By Lyn Bronson
It has only been a few years since California State University Monterey Bay (CUSMB) has had an approved music major program. We had an opportunity to see the fruits of this program this afternoon as graduating senior, soprano Andrea Blunt, walked out in front of an audience of family, friends and faculty to present to the public her degree recital, assisted by pianist Tiffany Truett.
It was an impressive performance! Ms. Blunt navigated her way through a difficult program running the gamut from the Mozart motet, Exsultate Jubilate, to contemporary songs she herself wrote and performed. Along the way we heard German Lieder by Schumann, French Art Songs by Chausson, Fauré and Ravel, and 20th-century contemporary songs by Hindemith and Copland.
To walk out cold and start with the difficult Mozart was no easy task, and if she were suffering from nerves, she concealed it well, and by the time she reached the final Alleluja she was at the top of her form and blazing forth like a supremely confident and seasoned coloratura. Her windup of the Alleluja gave me Goosebumps.
As we might expect from a student who spent the second semester of her junior year in Paris studying at the Sorbonne, Blunt displayed a special affinity for French art songs. Her moving performance of Fauré’s Après un Rěve was fabulous. It brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. Pianist Tiffany Truett showed her mettle in the lovely accompaniment of the Chausson Le temps des lilas, where her nicely articulated and multi-colored, almost orchestral, sound achieved a restrained but vital intensity that was very impressive.
In Ravel’s Manteau de fleurs soprano Blunt showed the darker side of her voice, and it was smooth and intense. The last of the French songs, Fleur jetée, was a virtuoso tour de force for both Blunt and Truett, and it was a knockout! A surprise on the program was the brief and unfamiliar song by Hindemith, which made me think that if there are more songs from this composer as good as this one, we have been missing something.
Blunt ended her program with two songs she composed, and then threw in some more as encores. At this point we were hearing an entirely different Andrea Blunt as contemporary song writer and performer. Assisted by a microphone and amplification, we could almost hear the lyrics, although her piano playing tended to be so loud that the lyrics were frequently buried. But, then, every once in a while she shifted gears to a lower dynamic, and this gave us an opportunity to hear how lovely and lyrical her voice can be in her own compositions, and also to hear how nicely she integrates the vocals with the accompaniment.
Paulette Gissendanner, Andrea Blunt and Richard Bains
After warm and enthusiastic applause from the audience, Blunt’s teacher, Professor Paulette Gissendanner, and the Director of the Music & Performing Arts program, Professor Richard Bains, came forward and awarded her a certificate of appreciation and a Gold Medal.
We have heard that there are 25 declared music majors entering CSUMB this coming September. We will be looking forward to many more fine senior recitals in the future.
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