor heard of this institution, don’t be alarmed—you aren’t alone.
The Friday Music Series is a program sponsored by the Department of Performing Arts, which brings nationally recognized musicians to campus for free concerts on Friday afternoons. According to Anna Celenza, the chair of the Department of Performing Arts, the series is a way to correlate music students’ curriculum with the musical works themselves; students can take what they are studying in the classroom and witness its live translation on stage.
Providing free music on campus is a great opportunity for students with little money left over for entertainment after all of the myriad expenses of college. But when I attended the first performance last Friday, only fifteen or so students showed up, which speaks to one of the series biggest problems: very few students know about it. The students who do know about the Friday Music Series are mostly those taking music classes with professors who either recommend or require that they attend performances. So while the series is achieving one of its aims, complementing the music curriculum and its classes, it is failing to reach the wider student body.
Graham Wolf (COL ’11), a music major (and former Voice staffer), said that he attended quite a few performances of the Friday Music Series last semester, usually those that complemented his music classes’ curricula. Wolf noted that the department should consider featuring more diverse genres of music. The series’ lineup this semester includes mostly classical peformances. The small number of jazz and international music performances—not to mention an altogether absence of popular music styles—do little to expand its base beyond the academic and the advanced in age.
In addition, advertising for the Friday Music Series is minimal. The extent of the promotion for last week’s show was a few bland flyers posted near the entrance of McNeir, and a mention buried at the bottom of the weekly GUSA events email. Christine Pfeil (COL ‘10), a psychology and studio arts major, said that in all of her four years at Georgetown, she had only attended one performance, and hadn’t heard any of her friends talking about the series. Investing a little more time in advertising would be sure to attract a larger response from the student population.
College students have a lot of distractions, and only a few will seek out little-advertised classical music concerts on Friday afternoons. That’s not to say, however, that we shouldn’t.
