I Expected a Quiet Night at ULM. The Music Had Other Plans.

I had driven past the Biedenharn Museum twice looking for the Recital Hall before I remembered they are not the same place. The museum is on Riverside Drive, about ten minutes from campus. The Emy-Lou Biedenharn Recital Hall is on the ULM campus itself, at 700 University Ave. They share a family name and nothing else in terms of geography. By the time I found the right building and sat down, my shoulders were tight and I was a few minutes late. Then the music started, and I let go of all of it.

Not students. Teachers.

The Summer Wind Ensemble Concert is part of ULM's Master of Music Education program, and understanding what that program actually is changes how you hear the performance. The conductors taking turns on the podium are not grad students fresh out of college. They are working music teachers, the kind who spend their school year directing bands at Neville High School and Wossman High School and schools across Louisiana. They come to ULM in the summer for an intensive three-semester graduate program, and the concerts are part of their degree requirement.

Five teachers conducted the evening I attended: Tyler Schweinefus, Ashton Theodore, Desziray Sullivan, Michael Tabone, and Adreanna Thrift. Each one stepped to the podium for their piece, directed the ensemble, then sat back down and picked up an instrument. The same person who had been conducting walked to the back row and played tuba. Another returned to clarinet. They are the musicians and the conductors, and it is worth watching both happen in the same evening.

I expected something gentle

I went in thinking soft classical, the kind of concert you half-listen to while your mind wanders. What I got was something more alive than that. The program moved through pieces by Yosuke Fukuda, Samuel Hazo, Steven Bryant, and a Bach adaptation, and ended with the ULM Alma Mater conducted by Dr. Nicholas Bratcher. It was precise and energetic, the kind of performance that reminds you these are not beginners running through their hours. They teach music for a living and they play because they cannot stop.

The name on the door

The hall is named after Emma Louise Biedenharn, known as Emy-Lou, the daughter of Joseph Biedenharn, the Monroe merchant who first bottled Coca-Cola in 1894. She spent fourteen years as a Wagnerian contralto, performing in Europe and across the United States before returning to Monroe. She gave up the stage to preserve the family estate, and the city has not forgotten her. Her name on the recital hall at ULM is a quiet acknowledgment that Monroe's relationship with music is longer and deeper than most people passing through would guess.

The Biedenharn story, from the first Coke bottle to the opera stage, is one of the better ones in the city. The Biedenharn Museum & Gardens on Riverside Drive tells that history in full.

The hall wasn't full. It should have been.

There were maybe forty people in the audience on a Wednesday evening. The hall holds considerably more. I sat there listening to a free concert by experienced musicians in a beautiful space on a campus that belongs to this city, and I kept thinking about the empty seats. Monroe shows up for a lot of things. This is one worth showing up for.

How to go

The Emy-Lou Biedenharn Recital Hall is on the ULM campus at 700 University Ave, Monroe, Louisiana. The Summer MME concerts happen every summer, usually in late June, and admission is always free and open to the public. The program typically includes a Wind Ensemble concert and a Choral concert on consecutive evenings. Check the ULM School of Visual and Performing Arts Facebook page for the current year's schedule before you go.

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