By Ashley Bradley/ne news editor
NE Campus music faculty will play a Veterans Day concert to pay respect to the military.
Two pieces written by music assistant professor Edwardo Perez will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 11 in College Hall (NCAB 1111).
The first, called Postlude: E Pluribus Unum and composed solely by Perez, will be played on the piano.
Perez said this piece centers on the aftermath of war. He said when wars end, people are left thinking, “What now?”
“Like when Sept. 11 happened, on Sept. 12,people didn’t know what to do next,” he said.
Though Perez has an idea of the melody he will play and the message he is trying to convey, he doesn’t have anything written in stone.
He said instead of having a structure, he will just go with what he feels.
“It’s not jazz, but what I like to call free atonal improvisation,” he said. “The audience will hopefully connect to it.”
The second piece, Requiem for the Unknown Soldier, will be composed by the performers: music instructors Glori Vela on viola; Rebecca Scherschell on the harp; Stan Paschal, tenor soloist, and Perez on trumpet and percussion.
Perez said when he decided to write pieces to be played on Veterans Day, he researched and thought about what he wanted to portray with his music. He thought about his family and his father, his father’s father, his uncles and his cousins, who were all once enlisted in the armed forces.
“To me, writing music is about expression. It’s about what I’m feeling and experiencing as I think about whatever topic or object I’m trying to illustrate with music,” he said.
“Painters use paint and brushes. Composers use notes and rhythms, but we’re all artists trying to say something with our chosen medium.”
Paschal said that the Requiem for the Unknown Soldier is a different kind of song about soldiers, and the perspective isn’t one normally heard.
“It is very unique and cool,” he said.
Perez said that even though he wrote six different versions of the song, he finally found one he liked.
“It isn’t a requiem for us to perform for the Unknown Soldier,” he said. “It’s a requiem performed by the Unknown Soldier for us.”
He said he wanted to convey that the Unknown Soldiers, who are already dead, are giving those still alive instructions to move on and live in peace.
“As an inspiration for this piece, I listened to and played taps on my trumpet several times,” he said. “It’s a very short and simple piece, but it’s also very haunting and moving.”
