Written by Bailey Ridenour \/\/ Photo by Macy Cox<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harding University hosted the 242 Strings Concert chamber ensemble in the Reynolds Recital Hall Tuesday, Feb. 21. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
242 Strings is a group of four Harding faculty \u2014 adjunct instructor of strings and director of the quartet Alicia Walls, associate professor of music Scott Carrell, music adjunct instructor Leigh Wing, and music adjunct instructor Micah Donar \u2014 who play mostly classical music with stringed instruments, mainly the piano, violin, viola and cello. Their group name comes from the number of strings in each instrument \u2014 the piano has 230, the violin four, the viola four and the cello four, making a total of 242 strings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a way to play with some really outstanding colleagues,\u201d Walls said. \u201cYou can\u2019t play well if you don\u2019t trust and respect each other, and we have that trust and respect in this group. You depend on each other musically \u2026 It\u2019s just a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group\u2019s inception dates back to about 2019 when the four professors were looking for more ways to become involved in practicing their craft. The members of 242 Strings will usually bring music to rehearsals and decide as a group the list of songs they want to perform. Walls explained that they will meet once a week either in Little Rock, Arkansas, or here in Searcy to practice but that the majority of the practice happens individually. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The members came together on Feb. 21 to play pieces that were more challenging and outside of the realm they would normally get the chance to play. Some of the pieces performed were movements from Johann Brahms, Johann Christian Bach and even an arrangement of \u201cMy Favorite Things\u201d by Carrell. 242 Strings would be considered a chamber ensemble and not a band because it is a small number of people and does not include any brass or percussion instruments \u2014 depending on how one classifies the piano. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think that the education of being able to experience and to see and interact with different kinds of groups and different kinds of artists is invaluable,\u201d Carrell said. \u201cThis is the time when [students] start to get a glimpse of what all is out there, with all of the various ensembles that are a part of the department and the additional things. It gives them opportunities right here, where you don\u2019t have to drive anywhere or go anywhere or pay big ticket prices \u2026 to bring exposure of the wider world \u2026 beyond what our students have seen before.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cQuartet in G Major W.B 66\u201d by Bach and \u201cAlla Italiana\u201d <\/em>arranged by Walls <\/em>were bright and fast-paced pieces, while \u201cQuartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 26\u201d <\/em>by Brahms was much slower and moodier. The concert drew students, faculty and local community members together to listen to the differing styles and moods of music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI really enjoyed the last one \u2014 [Carrell\u2019s] own arrangement \u2014 that was really neat,\u201d Avery Litten, an Arkansas State University-Beebe music student, said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have an orchestra, but we could be a conductor for an orchestra, and I think this is really good experience for us to witness a string quartet or the orchestra that [Harding has] here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Bailey Ridenour \/\/ Photo by Macy Cox Harding University hosted the 242 Strings Concert chamber ensemble in the Reynolds Recital Hall Tuesday, Feb. 21. 242 Strings is a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15068,"featured_media":17712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15068"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17713,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17710\/revisions\/17713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}