Ohio University is a campus that allows students to showcase different talents, but the school also has opportunities to show off its talented faculty.
On Saturday, faculty members from the School of Music will perform in the Glidden Recital Hall at 4 p.m. Admission is free and the recital is open to the public. The recital highlights professor of clarinet Rebecca Rischin, who will be accompanied by Matthew Morris on bassoon and Christopher Fisher on piano.
Rischin has been a clarinet professor at OU since 1995. Her accomplishments as a clarinet player have taken her to many stages for performing arts. In 1994, she won the First International Clarinet Competition in Poland, and in 2014 received a standing ovation for her performance at the world-famous Carnegie Hall. Those performances happened thanks to an old clarinet.
“It was sorta an accident,” Rischin said. “My father had played the clarinet when he was little, so he had an old one lying around, so I picked it up and had a liking to it.”
Rischin began playing the woodwind instrument when she was 10 and credits her fascination with the instrument thanks to “Peter and the Wolf” by composer Sergei Prokofiev.
“The cat is played by the clarinet, and I found that just very alluring.” she said. “I loved the sneakiness of the cat. It was so very surreptitious.”
Though Rischin has much to boast about, students like Lena Williams, a junior studying music education, said she does not brag about her accomplishments.
“She is very humble. Nobody even knew she wrote a book until I brought it up,” Williams said. “She doesn’t really talk about her achievements which are incredible.”
Her book entitled For the End of Time, The Story of the Messiaen Quartet has been adapted to a screenplay with plans for a motion picture. Rischin also has had two solo CDs, One of a Kind and Clarinet Fantasies.
Someone with a successful career like Rischin is great to have as a professor, Valerie Breda, a graduate student studying clarinet performance, said.
“Almost all of your guidance is coming from this person, so you have to look at them and say let me see about their teaching style,” Breda said. “‘What do they think about music?’ ”
As an instructor, Rischin feels it is just as important to show her students and those in attendance her capabilities as a performer and instructor.
“I think it's important to serve as a role model for students. I’m teaching these students,” she said. “You don’t believe anything from someone who can’t do what they’re telling them something to do.”
The recital will consist of a trio by Glinka called “Trio Pathetique,” a Gershwin tribute for the clarinet and piano, and three clarinet pieces that are unaccompanied.
For some, like Kayla Stubblefield, a freshman studying music therapy, it will be a performance that will highlight what she hopes to be someday.
“It is just really amazing to see someone that you look up to perform.” She said. “It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s my teacher,’ and maybe I can be like that one day cause she gives me all the tools I need.”
