Wouldn’t it be exciting to have the power and skills to write a song for an important moment in your life, or even better, the soundtrack of your entire life, like it was a movie? Imagine describing how you see the world on musical notes and sharing that view with others by playing it on different instruments. Well, maybe it is not as fantastic as the way I just described it, but it is basically what the composition students did for their recital, which happened last Sunday at HPAC at 4 pm. It is an annual opportunity to share with the world what they have created and represented with music.
Although not very well attended, the AU Composers recital is really important for the Department of Music, as a platform to let students showcase their creativity and talent through pieces that have never been heard before, giving space for listeners to experience new feelings and hear new ideas. The recital began with music professor Dr. Max Keller playing “Sequuntur” (meaning “logical conclusions or consequences of facts”), a piece for trumpet and piano, which I would describe as dark academia’s music style meeting jazz at the rhythm of a nice waltz. Following that, the ambiance changed as “Seeking the Face of the Lord” was performed by friends of the composer Minji Kang (senior, music violin) who, in her exchange semester here at AU, had the opportunity to compose a Christian song that can give you summer Sabbath afternoon vibes. After that, Jamison Moore (senior, music performance) appeared with his cello to play his composition called “Robert Glasper Plays Cello.” If you did not know, Glasper is a Black pianist and arranger whose focus goes mostly to Jazz, but he is recently known for his latest album “Black Radio III.” To represent Glasper’s style, Jamison played with a track that consisted of various electronic instruments, with a lofi hip hop structure and sound.
The minutes passed while the instruments for the next piece were being placed on the stage, and then two music students passed to the front to perform Grant Steinweg (senior, music composition)’s piece “Oriental Suite,” which was divided into two “movements,” the first one depicting a thunderstorm sound, which included the audience by clapping in a specific manner to represent the rain, and the second movement having a texture and sound similar to ancient East-Asian music. Next, Callan Lewis-Balfor (freshman, music education) approached the stage with some of his friends to perform his piece “Mary’s Song.” As he commented at the recital, this piece is part of a Christian play he composed. This particular piece is played during a burial scene for Jesus, with Mary singing the lyrics (although for this performance, the composer sang the melody). Next, an invited faculty member of the department of music, Dr. Kenneth Logan (faculty, music, although most of you probably know him as the “organ guy” at PMC) performed his piece “On Wondrous Love” for piano, which utilized a choral or hymnal style, with parts that created a big sound, like if you were hearing it in a big cathedral. Entering into the last part of the program, Andrews alumnus Caralynn Chan played the harp as current student Liesl Meadows (freshman, music & pre-med) sang “Woven Next to You,” a love song about falling deeply in love, written by Nicole Powers (senior, music composition). As she told me, Nicole was excited because Caralynn is a close friend of hers, who traveled from Chicago to perform her piece.
Nearing the end, the next piece was “Samba for Clarinet and Piano,” a composition by Carlos Lugo (junior, music performance) who, accompanied by Lucas Souza (junior, music education) on the clarinet, gave the concert a very tropical touch. The song was well performed and felt like a nice conversation between the two instruments. To close the concert, a string quartet formed of AU current music students entered the stage to perform a piece by recent music composition alumnus Daily Lin: “Oppressionata,” a piece full of dramatism, adventure, warmth, chaos, and desperation. After the final note, Dr. Keller invited all present composers to the stage to recognize them (as not all of them were the performers of their own pieces) and with the final bow, the recital came to its end.
Maybe you ask: what makes this recital different from a normal instrument recital or concert by the orchestra or the choir? Different from performing pieces from past centuries, accompanied by a lot of research and studies on those past composers and several recordings on the internet to hear before learning the piece, performing new compositions has its easy and harder side, especially if the performer of the piece is not the composer. From the easy side, you have direct feedback from the composer on how to play it and improve your performance, but from the more complex side, you do not have a reference to hear. The style is, most likely, new to you, which means more effort into understanding the composition, the composer’s ideas in his mind that sometimes cannot be described in words, and putting your best effort into making a performance that presents the recently-born composition to the audience in the best possible way. It is simple but complex simultaneously, making it even more interesting to do!
Now I ask you: what would you do if you could recreate your world and make it as music?
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.