It wouldn’t be halloween at Carthage without the music department’s annual Monster Concert, which is our fun-loving take on what’s actually a fairly long-lived tradition in music. The term Monster Concert refers to a concert involving multiple keyboard instruments combining to produce a thundering amount of sound. It was back in the mid 1800’s that an American composer by the name of Louis Moreau Gottschalk led the first so-called Monster Concert while on a concert tour through Puerto Rico. The first one featured forty pianists, but there were later Gottschalk-organized Monster Concerts that actually involved hundreds of pianists joining forces. The novelty eventually wore off, but in the 1970’s an Eastman piano professor named Eugene List recreated some of those Monster Concerts and the craze was revived (at least to an extent) and lives on to this very day. Quite a number of conservatories and universities have annual or semi-annual Monster Concerts, and in many cases they involve some spectacular music-making!
Carthage’s Monster Concert goes for a very heavy dose of Fun, and part of the way that happens is by scheduling it to coincide as closely as possible with the holiday of Halloween. The vast majority of pianists who play on our Monster Concert are dressed in costume – and some of our students spare no trouble or expense to be as spectacularly-garbed as possible. The chapel is decorated with jack-0-lanterns and other spooky trimmings. And many of the pieces of music played are, in one way or another, scary sounding.
What makes it the most fun, however, is that an incredibly wide array of pianists perform. Carthage’s piano majors are featured …. but so are all kinds of music students who are not pianists at all in the conventional sense of the word, but are taking Keyboard Skills as part of their studies. Many of them have never had any serious piano lessons before coming to Carthage, but part of the gauntlet of music study is to become at least somewhat proficient at the piano. It’s a tough road, especially for the complete beginners, but if they’re willing to put in the time and determined effort, it’s a mountain that anyone can climb. Many of those non-piano music students are part of the Monster Concert, and I suspect that for some of them it’s one of the most terrifying experiences of their entire college careers. Part of the beauty of the Monster Concert concept, however, is that there are almost no solos at all. You are playing with at least one other person- and in many cases the pieces involve 3, 4, or even 6 or 8 pianists. You are not alone when you play on a Monster Concert! But in addition to all of the Carthage students, there are also more than a dozen elementary school piano students – also dressed in costume – who also perform ….. and they tend to provide some of the best and most exciting playing of the night! And I have to say that there is something so sweet and endearing about seeing 9 year olds and 19 year olds sharing the stage in a piano recital – and everyone cheering each other on.
A concert like this tends not to be the last word in refined, nuanced music-making ….. although there are some really exciting and beautiful moments – and for me one of the loveliest things on tonight’s program was a performance of the familiar and hauntingly beautiful opening movement to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata- in an arrangement for piano and organ. Marisa Landswerk and Collin Crowl played it and you could hear a pin drop. There was some similar magic spun by Michelle Neutzmann and Samantha Lampe playing the Beauty and the Beast movement from Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite. Of course, not long after the Ravel, someone was playing the theme music to “The Munsters,” which gives you a sense of the free-wheeling sense of fun that was the predominant theme of the night. (You should have heard “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” for five pianos, with percussion – and an absolutely spectacular “Sabre Dance” right after that.) And although it was a slight departure from the normal Monster Concert fare, I’m glad that Carthage’s bell choir performed an exciting medley from “Phantom of the Opera.”
There is safety in numbers, but just because two or three or four (or more) pianists are joining forces in a given piece of music does not mean that it’s 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 the amount of work. In fact, getting yourself coordinated with your fellow pianists is no small matter. But when multiple pianists are truly in sync, it’s just about as exciting as music can get.
I’ve been in the audience for most of the most recent Monster Concerts, but this was the first year that I actually got to be onstage as one of the performers, joining colleagues Jane Livingston, Deb Masloski, and Fumi Nakayami in a Grand Galop by Lavignic ….. four pianists at one piano! That gets to be wildly crowded and the crazy ‘business’ we cooked up made it even wilder! Our piece started the second half and I think the students were pleasantly surprised to see some of their teachers let their hair down, throwing all caution or restraint to the wind! My own particular shtick included running in late (what a shock!), trying to crowd myself into the middle of the bench before settling for a spot on the far end, changing neckties during my first interlude, taking a selfie during the second interlude, and cleaning off the piano (and my fellow pianists) with a feather duster during the third. Deb and Fumi played a quick hand of cards at one point, and Jane and I even shared a cocktail – in short, there was no shortage of mayhem.
Although it was a wild and crazy night, there was also a touch of poignancy for me because it took me back to some of the piano recitals of my own youth ….. including the piano recitals of my piano teacher in Decorah, Connie Bolson. As is often the case with such programs, the evening would begin with least experienced/least skilled pianists and progress from there – with the oldest and best players in the spotlight by the end. The grand finale for her recitals was always a spectacular 8-handed arrangement of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” – and for at least the first several Connie Bolson recitals on which I played, one of the four pianists who played that grand finale was a splendidly-skilled high school boy, and I dreamt of the day when it would someday be my turn to play in that finale! Sadly, at some point my folks decided that I had progressed about as far with Mrs. Bolson as I was going to, and they switched me to a teacher at Luther who they thought would push me to the next level- and I was out of the rotation before I ever got my crack at the Stars & Stripes Forever. I like to think that my little bit on tonight’s concert was my own little Stars & Stripes moment.
The concert ended with a spirited performance of “The Monster Mash” with all of the Carthage pianists onstage, playing together, and all of the youngsters up there as well, dancing! And off to the side, clapping along and dancing up a storm was my colleague Jane Livingston, who will be retiring at the end of this school year. She and I became full time at Carthage back in 1995, and we have enjoyed many fun collaborations over the years. She conceived of Carthage’s first Monster Concert a few years back, and under her loving and light-hearted leadership, the event has grown and become even more entertaining over the years.