Bloomington, IN: Summer Clinic Faculty/Staff Recital at Jacobs School of Music (6/19)

The last thing we did with Mike and Kalina was to head over to the Jacobs School of Music for a free recital. The Jacobs School offers a ton of free (and paid) music over the course of the year, and during the summer they host events for the Summer Festival of the Arts. Most of the festival events cost money, except for the one we went to, which was free!

The Jacobs School has several buildings on campus, but the one on Jordan Avenue with the fountains (Simon Music Center) is the one in most of the photos :) We went in here, to Auer Hall, for our concert.

Auer Hall seats 400 via floor and balcony seating. We sat in the front row of the balcony (tricky to get to -- the stairs to go up are outside the hall) in a packed house. I thought it was a really nice space and the acoustics were great.

The concert itself was lovely and had some variety to it. There were several duets and quartets, along with one solo, one trio, and one quintet. There were nine pieces performed altogether, ranging from a string quartet to "Variations on Porgy and Bess", which was our favorite because it was performed on a marimba! That's the giant xylophone-looking thing to the right in the photo above. You can see a video of the performance of the guy who played, Chris Murphree, of that song here. But really everyone was very good and I am glad we were able to go. We will definitely need to head to more Jacobs School concerts over the next few years while we are here, because how many people get to claim a world-famous music school just a few miles from home?