JUNE 19, 2010 — HINSDALE, ILL. — Have you heard The Who's "Pinball Wizard" played on handbells? The Shadows of Bronze, featuring handbell ringer Daniel M. Reck and pianist Michael B. Surratt, will perform this work and about a dozen others at concerts in the Chicago suburbs next weekend.
Reck and Surratt, along with flautist Rebecca M. Johnson, form a trio which performs a wide repertoire of music ranging from the sixteenth to twenty-first centuries. Recognizable pops pieces like "Pinball Wizard" and "Plink, Plank, Plunk!" will be performed alongside stirring arrangements of "Amazing Grace" and of the hymn tune "Hyfrydol." [Video of "Symphonia on Hyfrydol"]
"The goal of the Shadows of Bronze is to engage our audience with an exciting program showcasing the many different ways that handbells can be used to perform music," says Reck, one of the group's founders. "Many think of handbells as an instrument limited to playing hymns on Sunday morning and carols during the Christmas season."
Read more: New Trio Begins Handbell Performances in Chicago Area
Remarks at the Greek Life Banquet and Awards
March 26, 2010 at 7:30 PM
The Stockdale Center at Monmouth College
Since last year’s banquet, a lot has happened. IFC has continued to step up, the Greek President’s Council has promoted better inter-chapter communication, Mr. DeMarkco Butler has been hired by the Phi Delta Theta international headquarters as their first African American leadership consultant, and some cool new housing is in the works with the Greek Life Initiative. And that brings us to tonight’s Wørd… PROGRESS.
MARCH 11, 2010 — NASHVILLE, TENN. — For some, spring break means a lazy week on the beach, but for fourteen students from Monmouth College (Illinois) and their advisor, Daniel M. Reck, this week is about hard work.
The college's website quoted Reck, explaining the Alternative Spring Break contingent would be "working with several different groups, and what’s exciting to me is that they’ll be doing more human service work than they’ve ever done before” Reck is Assistant Director of Greek Life, Leadership and Involvement at the college.
“In the past, they’ve done more physical jobs. They’ll still be doing some of that, but they’re also going to work with some elementary school students and with some senior citizens,” Reck said. The service included lifting spirits with music performed by Reck and his students.
Read more: Students and Reck bring music, service to Nashville
DECEMBER 20, 2009 — HINSDALE, ILL. — From its animated and dissonate introduction on the piano, to the clarinet's jazzy lament, "Fantasia Annenberg" will takes performers and audiences on a journey through senses of tense excitement, reassurance, and meditation. The new duet was composed by Daniel M. Reck during his residency at Northwestern University, and the work's interlude is based on music originally arranged by Brahams and adopted by the university as its hymn, and is a nod to the composer's graduate residency on the Evanston campus. The music is published by forzandoArts. "I am very excited to finally have 'Fantasia Annenberg' out the door," says Reck.
"I got started on 'Fantasia' a couple years ago and had it pretty well roughed out in a couple months," Reck says, "But I was busy with other projects and could only edit it when I had the chance." The duet was sharing time with Reck's graduate studies in education at Northwestern, which awarded him a Master of Science in Education and Social Policy degree in 2008.
"The 'Annenberg' name refers to Annenberg Hall on Northwestern's Evanston campus," Reck says. The building houses the university's School of Education and Social Policy, and is named for noted publisher, broadcaster, diplomat, and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. "The building itself is relatively new and was designed by the architect to unify the nearby Gothic- and modern-styled buildings," the composer says, "That building was the nexus of my studies, and and this music also brings together the various moods I experienced at Northwestern."