The Pierce College concert series began Thursday, Sept. 25 with two former students performing their solely instrumental music to a full audience.
Associate professor James Bergman has been in charge of putting on the Pierce College concert series for students for about five years.
Bergman finds the performing artists through fellow colleagues, former students and people who contact him wanting to perform. Bergman said he likes to use the same artists because they bring good music and performances and they’re professional.
“We also have two Pierce concerts which are Pierce students performing and that’s a free for all. It’s Broadway tunes, rock songs and some people rap so it’s sort of like a hodgepodge but students seem to like those concerts best.”
Guitarist Adam Werner and Hammered Dulcimer player Adam Howe, formally called ‘Adam and Adam’ opened the concert series with a unique instrumental performance. They describe their music as ‘Apocalyptic Acoustic World Metal’ and hope they inspire students to try new things.
Werner has performed at Pierce multiple times as a student as well as a guest artist both solo and with Howe. They started performing together around three years ago when the Adam’s felt they were in a ‘musical funk.’
“Adam and Adam is absolutely original, you’re not going to hear anything like it anywhere else,” Werner said.
Adam and Adam use a variation of instruments including an iPad application called ‘Morph Whiz.’ This application allows Werner to feature a more electronic side to their music as well.
“We thought about how cool it would be to incorporate that into our sound so it’s like we’re using acoustic but also the technological aspect to kind of merge that all together,” Howe said.
Students were very appreciative to the Adam’s for performing at the concert series.
“Personally I loved the show because I play guitar myself. I can really tell that they were feeling it and how they created it,” said 19-year-old computer engineering major Alana Parks. “It just sounded like they’ve worked on it for a long time and got it to sound how they wanted it to.”
Werner and Howe expressed their gratitude to Pierce and Bergman for asking them to come back to perform again.
“I appreciate that Pierce College is giving us the opportunity to play here again and I hope music students enjoy what we are presenting,” Werner said. “It’s a little different but I hope they get inspired to try new things.”
The concert series will run through December and the next show will be on Oct. 2 and the Los Angeles Baroque Players will be performing at 12:45 p.m. in the music building 3400.
