Leonard Bernstein founded the Festival of the Arts as a forum to debut his new piece of music. Now, 52 years after the original founding, Kristen Sergeant (GRAD), accompanied by Jennifer Honen (GRAD), paid tribute to him in a small and intimate recital last Friday.Sergeant opened her performance with I Hate Music, a song cycle about a child's desire to sing and not worry about all of that music stuff. Sergeant eloquently sang of the little girl's desire to stop practicing and her body language and crisp delivery had the audience laughing in all of the right spots.

She followed with "Take Care of This House" from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a show Bernstein wrote in 1972 with Alan Jay Lerner in an attempt to criticize the Nixon administration. The song itself is about the sacred ground that is the White House, but as Sergeant described, "it can really be applied to any place that has a lot of meaning to someone."

Sergeant gave an excellent performance of the piece. Quite often very high treble sopranos can come off sounding breathy and light, but Sergeant gave a full, supported performance that created a strong sound.

For her third piece, Sergeant performed two love songs: "Extinguish My Eyes" and "When My Soul Touches Yours," both of which are poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. Sergeant's flowing legato performance enhanced the messages of love delivered by the poems. Furthermore, her smooth phrasing allowed the audience to understand each word that she was saying, adding to the mood Rilke meant to create in her writing.

"La Bonne Cuisine" is a series of French recipes from Emily Dumont's La Bonne Cuisine set to music. Sergeant's performance of the series was fast, fun and staccato, a very big style shift from the previous piece. While some of the humor of singing recipes was lost in the French, it was still very entertaining to listen to.

Next, Sergeant performed selections from Mass by Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin) and Bernstein. Schwartz's influence was very prevalent in the second selection "I Go On," where the accompaniment bore a distinct resemblance to "Corner of the Sky" from Pippin. Both pieces added to Sergeant's already excellent performance.

Sergeant closed with "Piccolo Serenata," another legato piece she performed beautifully with her powerful soprano voice. Overall, the recital was an excellent display of the wide varieties of music that Bernstein wrote in his life and each was performed incredibly well with meticulous attention paid to each song and performance. Although it might have been one of the smallest audiences, it was one of the best performances of the Festival.