SRSU Music Professor Nicolas Hurt Releases Album
By Brooke Manuel, Skyline Editor
ALPINE – More than a month after a screening of his short film, “Serenade, I Miss You,” at the Museum of the Big Bend, Nicolas Hurt, a music professor at Sul Ross State University, released the film’s companion album of the same title on March 15, 2024.
“Serenade, I Miss You” is a collection of four songs. Hurt composed one of the songs himself, and he had the other three commissioned by his friends Zeke Jarmon, Justice Philips and Claire Puckett in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The album consists of solo classical guitar music, but because not all the pieces were written by strictly classical composers, Hurt says that he hopes it has an “eclectic energy to it.”
Each piece tells a different story. The song, “Lemonade,” elicits feelings of a breath of fresh air and a cold beverage on a hot summer day. “Serenade, I Miss You” brings an intimate image of someone serenading their lover with a song to mind. And the song, “Lantern,” makes one feel as if they’re sitting in a clearing in the woods staring up at the stars. “Lemonade,” “Serenade, I Miss you” and “Lantern” were composed by Jarmon, Philips and Puckett respectively.
The fourth song, “The Springs,” is the song composed by Hurt, and he says that it is about a swimming hole.
“[The Springs] is a sketch of a beloved swimming hole of mine, and even if I am away from it and can’t actually get into the water, I have this piece to kind of bring me there in my musical imagination,” Hurt said in his short film, which can be found on YouTube.
Learning the new songs his friends, and fellow musicians, wrote for him challenged Hurt as an artist as the pieces were submitted to him in various formats.
“Some of the pieces were given to me in standard sheet music score and some through a fuzzy voicemail on my phone, but it’s all played on the same guitar,” Hurt said.
“Serenade, I Miss You” is Hurt’s first solo album, but he is far from new to the music scene. In addition to being a music professor at Sul Ross, Hurt is a solo guitarist, a guitar instructor and the host of a classical music radio show called In Tune on Marfa Public Radio.
Among his accomplishments as a musician are the two awards SPEAK, a band that Hurt played in, won at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Tx., for Best Indie Band and Best New Band, and his performance with the Orpheus Guitar Trio at Carnegie Hall. Hurt has performed as a soloist at music festivals in Paracho, Mexico, Cervo, Italy, and New Milford, Connecticut, and has performed concerts in Marfa and Austin, Texas.
Stream the album on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/30BLKws9Ky0C7Ri4wzyvcI?si=f8f3af3125e642bc&nd=1&dlsi=8c9697c348604c1e