Jacobs offers free music for students at MAC

The Jacobs School of Music seeks to bewitch audiences with strains of free classical music.

Five of the student orchestras have free shows at the Musical Arts Center this month.
The semester starts off at 8 p.m. today at the MAC with the Philharmonic Orchestra.
Jacobs spokesman Alain Barker predicted a relatively large turnout for the first major student orchestra of the fall.

“We expect to see about 1,000 people Wednesday night,” Barker said.

Faculty member David Effron will be conducting, but he might conduct for other orchestra performances over the course of the semester. Each performance of the orchestra can also have a different conductor.

“They switch up the conductors every show,” Barker said.

After the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra will be performing at the end of the month.

The Jazz Ensemble, Wind Ensemble and University Orchestra will also perform this month at the MAC.

In order to help improve the quality of the orchestras, an audition process was put into use.

“We started to audition all instrumentalists just the last two years,” Barker said. “Almost all students make some ensemble.”

Barker said the student talent levels are now more evenly spread between the orchestras, and each orchestra has a mix of undergraduate and graduate students.
The number of students that attend the free shows through the Jacobs School of Music varies with each performance, but it typically rounds off to about 60 students in the audience for every 40 non-students, Barker said.

Some students said they are interested in attending the concerts, but many have scheduling conflicts because most shows are on weeknights.

“There are tons of clubs and activities on school nights,” senior Adam Mendelevitz said. “I can only do one thing at a time.”

Many of the students attending the free concerts go because of their friends.
“Friends usually drag me along,” Mendelevitz said.

For students unaware of classical music and the Jacobs School, the free shows around campus are a good way to test orchestras out, both Barker and Cronin said.
“They should go check out the free shows to get a taste,” Cronin said.

Barker pointed out that the quality of the shows is similar to many symphony orchestras throughout the country.

However, audience members would usually pay a high price for tickets.
“You get to see world-class performances of the highest caliber for free,” Barker said.
Mendelevitz said there are other benefits to seeing the performances.

“It’s good if you want something to do that doesn’t cost a lot of money, and you want some culture,” he said.