Below are details and photos related to Repeating Cycles which was the title of my senior recital that I performed as the final part of my undergraduate studies in music at UW-Madison. The focus of the recital was contemporary, electro-acoustic works for flute by living composers.

Background

A culmination of my work in my different areas of study as an undergraduate student at UW-Madison, Repeating Cycles, is a multimedia performance of contemporary flute music. The goal of this recital is both for it to be a capstone to my studies–incorporating artistic design, music performance, digital media production, and written content–as well as a way for me to look forward toward my future goals as a performer and information professional because I am very interested in continuing to explore contemporary, electroacoustic works by underrepresented composers. Officially, I began preparing for this recital sometime in November-December 2024, though intense preparation started in February 2025, with a final performance on April 20th, 2025. The performance itself will be approximately 50 minutes long and will include 8 different works. One of the works on this recital (Uroboros by Doina Rotaru) is a collaboration with another student, Alice Alford. The preparation for this recital included not only learning the flute parts to these pieces of music, but learning to work with recorded backing tracks, recording my own track for Sempre Dolens for flute and recorded flutes, designing my own posters and programs using Photoshop and InDesign, and researching to write detailed program notes. 

Repeating Cycles

The title and theme for this recital–Repeating Cycles–is referencing cycles and habits in life. At a time in my life where I feel stuck between appreciating habits for their structure and stability, and feeling trapped in cyclical experiences on a day-to-day basis, I felt that it was fitting for this recital to take on this theme when it comes as such a point of potential change in my life. Each piece on the program includes repetition or reference to life cycles in some way–whether more literal with Uroboros being the symbolic snake that eats its own tale–or more hidden like the rhythmic repetition of the poetry in the backing track for Preciosilla. Below, I have included my design for the poster that is being posted both digitally and around the George L. Mosse Humanities Building on campus which I designed in a collage style on Photoshop. The basis for the design was the insert for a cassette recorded by the Wingra Reed Trio in 1987 that I found during a cataloging project. I scanned this insert in and combined it with fragments from modern-day photos taken in the same location as the one on the cassette insert along with other details to create my poster.

Digital Program