Jansen performs trombone recital

Senior Molly Jansen has been playing trombone for 12 years. On March 13 Jansen gave her first recital to showcase her work.

Jansen said she practiced for the recital since the beginning of last semester.

“My piano player and I got together about a month ago and I practiced every day for about two hours,” Jansen said.

Senior Jimmy Bloomquist was in the audience and has played a trombone recital every year during his time at the University of South Dakota.

Bloomquist said preparing for the recital takes a lot of time and focus.

“It’s a tough thing to lead up to,” Bloomquist said. “It becomes a big process. For every piece that you play you need to learn the notes which seems like it would be the entire thing, but after that you need to take into account style and approach and all these different things that go into every piece.”

Jansen’s pianist, Liz Teel, met with Jansen for only a handful of rehearsals. Teel said it takes hours and hours of practicing to present the recital.

“Having to put it together with the piano player at the end is a challenge because (Jansen) knows how it sounds in her head and how it sounds on the horn,” Teel said. “Then to add the piano parts can kind of throw it off a little bit. You just have to work through that and put it together and she did a great job.”

Jansen said she chose the music she played because of the style of the songs.

“For the first song the style changed quite a bit,” Jansen said. “You can go fast or slow and ‘Ave Maria’ is one of my favorite songs so I really wanted to play that.”

Teel said the music was a good choice for Jansen.

“It was good for her because it challenged her in all the right ways,” Teel said. “It challenged her range-wise and it challenged her technical ability. It stretched her because some of it she didn’t like right away. The more she played it the more she started to like it.”

Jansen said although she was nervous to perform, the recital went well.

“I’m so happy with how it went,” Jansen said. “This was my first recital and it was a lot of fun.”

“She did a great job,” Teel said. “I was really proud of her. It’s really hard stuff and it really challenged her so it made her a better player. Every time we practiced it got better and better. It was really good to have it go well.”