The Gordon College Symphony Orchestra tonight, Saturday, March 28 at 7 pm, will be performing its spring concert in the A.J. Gordon Chapel on campus. Admission is free. Students are excited to share pieces that they have been working on since the beginning of the spring semester.
The concert has a repertoire of three pieces, opening with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, performed by just the string portion of the orchestra. They will be performing this portion without a conductor, fully student-led by the concertmaster, Aidan Montmeny. The conductor and director of the Gordon Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Band is Dr. Robert Southard.
This piece will be followed by “Erbarme dich, mein Gott” (“Have mercy Lord, My God, for the sake of my tears”) from Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, which will feature the vocal soloist Jake Bump, winner of Gordon’s 2025 Concerto Competition. This piece will also include a violin solo by Aidan Montmeny, as well as Dr. Jessica Modaff playing a part on the harpsichord.
Then the night will close with Shubert’s “Unfinished Symphony,” the Symphony No. 8 in B minor, which will pull in the winds, brass, and percussion of the orchestra.
During an interview, Dr. Southard explained how he chooses the repertoire for the spring concert. He bases it on whoever won the concerto competition – in this case, the vocalist Jake Bump.
I asked Jake what it was like to audition for the Concerto Competition, and he said he originally wasn’t planning to do it. He doesn’t like to compete, but after encouragement from his teacher, he performed the aria from St. Matthew’s Passion that he will be singing on Saturday. In the middle of his night shift after the competition, he received an email he had never expected, stating he had won. Jake says it was rewarding to receive it and to realize, “Oh, I can do it. I can do this.”
Jake finds this solo sad but beautiful. In St. Matthew’s Passion, an oratorio written about the events surrounding the death of Christ, this aria comes after Peter denies Jesus three times, and portrays him begging, “Lord, have mercy upon me.”
While the aria was originally written in German, Jake has chosen to perform an English translation because he thinks it is important that the audience can understand it. He personally chose this translation as the most accurate to the original meaning while retaining its poetic beauty.
Jake feels more than ready to perform this piece he knows so well, and he hopes the audience finds it as moving as he does. “I think the message is very beautiful,” he says. According to Jake, it is important for musicians to connect to the music they perform, as it is their job to relay the music’s message to the audience. He says that when you perform a piece you’ve grown to love, “you want people to love it with you.”
He believes that it is exactly this love that causes seasoned musicians to still suffer from performance anxiety. “There would be something wrong with you if you didn’t have it – it means you care. You care about what you’re doing.”
Based on Jake’s aria, Dr. Southard chose another piece by Bach, then chose a piece that he feels all music majors should get a chance to play before they graduate – the “Unfinished Symphony.” This symphony was one of Shubert’s last works, which he never completed before his death. He only wrote the first two movements, and according to Dr. Southard, these two movements have always drawn people in because they “tantalize your imagination as to what the rest of the piece could have been.”
Schubert’s piece is a prime example of the power of classical music, and Dr. Southard feels that Gordon College serves its community beautifully by offering these free musical concerts. That’s what seems to draw people in – the music shows such a high level of performance, and yet the performers are still students.
This year, Dr. Southard would love to see more engagement from younger members of the community, who may believe that classical music only caters to older generations. The Unfinished Symphony, in particular, has strong emotions that can touch listeners of any age.
There are parts “where it makes you sad, parts where you get really tense, and everything builds up, and then when that relaxes, it’s a sense [that you] just went through something,” Dr. Southard says. “Classical music isn’t this elitist thing. It really is for everybody.”
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