The ISU Department of Music and Theatre is presenting the first annual C-HOP  Festival on Sept. 15 and 16.

The two-day event is being billed as a festival of dance music for carillon, harpsichord, organ and piano (C-HOP). It will feature performances from ISU faculty and students, as well as several guest performers coming from around the U.S. and abroad.

The C-HOP Festival is open to the public and all events are free to attend.

Most of the festival’s events will be held at the Music Hall on campus, with the exception of the carillon performances taking place at the campanile.

The C-HOP Festival is being organized by members of the music department’s keyboard division. It was their goal when planning the festival to unite the keyboard instruments in a way that would showcase them to an audience who may be unfamiliar with them.  

“We sat down together and we had a concept that we wanted to do a collaborative event featuring each area [of keyboard instrument], so we came up with dance [for a theme] and thought it would be a good kickoff for our first ever festival,” said Tin-Shi Tam, associate professor of music.

The C-HOP Festival will feature different types of events, which are set to start Friday afternoon.

“Hopefully by doing this, more people will know about the keyboard program at ISU and we can attract more interested students. Since this is our first year [doing the festival], I wouldn’t say we are targeting a certain group. It is open to everybody,” said Mei-Hsuan Huang, assistant professor of music.

Private lessons for carillon, piano, harpsichord and organ are scheduled to be the first events of the festival. The lessons will be given by ISU faculty members. To participate in the lessons, it is required to register ahead of time. They are open to people of all ages and are free of charge.

“Hopefully through these free lessons, it can be kind of an important part of their learning career. They can remember that they went to ISU to take this lesson, and they have some fun and they learn something valuable. I think that is important,” Huang said.  

The first night of the festival will also feature a joint piano and dance workshop. This workshop is titled, “Dancing and Playing the Baroque Dances.” It will be taught by dancer Denise Celestin and pianist Sylvia Coats. Celestin is a professor of dance at Wichita State University. Coats is a retired professor of piano who spent 28 years at Wichita State University. They will teach Baroque period dances such as Minuet, Sarabande, Bouree and Gigue.

Celestin and Coats will team up again to conduct a workshop on Saturday morning. The workshop is titled, “Dancing and Playing the Romantic Dances.” It will focus on 19^th century dances such as Mazurka, Polonaise, Waltz, Hungarian Dance and Polka.

The Friday night of the festival will additionally feature what is designated as the opening concert. This concert will include performances by ISU keyboard faculty and students. It will bring carillon, harpsichord, piano and organ together in a collaborative effort. The performances will be solos, duos, trios and quartets.

The combination of these keyboard instruments together in concert is what many people who are involved think to be so novel about the C-HOP Festival.

“I’ve never heard of any school that has done this before. First of all, not every school has carillon. And secondly, it’s not that easy to host a festival including four instruments together: organ, harpsichord, piano and carillon, and find a common subject [between them] which is dance,” Huang said.

With the C-HOP Festival’s theme being dance music, the festival’s organizers expect the opening concert to have a fun atmosphere.

“Our goal will be when you sit in the concert, you feel like you want to sit up and dance,” Tam said.

Sarah Reger, sophomore in pre-business, will be playing carillon in the festival. She is looking forward to the added element the dance theme will bring to the musical performance.

“I’ve never had a background in dance at all, just music. I think putting the two themes together will be nice [in order] to see the other side of the music and hopefully give me more insight on how to play it like a dance,” Reger said.

Reger added, “Dance pieces have more of a melody and a pattern to them. There are usually a lot of repeats, a lot of patterns. Normal [non dance] pieces are more like an extended idea.”

Reger is among several ISU students that will perform in the opening concert and other events in the festival.

“It will really be featuring the best of our students,” Tam said.

Matt Bourland, sophomore in Music, is playing piano in the opening concert Friday night. Though he has not played in a festival setting like this before, he said he is not too worried about the opening night’s performance.   

“This is not stressful at all. This is fun music,” Bourland said about the opening concert’s selections.

According to Bourland, he will feel more pressure during his performance in the piano master class happening during the C-HOP Festival.

Master classes for each of the four instruments are taking place on Saturday. ISU music students will get the opportunity to practice their instrument with the festival’s guest musicians.

“Master class is more like a formal public lesson, so people are encourage to go, to watch, to learn and listen to the class,” Huang said.

“It can be very beneficial because first of all it’s just like having another lesson, but then it’s also like a performance because you’re playing in front of other people. And so it gives you the amount of pressure as a normal performance would,” Bourland said.

Caroline Hong, a guest pianist from Ohio State University is conducting the piano master class that Bourland will partake in.

“It’s always good to work with different perspectives, different ideas. Each teacher has their own way that they want to see their student, so it’s good to have a variety of different, unique perspectives,” Bourland said about the opportunity to work with Hong.

Hong will also conduct a piano lecture-recital which is titled, “Structure and Symmetry in Bach’s Goldberg Variations.”

The carillon master class will take place on Saturday. This will be taught by Luc Rombouts, a guest carilloneur from Belgium. Rombouts is the university carilloneur at Leuven in Flanders, Belgium. His master class will happen up in the campanile and will be webcasted on a screen in the Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall for those who want to view it.

Rombouts will also give a lecture on Saturday titled, “Did the Flemish Really Dance to Carillon Music?” His lecture will discuss the origins of the carillon in Belgium. Rombouts is a noted scholar on the carillon and has done much research on the historical aspects of carillon culture. In 2014, he published a book titled, “Singing Bronze: A History of Carillon Music.”

Another lecture-recital will be given by ISU keyboard faculty member Miriam Zach. Her lecture-recital will be for organ and harpsichord. It is titled, “Terpsichore: Danses pour l’orgue et clavecin.” The French title translates to, “Terpsichore: Dances for Organ and Harpsichord.”

“It is focusing on French Baroque repertoire. And I plan to compare also, Italian. I will perform and I will also talk about the origins of French Baroque performance,” Zach said.

Her lecture will discuss the history of ideas and methods in French Baroque music. She will also highlight how French Baroque influenced other composers around Europe. 

“[I want to invite people] to watch them (organ and harpsichord) be played and also have the opportunity to play them and to explore instruments that perhaps they’re not as familiar,” Zach said.

Providing the opportunity for people to experience the carillon, harpsichord, organ and piano is a big reason why ISU keyboard faculty organized the C-HOP Festival. It is also why they are letting ISU students attend the entire festival for free. They hope it will spark an interest in people to continually attend concerts in the future.   

“I want to see how much of an impact we can have to draw people to want to hear more concerts. Maybe some of them (ISU students) have never gone to a concert hall to see and hear a real concert. This is a good opportunity for some students who have never gone to a concert, and this is free. So that’s something I’d like to see happen,” Huang said.

For a full schedule of events, visit the Department of Music’s website.