UWM Professor Sparks Joy in Faculty Recital

Musicians and music fans gathered inside the Music Recital Hall at UWM for Dr. Alex Wier’s Faculty Recital. Bethany Deyo was in the crowd.

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Narration:I sat in the lobby of the recital hall Saturday and watched as family, friends, and students of Dr. Wier poured in. The usher hurriedly handed out programs as people began to take their seats.

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Yanni:“Well I do know he’s playing handbells on one of his pieces…”

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Narration:Yanni Chudnow is a Percussion student at UWM.

Yanni:“Handbells are an incredible instrument, but they’re also a little bit goofy, so to see Dr. Wier in his professional doctoral state playing these goofy but interesting instruments is gonna be pretty huge for me”.

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Narration:A different piece that Wier chose for the recital is a lot less goofy.

Wier:“There’s kind of this, 15-minute masterwork by Jacob Druckman called Reflections on the Nature of Water… and I just think it’s an expertly crafted composition, one of our most colorful and masterwork-type pieces for solo marimba…”

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Collin:“It’s a really well-known piece and it’s one of those big pillars of percussion repertoire that everyone has to tackle at one point (laughs)”.

Narration: Collin O’Day is an alum of the program and met Dr. Wier while performing in the city.

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Narration: Along with various marimba solos, Wier also performed solos like one written for Glockenspiel, desk bells, and ankle bells.

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Dr. Wier: “The composers in their program notes describes being inspired as like a one-man marching band, so that’s a really unique, fun, kind of light-hearted piece…”

“It’s just fun and it was new to me, I just learned it for this recital…”

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“And then, I’m doing a snare drum solo that kind of mixes a few different styles of American and French rudimental tradition…”

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Narration: One unusual instrumenton stage is called a Ghil. It’s from Ghana and sits at about ankle height.

Dr. Wier: “It’s a xylophone that’s very unique sounding and tuned pentatonically so it’s not like one of our modern chromatically-tuned and machine-made instruments…”

Narration:It has various-sized gourds hanging below it. They have holes carved into them with a thin piece of paper covering each one.

Dr. Wier:“I just enjoy playing all the different instruments and all the different challenges and contrast that each piece gives to a program…”

Narration: To learn about upcoming faculty recitals as well as student performances, visit the “Upcoming Events” page on the UWM Peck School of the Arts website.

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