“I think that was really a interesting process for me,” Steg said. “It’s a good way of thinking about how to create a program, putting together something that’s enjoyable and fine-tuning pieces with that purpose.”
At 7 p.m. Friday in the Ford-Crawford Hall located in the Simon Music Center, Steg, a soprano majoring in vocal performance with an outside field of theater, performed in her senior recital and final performance at IU.
Before people walked into the hall to hear Steg sing, Brittany Greene, a senior and one of Steg’s friends, waited in the lobby. She said she came to support Steg.
“I’m not that educated in the opera and type of music that she’s into, so I’m really just interested and excited to see what she does everyday,” Greene said.
Steg started selecting her pieces during the fall semester but chose the ones she wanted to sing for sure at the beginning of the spring semester. She chose a variety of music including pieces in German, Italian and a few musical theater pieces.
“I picked it based off stuff I’ve worked on with my teacher and stuff we thought would sound good,” Steg said. “We went back and forth on a couple of pieces and sort of just felt out what would fit best and what I liked best.”
The recital started with a set of pieces by Henry Purcell. They included “Hark! The Ech’ing Air,” “I Attempt From Love’s Sickness to Fly” and “Music for a While.”
She then sang two pieces by George Frideric Handel titled “Bel Piacere” and “Lascia Ch’io Pianga.” She said she selected these because she wanted to incorporate some ornamentation, or notes which are added to the main notes of a piece of music in order to make it richer, in the recital.
She then performed “Vedrai, Carino,” composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from the opera “Don Giovanni.” Steg said she selected that piece because it shows a flirty side to an opera, and they are not all dramatic as people think.
Steg’s final songs, “The Light in the Piazza” and “The Beauty Is,” are both from the musical “The Light in the ?Piazza.”
Steg said because theater and musical theater have been such a big part of her life since she was a child, she put that at the end of her recital because she’s very familiar and enjoys that type of music. She also wanted to incorporate that into her recital because she wanted to show that classical and musical theater voice training are not as different as most ?people think.
“I love musical theater and have a passion for it and wanted to do it because of that, but also I think it’s a cool experience to bring everything that I’ve been working on full circle into stuff I used to work on more frequently,” Steg said.
Steg said she’s going to miss her voice teacher most out of everything at IU because she had been such a supportive person to her.
“She’s really wise and very caring, and she’s been very helpful in many ways,” Steg said. “I’m going to miss her telling me everything is going to be OK when I’m freaking out and just that the way she’s able to talk to about my voice and where I’m going.”
With the plans of moving to New York City and auditioning, Steg said she wants to take some time to just focus on her music and performing after she graduates.
Steg said she initially thought she wanted to pursue a degree in musical theatre, but she realized the incredible amount of training and vocal strength it took to be an opera singer and then changed her mind.
“I just felt like it would open so many more doors for me in another sense,” Steg said. “There’s such this foundation that I thought if I can learn to do this somehow, then I can apply that technique to so much more ?in my life.”
