A young violinist walks calmly onto the stage followed by a pianist who sits down at the piano and places her fingers on the keys.  The violinist focuses her gaze on her sheet music and after putting her bow to the strings, begins to play her piece.

On Thursday, March 7, eight violinists took the stage of the Staller Center Recital Hall to play movements from Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas, with piano accompaniment by Doctoral of Musical Arts student Tyler Wottrich and undergraduate music major Bowei Chen.

One by one, the violinists entered and left the stage separately to play movements from the Sonatas and display their talents as a part of “the violin project,” a yearly endeavor by the university’s violin studio.

This year, members of the violin studio voted to perform a recital composed of their own interpretations of Beethoven’s sonatas.

“There are ten amazing sonatas and we would’ve loved to do them all but that would’ve been about a four or five hour concert so we just chose selections, our favorite movements and everyone who could play played,” said Andrea Segar, a doctoral student who majored in violin performance and is now a teaching assistant in the violin studio.

Segar listened back stage, played her piece, and then listened in awe as she sat in the audience.

“To hear the amazing amount of variety of types of music that [Beethoven] wrote and it has so much joy and passion and so much emotion in it, it’s just so fun to hear everyone play,” Segar said.

The audience, composed mainly of fellow music students, enthusiastically applauded the performers, and the recital came to a close.