When entering Mother’s on Friday and Saturday night, people were greeted with the strumming of the guitar and a stage that contained six different instruments. Was it a band playing? No. It was Mark Rust performing his annual RPI holiday solo concert. And yes, he knew how to play all six of the instruments on stage.
Who is Mark Rust, you ask? Rust is a professional musician with great proficiency in the piano, guitar, fiddle, banjo, mountain dulcimer, and hammered dulcimer. He has written almost 200 original songs, and along with performances across the country, Rust was known to have been involved in a number of theater productions (some on Broadway, even).
As the lights dimmed down in the room, the performance started off with Rust strumming the guitar and introducing himself. To relate to (or to break the ice with) his audience, Rust even jokes about his inability to spell Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute I don’t blame him; I had a hard time with that as well.
The first half of Rust’s performance was about family, and before playing his first song, he brings up an anecdote of his love of autumn and the falling leaves. It was no surprise when his first song was about “watching the colors changing in the trees.”
His second song was a reminiscence of the past with his brother. Rust relates his story of a brother he shared a room with through his music, and to tell the truth, it was a nostalgic feeling, as I thought of the room I shared with my sister.
When Rust moved on to talk about Thanksgiving, he sang a humorous bit about children and their thoughts on Thanksgiving—which is, of course, the thought of no school the next day. Still on the guitar, Rust also performed a song he wrote when his daughter was born, as well as a song he entitled “Catch the Wind.”
Finished with the guitar—for the first half, anyway—Rust moved on to play one song on the piano, which he called “Patriots All.” It was a song that touched upon the different political views families can have.
At the end of the first half of the performance, he introduced the audience to the hammered dulcimer (also called a santur). The dulcimer, to put it shortly, was shaped like a trapezoid and resembled a sort of piano. Rust gracefully performed two musical pieces on the hammered dulcimer, and the sounds of the instrument emanated throughout the entire room.
Once the audience returned from the intermission, Rust began to kindle the holiday spirit, ready to entertain with Christmas music. And again he went back on his guitar. This time, instead of singing about his family, he went for the traditional “Joy to the World.”
In the middle of the second half of the performance, he read a story—or, well, a short piece—from Dave Barry about the little drummer boy and his “pa-rum-pum-pum-ing.” Afterward, he chose to play a medley of Christmas tunes, namely “Oh Christmas Tree,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” and “Jingle Bells” (accompanied by the audience jingling their keys).
What entertained me the most, however, was Rust’s rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Instead of sticking to the actual lyrics, he created the song in the perspective of a hard-working college student (and that student did it “their way”).
Rust then continued to lighten the mood by making it cheerful with “Happy To Be Here,” and then by making it romantic with a song created for his wife on their wedding (“My Best Friend for Life”). His last guitar number was a favorite song of his, titled “Minnie and Maxie McGee,” which told the story of a loving married couple of 52 years.
Near the closing of the whole show, there was a request that Rust perform with the mountain dulcimer (an instrument similar to the hammered dulcimer, only that the mountain dulcimer resembles a guitar). Rust performed one more song on the dulcimer before ending the performance.
You couldn’t have walked out of Mother’s without a slight bounce in your step that night! All in all, Rust’s ability to play both serious and humorous songs on a variety of instruments impressed me throughout the entire show.
