Please consider supporting the IU Southeast Music Department by making a financial gift of any amount online.

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

When it was clear that IU Southeast was going to have to cancel its 2020-2021 concert season due to COVID, the faculty decided to find a way to continue making music and sharing it with students and members of the community. Many university groups around the country were creating videos of its musicians performing classical music, jazz numbers, and famous songs. We decided to take an ambitious approach to this idea by arranging excerpts from three songs that spoke to Indiana in some way, scored for all of our major ensembles — the IU Southeast Orchestra, IU Southeast Concert Band, the Commonwealth Brass Band, and the IU Southeast Concert Choir & Community Chorus. We chose music by two Indiana-born composers, including one tune by Hoagy Carmichael​ called “Can't get Indiana off My Mind” and two numbers by Cole Porter, “Begin the Beguine” and “From this Moment On.” In August of 2020, faculty composer, Erich Stem set out to write what ended up being a three minute medley of these tunes for a 54-part ensemble. More than 75 students, community members, and faculty have participated in this project.

Each musician recorded their individual part on their smart phones and sent it in to be put together by a team of faculty and staff audio/visual experts. Faculty sound engineer, Timothy Haertel was given the task of editing audio by lining up all of the 54 parts of this “mega ensemble” while IU Southeast students Jaime Young Irvin and M Salisbury put together the video portion of the project.