GENTRY: And Now Great Arts at Eastern - coming to you from the Portales campus of Eastern New Mexico University. I'm Jeff Gentry, here on KENW: Your Public Radio Network. Today my guest is Sidney Shuler of ENMU‘s Department of Music. He Co-Conducts the annual Holiday Concert, which will be released between now and December 20th. Thank you very much for joining me today.
SHULER: Glad to be here Doctor Gentry, thanks for inviting me.
GENTRY: So, earlier this week you presented a wonderful faculty recital with Pamela Shuler and Miles Massicotte and now the holiday concert on Friday. What do you do in your spare time?
SHULER: I would say that that's kind of a thing of the past,
GENTRY: Right
SHULER: In 2020 we've all kind of adapted to our current situation and in adapting to anything we always have to take a little bit more time to make sure we're delivering the same kind of quality that we're all individually expecting of ourselves and those that we work with expect from us. now that being said a lot of free time, but free time like I do have is generally my family.
GENTRY: Right and the big family there with, what three dogs and two children and your wife.
SHULER: Well we have two dogs now, that we lost one July of 19 but we still have the dog family and the kids of course around.
GENTRY: Alright.
SHULER: It's been good. That's probably one of the biggest positives of this particular situation is just how much closer we've all been unable to grow during all the time that we have to spend in the same space.
GENTRY: Well, one really great thing is that the Music Department has its YouTube page; which has scores of fantastic performances; including your recital that you performed earlier this week and then the holiday concert. Can you name some of the featured numbers that we could listen to on Friday?
SHULER: Well, I'm pretty sure that Mr. Seifert is looking through some old holiday concerts to help the post with the obvious dearth of performance opportunities where we would gather with large number of students. We're going to try to put together some of the old concerts in with the presentation of a recent work that we're dealing with right now. I'm not sure if it's going to be released on Friday which is the original date but we certainly will make it before the deadline of the 20th, I think of what we had hoped for at the end. But the piece that we're trying to put together here lastly of the semester is the Holly and the Ivy. The wonderful arrangement the standard Christmas tune. and one of the things that's really somewhat convenient about it, is that it is a consistent tempo from beginning to end. So, it is one of the easier tunes if you will or the production, the advanced production, what is that we have to do in this situation. So, what we have done is provided the music to the students so that they can be working on their own. Give them their projected temple and the section leaders have been working with the different section based of like instruments to help them improve the individual performing of what it is we're doing. I was able to produce a click track to that the two free easily, because again it was the same tempo throughout and then you apply that to the audio recording and send the overall performed recording from the studio and the click track to the students. they were headphones and they perform their own recorded version of their part. and then it is back together by one of our talented students, Vicky Garcia, and we get a final product of all the students that are printed participating in the recording, and works out pretty well. But, as you may have noted a little lengthy in production. So generally, more than 40 - 50 students at this time of year participating. it can be a little daunting to get it all together especially with all the new, the new tech requirements and skills that we're all learning on a regular basis right now.
GENTRY: Right and so one new featured presentation and then some greatest hits it sounds like.
SHULER: Yeah, I think that's what we're going to be trying to do I'm not sure if there will be several recordings or all put together in one recording on YouTube. but I believe that is the goal.
GENTRY: Great, alright so not necessarily on Friday, but soon the music department's YouTube page will find the holiday concert, as well as right now, you can listen to the Shuler‘s and Massicotte recital which was recorded earlier this week. Thank you said Shuler for visiting Great Arts at Eastern. And so, for folks to be able to find the concert when it's up, you can go to the YouTube page enmu.edu/MusicPerformances. Thanks for listening on KENW your public radio network.