By Kellen Quigley
Contributing Writer
After four long years of intense practice and preparation, St. Bonaventure senior Griffin Kramer performed his capstone piano recital on Saturday, Feb. 21 in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.
Students, staff, family and friends gathered from all over New York and as far south as North Carolina to see Kramer play to a packed house in the Rigas Family Theater.
“There’s a lot more of you here than I planned on,” Kramer said, after walking on stage to the roaring applause of over 120 people.
Kramer, a music and chemistry major, said he wanted to make the whole experience casual. Although he wore dress clothes, he did not have a tie and immediately removed his sport coat. This occasion was not to be formal—just an afternoon with friends and family, he said.
“Everyone really liked the informal atmosphere,” Laura Peterson, music professor at Bonaventure for nearly 20 years and campus piano instructor, said. “When it came to the performance he was all formal, but he’s very engaging on stage, which was the informal part of it.”
Kramer began with Alberto Ginastera’s “Sonata #1 for Piano,” a modern piece with seemingly no set key or time signature, and followed with Frederic Chopin’s “Ballade #1,” which he dedicated to a man in a nursing home where Kramer used to play.
“I heard him play the other pieces, but never heard the Chopin,” Hannah Robinson, a senior biology major, said. “It was cool that he had a special connection to it.”
Peterson had selected the first two pieces for Kramer. He began working on one his freshman year and the other one the following year.
After a short intermission, Kramer began the second half with a short section of the Can-Can, but with a twist—he played it behind his back.
“I made a tweet that day that said if it gets 30 favorites, I will play the piano behind my back during the recital,” Kramer said. “Within a few hours it got about 80 favorites.”
Kramer followed the bit of fun with the most personal piece of the recital: George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”
“This song has always been comforting for me,” Kramer said.
Although he had this piece memorized since high school, Kramer continued to develop it in his own style until the show.
“The performance was very technically and mentally demanding,” Leslie Sabina, chair of the music department, said. “He pulled it off with near perfection.”
Kramer added that the piece was something he used to play with one of his relatives who didn’t make it to see his recital.
“I honestly had no idea someone around my age could play anything that well,” Julie Curran, a junior psychology and music major, said. “It was just astounding.”
Kramer finished his concert with Franz Liszt’s “La Campanella,” the lightest of the four, which he began working on his junior year.
“Seeing him memorize an hour’s worth of music was so impressive,” Robinson said. “He had to play really fast and still hit all the notes.”
But memorizing the notes had only been half of the preparation.
“We had been practicing just the endurance for months to keep him from the mental exhaustion,” Peterson said.
In the last couple weeks before the performance, Kramer said he would practice two to three hours every day.
“It wasn’t just playing through the pieces,” Kramer said. “For the past week I’d spend an hour and a half just visualizing to prepare for the mental aspect of it.”
After a standing ovation, Kramer returned to the stage for an encore, performing the piece he played at his audition for the music program four years ago. He called it going full circle.
“He always had musical technicality, but he still grew over the past four years,” Peterson said. “The physical and mental growth was essential to pull it off.”
After graduation, he plans to pursue a degree in Physician Assistant Studies and will continue his music career as both a performer and teacher in the Buffalo area. But for now, he said he’s just happy his recital is over.
“It felt very good to get it over with,” Kramer said with a laugh. “It was a big load to get off my back.”
