Friends and Family: How to Prepare a Themed Recital

Recital preparation is an essential part of being a successful musician that can be very challenging to students that are unfamiliar with the process. A recital that revolves around a theme can lead to greater audience engagement and make a sense of continuity to multiple pieces on a recital. Though there are countless method books to brass playing, very few of them discuss a method or process for organizing recitals, especially recitals revolving around a theme. In this paper I will discuss the methods that I used to prepare my senior thesis recital: the techniques I used to practice difficult passages of music, how I went about deciding which pieces to select as well as how they revolved around my desired theme. The process is helped through a variety of historical or musicological sources, professional audio recordings, and common "performance practices" that would be relevant to each piece that I may have learned from other performers. The center-piece of the recital is Ruth Gipps' Horn Concerto, and this piece will receive a more focused and in-depth look. The methodology outlined in this paper will assist me in producing a polished recital revolving around the theme of friends and family, program notes that explain the themes and history of each piece, and record and reflect on the process so that other performers may use it as a method or reference to their own performances and recitals.