Alejandro Reyna \u201917 was finishing his freshman year at Wabash when he attended\u00a0a recital of original compositions by Taylor Neal \u201914.<\/p>\n
\u201cWords always fall short of conveying the beauty of any composed piece of art,\u201d Reyna wrote in his blog on the Wabash Web site. \u201cHaving said that, I wish you could have listened to the compositions he shared.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat experience reaffirmed my decision to be music major, and I am eager to begin my independent study, when I will begin to apply the music theory I have learned to composition.\u201d<\/p>\n
That learning\u00a0and inspiration come full circle Saturday, April 8, at 4:30 in Salter Hall, when Reyna will present his own senior recital of original compositions. (Click\u00a0on the music slider above to listen to\u00a0excerpts\u00a0from rehearsals of Reyna’s oboe suite, piano work, and quintet for strings.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The music is no less than the culmination of his Wabash liberal arts experience, four years during which he\u2019s thrived as a singer, musician, and composer, but also been surprised by his love of subjects he\u2019d never studied before and his participation in the Center for Innovation, Business, and Entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I\u2019d have taken psychology and philosophy classes earlier in my time here I would have minored in one of them,\u201d Reyna says, noting that he saw value of the philosophy, in particular, during the senior colloquium class he completed last semester.<\/p>\n His time living with a host family in Ecuador, learning the folk music of that country, and performing there also inform his music and comprise an\u00a0education far different than he would have received if he\u2019d chosen the more music-focused curriculum at the other school he considered, the Berklee College of Music in Boston.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I had attended Berklee my focus would have been on jazz composition, I wouldn\u2019t have studied Spanish (his minor) or philosophy, and I doubt if I would have joined a choral group,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Reyna performed his first solo with the Wabash College Glee Club last fall, and he wrote a piece for the group for his recital.<\/p>\n \u201cSo much of what I learned here is in the music I have written,\u201d says Reyna, who hails from near Houston, Texas and whose family will hear his compositions for the first time at Saturday\u2019s recital.\u00a0He says he\u2019s looking forward to seeing them, but is also a little nervous about what they\u2019ll think of his music.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been away from them for\u00a0four years,\u201d he says, \u201cand this music represents what I have done.\u201d<\/p>\n It also reveals much of the man Reyna has become during his four years at Wabash.<\/p>\n Professor Peter Hulen, his composition teacher and chair of the music department, believes Reyna has nothing to worry about. A recital like this, Hulen says, \u201cgives full meaning to a\u00a0composer’s work,\u00a0allowing\u00a0it to be shared as real, live music as a human process\u00a0with appreciative participants. It is nothing less than finally rendering concept into art, idea into human experience. What could be more exemplary of what we do at Wabash?\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Steve Charles<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alejandro Reyna \u201917 was finishing his freshman year at Wabash when he attended\u00a0a recital of original compositions by Taylor Neal \u201914. \u201cWords always fall short of conveying the beauty of any composed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3442,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"audio","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-audio","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-videos","category-uncategorized","category-works-in-progress","post_format-post-format-audio"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/04\/img_0577-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3439"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3451,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3439\/revisions\/3451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}