June 6, 2002
School of Music duo highlights summer arts festival
Steve Hill
University Week
The third annual Summer Arts Festival at the UW is being billed as an exploration of beat. But for School of Music faculty Julian Patrick and Marc Seales it’s all about performing.
Patrick and Seales, both happy in their teaching roles at the UW, can’t shake their love of performing. So when they team up for an exploration of some of America’s favorite songs, they say it will be as much fun for them as the audience. Their performance, From Tin Pan Alley to 42nd Street, is scheduled for July 19 from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m. in the HUB Auditorium.
“I’m a jaded old soul,” Patrick said. “It takes a lot for me to get excited, but when I work with Marc that excitement of performing returns to me.”
Patrick has performed worldwide with major opera companies — Metropolitan Opera, Theatre de Geneva, Vienna Volksoper, Netherlands Opera as well as operas in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Houston to name a few. But he thought his performing days were over when he took a job at the UW. That has turned out to be far from true.
“I’m teaching now, so this is basically a second career,” he said. “I thought when I started teaching I’d have to stop that first career. Thankfully that hasn’t happened yet.”
Seales agrees. Years into his academic career a friend said to him it must be nice not to have to play gigs anymore.
“But I do,” Seales responded emphatically. “That’s just it. I have to play. I dig playing. I mean, I really love my family, but I just dig playing too.”
And the duo has found their collaboration to be a natural.
“I love working with Marc,” Patrick said. “He’s a great collaborator. He knows how to give and he knows how to take over when it’s his time or his moment. And he’s a great soloist.”
Arts Festival organizers have billed the performance as a sentimental journey through several of the greatest decades of American song. Among the highlights, according to Seales will be songs from Duke Ellington’s Beggar’s Holiday and some African American spirituals.
“I try not to think too much about what we’re playing,” Seales said. “I just like to play the gig.”
That’s what it gets back to for Patrick as well.
“When I’m on stage, if I think about it I think, ‘This is right. I feel at home here.’ ”
The UW Summer Arts Festival runs from
July 16 to July 20 and includes everything from music and film to visual art and lectures. For ticket information call the UW Arts Ticket Office at 206-543-4880. For more information call the 24-hour information hotline at 206-221-2327 or go online to www.summerartsfest.org.
