Photo by Christian Nichols

Drew Raleigh, a senior Music Technology major with minors in Communication and Digital Arts and Media, will give his senior recital this Saturday, Dec. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Coleman Recital Hall. Raleigh will be showcasing a mix of digital recordings and live performances.

The pieces Raleigh decided to showcase each were chosen with a hint of nostalgia which he explains was “originally subconscious.”

“But towards the end when I added ‘Oh Comely,’ I was like, ‘Okay, well the rest of this is related to events in my life or things that are important to me,'” he said.

Raleigh’s version of “Oh Comely,” which was originally released in 1998 on Neutral Milk Hotel’s album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, is a song he grew up singing with his friends driving through his hometown and played on his second day of his freshman year causing his R.A. to come check if everything was alright.

“I kept telling myself, ‘no you can’t play ‘Oh Comely,’ you are a parody of yourself if you play that song. But then after thinking about it for a few hours I decided I had to play it because of that,” said Raleigh. 

Throughout his time at Transylvania, Raleigh has been offered some amazing opportunities. One of the most memorable of these was possible because of his mentor through Transy’s 100 Doors program, Charlie Taylor. Raleigh was able to visit Taylor in Nashville before he moved to Lexington.

“He took me all around the Nashville music scene and we toured studios and I played a piano that a bunch of famous pianists had played. It was the piano on the Johnny Cash show. Ray Charles had played that piano,” said Raleigh.

Raleigh first got involved with recording technology at a young age when he stumbled upon multi-tracks of a few Nine Inch Nails songs when he was 14 or 15 years old (Multi-tracks are the separate layers of songs, like instruments and voice parts, that are combined together digitally in order to blend the sounds and instruments of a song).

Raleigh explained his first encounter with music technology: “I loaded them into Garage Band and when I soloed each of the tracks and looked at the detail in each of them I was really like astonished by how it all came together and the tracks blended to make it sound like fewer tracks than there were.”

Raleigh’s fascination with music technology continued to grow after this pivotal moment.

“When I figured out the basis of how audio production works I was just really, really fascinated. I don’t really think that after that there was ever a time that I was more interested in something else, so it was an easy decision for me to be a music tech major,” said Raleigh.

Raleigh’s knowledge of music spans across genres, instruments, and subjects. Raleigh grew up playing guitar and planned to continue learning and developing his skills and understandings of this instrument, however, he ended up taking piano lessons instead at Transy. Raleigh has seen the diversity of his interests cross planes throughout his different classes for his areas of study. In Scott Whiddon’s WRC class, Taste and Tastemaking, Raleigh created three different covers of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

Raleigh said he chose this song because he hates it. “So I tried to take it and make it into things I like,” he said.

Come see Raleigh play “Oh Comely” and The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin,” plus six other pieces that have been memorable for his music career.

For more information about Raleigh’s recital visit the Facebook event page here.

This Sunday, Turner Hawkins’ senior bassoon recital will mark not only the culmination of his undergraduate musical career, but also the end of an era for the Hawkins family.

Hawkins will perform his senior recital this Sunday, Nov. 20 at 3 p.m. In attendance will be his director, academic adviser and father, Dr. Ben Hawkins, who has taught band at Transy since 1985 — before Turner was born.

“I’ve been coming here as long as I can remember, to basketball games and concerts, anything, honestly,” said Turner.

This is the last of eight consecutive school years that Dr. Hawkins has taught one of his sons in the band; Turner’s older brother, Jay, played tuba in the band from 2009-2013.

“I’ve loved it,” said Dr. Hawkins. “It’s going to be weird again next year because it’s been so long since I haven’t had one [in class].”

If one were to sit in on a band rehearsal, there’s a good chance one would witness the two incessantly poking fun at each other.

“We have this mutual harassment thing,” said Dr. Hawkins. “Jay wasn’t as forthcoming about it as often as Turner, but that’s sort of the way that we’ve related to each other ever since I can remember.”

“We have a really great relationship,” said Turner. “It’s cool to sit down and talk shop, hear his thoughts about things and his perspectives on the changing landscape of music education, because he’s a pretty aware dude.”

Music has always been an integral part of the Hawkins family environment. Turner’s mother, Cyndee Hawkins, was his band director in middle school, and the one who initially encouraged him to try the bassoon.

Currently, Hawkins is Transy’s only music education major. Originally, he intended on becoming a political science major on track for law school.

“I really fought it for a long time as far as what I wanted to pursue as a career… I feel like anybody who has parents who do that same thing instinctively reacts against that,” he said.

Love for his home city of Lexington, and a history of positive associations with Transylvania and its faculty, made Transy a natural choice. However, pursuing music education at a liberal arts school has had its pros and cons.

For one pro, Transy’s lack of a marching band allows him to invest time getting hands-on work experience teaching high school marching band. The small school size also grants plenty of individual attention, “which would be true no matter what my last name was,” Hawkins noted.

On the other hand, the ensembles at Transy aren’t always as challenging as those at large, competitive music schools. Additionally, there aren’t many times when he can network with other music majors.

“It’s all about what you make it and the path that you make,” he said.

And Hawkins has certainly made a lot of it. Playing tuba, he has toured with Drum Corp International and the Concord Blue Devils, two premiere marching organizations. Marching in the “A Corp” in the 2015 season, he helped the Blue Devils to their 17th world championship.

“It’s been a really awesome experience of not just music education, but personal growth, and understanding the difference between what you think you can do and what you can actually do,” Hawkins said.

By August, Hawkins’ goal is to be an employed music teacher, preferably outside of Kentucky in a high-profile program. Even though job prospects in music education aren’t as prolific as other fields, because of Turner’s strong resume, Dr. Hawkins doesn’t worry.

“He’s got such as unusual background that includes several highly desirable credentials,” said Dr. Hawkins. “I mean, Jay majored in art history and religion. I never worried about him making a decent living, and he’s doing fine… it never cost me a minute of sleep.”

Each piece Hawkins will perform this Sunday uniquely relates to his musical journey. For example, his mom accompanied him on piano for the first movement of the Mozart bassoon concerto during his senior year of high school. It was also the piece with which he won the 2015 concerto-aria competition.

In liberal arts fashion, he has even found a way to tie in his political science interests, informally titling his recital “Big Stick Diplomacy” in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt.

“I’m still working on the speaking softly part,” he wrote on the Facebook event description, “but luckily for you, I’ve gotten very good at carrying the biggest of sticks: the bassoon!”

He also notes that the recital is “guaranteed to be 100% imperialism-free.”