A composition recital requires a lot of collaborators, so planning and communication is critical to a successful senior recital.

Scheduling one semester ahead

• Register for MUSP 400 Senior Recital as early as possible. Registration is a prerequisite for reserving a time for the recital.
• The date and time of the recital is up to you, but Miller Concert Hall is generally preferable due to its large stage for multiple setups and ease of percussion load in/out.
• Dates later in the semester may be tempting, but remember that everyone else is also scheduling their junior and senior recitals, and you will need to coordinate schedules for performances and rehearsals with many people. The later it gets, the trickier this can get!
• If you are already collaborating with performers for your recital, that’s great! Try to get their input on your recital date/time as well (but also know you may not be able to accommodate everyone). It’s never too soon to start getting performers to commit to performing on your recital.

Planning the recital semester

• The School of Music requires that senior recitals have a faculty committee consisting of your primary teacher and two others. The other two are up to you, though you may want to get input from your primary teacher as well. You should try to confirm your faculty committee during the first two weeks of the semester in which you give the recital.

Note: Submissions below should be sent as links to cloud-shared folders in Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. Please do not email loads of files to your professors!

Score Review: Due at the end of Week 2

• You should have completed all the compositions you wish to present on your senior recital by the end of the second week of the recital semester. Final PDFs of all scores (where applicable) should be submitted to the members of your committee by the end of Week 2.
• Only with permission of your primary instructor, you may include a work-in-progress. You and your instructor should set a clear deadline for the completion of this work by the end of Week 2 as well.

Program Review: Due six weeks before the recital date

• Submit a completed recital program to your committee, including the names of all performers for all pieces on the recital. Any changes to the recital from this point forward must be approved by your primary instructor.
  • Please make it clear to any percussionists on your program that they must coordinate the use of any WSU percussion equipment with the WSU percussion studio faculty and that the performers are responsible for the care of that equipment.
• Completed programs must include program notes for each piece. Your committee members may request revisions before printing.
• Remember that printing programs is the student’s responsibility! Be sure to leave Shocker Printing enough time to complete your order without a rush fee!
• For programs that occur during the first half of the semester, program review is due with Score Review at the end of Week 2.

Recital Hearing: Due two weeks before the recital date

• Submit a complete rehearsal run-through recording of each piece on your recital. You should be present for this recording.
• You can check out a handheld recorder from Dr. MacDonald to help with this process.
• The recording doesn’t need to be perfect. It can have flaws or be slightly under-tempo, but it needs to be without stops.
• All personnel on the recording must be the same as the personnel on your recital program.

Dress rehearsal

• You are entitled to a two-hour dress rehearsal in the hall prior to your recital. It’s ok if not everyone on your program can make it.
• Be sure to coordinate any necessary load in/out times as needed.
• Make a schedule for how you will use the two hours of your dress rehearsal. If some pieces can’t be rehearsed due to players being unavailable, that’s ok! It’s also ok if not every piece gets the same amount of time or the program is rehearsed out of order. If you have the same person performing on more than one piece, it’s a courtesy to try to put their pieces next to each other in the rehearsal so they don’t have to wait.

Recital protocol

• Call time and load in: If you have percussion or electronics or any other kind of complex setup, be sure to you plan for a load in. You’ll need to coordinate with Performance Facilities (or the venue for an off-campus recital) when you will be able to get in and set up, and this should be communicated with your performers. Any last-minute sound-checks should also be part of this schedule. Be sure to communicate a call time for all performers, especially if you have different call times for different people.
• Attire: You should dress nice. You’re an adult and can decide what that means for you. You should also determine what you would like your performers to wear and be sure to communicate that clearly to them at least a couple of weeks ahead of time so they can plan accordingly.
• Speaking: Composers don’t always speak before performances of their works, but it’s common enough that you should practice doing so and that you should demonstrate your facility with this skill in your senior recital. In general, plan to speak briefly about each piece, even though you have also provided program notes. I recommend speaking after the first piece and then before each subsequent piece. Whatever you decide to do, be sure to communicate this with your performers!
• Bowing: You don’t need to take a composer-bow at the end of each piece, since you wrote everything on the program. You can just take a bow at the very end. Be sure to communicate bowing with your performers. They should bow like normal (once when they come out, and then once after the piece). The performers of the last piece should then gesture to you to take your composer-bow.
• Say “thank you.” It may be obvious, but just saying thank you means a lot. Please do not pay your performers for your senior recital. Yes, we appreciate all the work that goes into performing at a high level, especially new music. However, it becomes a slippery slope where composers may end up having to outbid one another or make compositional choices based on who they can pay. Having said that, saying thank you and maybe buying them a coffee wouldn’t go amiss. Please treat this as a thoughtful gift, rather than an pre-negotiated payment for their services.