Student musicians enveloped their audience in the sounds of music Friday night as they lined the aisles of the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, kicking off the Cal State Long Beach Festival of the Arts.
The festival, which was free to the public, opened with the music department's Double Brass Choir performing Richard Strauss' "Fanfare," from "Festmusik der Stadt Wien." The parading performers had the center teeming with excitement.
The festive performance of the CSULB brass band was only the beginning of a two-night showcase of a variety creative mediums, including the works and talents of 3,000 students and 200 faculty members of CSULB.
Wade Hobgood, dean of the College of the Arts, described the festival as "award-winning." Hobgood welcomed the audience, saying the event was one of the most outstanding displays of the college, since its inception in 1949.
"The festival is meant to showcase the accomplishments that each department has, so everyone can experience this celebration of each department's accomplishments and abilities," Hobgood said.
All six departments of the College of the Arts were represented in the celebration of CSULB music, dance, design, art, film and electronic arts.
Act One began with the dance department, which has been one of the Top 10 dance departments in the country for the past two years, led by department chair Judy Allen.
The first dance, performed by 13 graduate student performers, including John Stronks - a student highly praised at Orange Coast College's Regional Dance competition - will go on to perform at the National Dance Competition in Washington, D.C.
The choreography and skill of the dancers combined to make the dance program highly uniform and creative.
Students Erin Shelton, a soprano opera-singer, and pianist Mark Uranker performed "Quando Men Vo" and "O Mio Babbino Caro" with great expression and seemingly effortless grace.
Alumni Penny Miller Lindbloom and Jeff Paul, both outstanding graduate thesis award winners in 1996, performed three songs from musical theater.
Act two began with a video titled, "Virgin Martyr Mystic" by student Skot Kuiper. The film featured student-artist Kate Savage's works, which consisted of her own interpolation of the Virgin Mother.
The music department's John Nelson Quintet performed a jazz-fusion rock ensemble of "Sapphire."
The lobby of the Carpenter Center was filled with the work of several students in the art department, like graduate student Lucy Baker Holdman's "The Kid."
"The Kid" consisted of a ceramic statue of a grinning girl poised atop a pillar-like tree covered in baby and high-heeled shoes.
The industrial design department's contribution to the evening was "Bosch Brute Breaker," by students Levi Capaci and Noah Kuehnast. The two said their intent was to show how companies use color coordination in products so consumers can identify particular brands.
Capaci and Kuehnast displayed how an electronics firm uses yellow and black in electronic products such as radios, and also uses the colors in other non-electronic products, such as cooking utensils in order for the buyer to identify particular products by visual cues.
Comic relief for the evening was provided by film students Umberto Jutore and Michael O'Kelly. Their short film titled "Bob and Arlene."
The music department's sixteen-piece Studio Ensemble performed a swing version of, "My Baby Digs Mustard Pie." The ensemble continued with a sultry blues song, "Nighthawks," complete with drums played with brushes and a muffled sax.