Student Soloists Take The Spotlight

Five students were selected to perform music pieces of their choice for California Lutheran University’s Orchestral Vignettes: Student Soloists in the Spotlight event. 

The five soloists included senior Daniel Martinez, senior Noeloni Ramiscal

, junior Vivian Meyer, sophomore Shao Chen, and sophomore Julian Perez. These five students went through an audition process, had to choose their music piece of choice, and then had to distribute it to the other members of the orchestra. 

For his solo, Martinez performed a romantic style trumpet concerto piece titled “Concerto in F minor for trumpet Opus A team” by Oskar Baum. 

“I just kinda chose it because it’s more challenging, it’s exciting, and it’s what I wanted to do,” Martinez said.

Martinez said that he has played the trumpet for about 10 years. Although it is not the original instrument he played when beginning music, it is the instrument that he most enjoyed.

“I really liked playing trumpet and now it’s the thing I want to make my career,” Martinez said.

Ramiscal plays the clarinet and has played for about 14 years. She said that she began playing the clarinet because she wanted to play an instrument like her brother, who is two years older than her. 

“He tried the clarinet. It didn’t work out for him, so then I was given the clarinet because I also wanted to do an instrument,” Ramiscal said.

Ramiscal performed a piece from the classical era by composer Carl Stamitz titled “Clarinet concerto No. 3 in B flat.” She said that she has only played one part of this piece in the past, and was hesitant to audition, but in the end decided to give it a try.

“I’m not a music major, so I was like ‘okay, I’ll just I won’t do it.’ And then I think it was two weeks before the actual audition date. I’m like ‘you know I wanna do it now,’ so I pulled out this piece,” said Ramiscal.

Ramiscal said going into the audition, her mindset caused a bit of nervousness; however, she thought she had a “great” audition. 

“I was still nervous because you know if you’re nervous about something, it’s because you care more about it,” Ramiscal said.

Ramsical said she is excited about the experience she is gaining from this event.

“I’m excited to have this because it’s also something that I’ve never done, having to be a soloist in front of a whole orchestra backing me up and then in front of audience members as well, pretty sure my family is going to be able to come out for it,” Ramiscal said.

Sophomore Shao “Yoyo” Chen plays the saxophone, but for his solo performance, he will play a more alto saxophone. 

Though part of the same instrumental family, the two instruments make very different sounds according to Chen. 

In Chen’s opinion, “once you play one of the saxophones, you can play all of them.” 

Chen said he got into playing the saxophone because his parents told him he would make several friends. Though he does not play the saxophone professionally, he said he has consistently played the instrument for 12 years. 

Chen chose to perform a common repertoire, Glazunov’s “Saxophone Concerto in E flat major.” 

Sophomore Julien Perez plays the contrabass and performed the “Dragonetti Double Bass Concerto,” formerly attributed to Italian composer and bass virtuosi, Domenico Carlo Maria Dragonetti. In the recital program, Perez stated that credit is now given to French double bass educator of the Paris Conservatory, Edouard Nanny.

Perez said even though this piece wasn’t written by “the famous Dragonetti,” it was written to mirror his compositional style.

“I wasn’t able to make the original audition date, and it was a one-time thing. So I communicated with Dr. Hart and Dr. Thornton and asked, ’Can we move this to another day?’ And they both graciously said yes.”

One of Perez’s biggest obstacles, he said, was finding orchestral pieces to accompany his solo. Unlike his peers, Perez could not find any orchestra parts anywhere. According to Perez, without this, his piece was at risk of getting cut. 

“That was a really shaky couple of weeks because I didn’t know whether or not I was gonna be able to perform it because I couldn’t find the orchestra music, so I essentially had to arrange my own parts [of music for the orchestra] and they worked out very well,” said Perez.