Compose yourself: writing music is fun

Six Missouri high school students expanded their talents in the creation of new music, thanks to an unusual summer workshop at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Music.

The students - all winners of 2007 Creating Original Music Program (COMP) prizes - received scholarships to work for a week with MU's award-winning faculty in music composition. At the conclusion of the Missouri Summer Composition Institute, each student had produced an original composition and experienced its performance debut.

Composition and theory professors W. Thomas McKenney and Stefan Freund led the workshop, which, they say, is the nation's only composition seminar for high school students. Morning classes and afternoon lessons filled the students' days as they developed original pieces for any combination of at least three instruments from a selection of flute, violin, clarinet, cello and bassoon.

"They are gifted kids who worked hard, so it was a wonderful experience for Dr. Freund and me," McKenney says. "Two days that week, all the students got up on their own at 6 a.m. to work on their pieces in the lab before their classes began. We were so impressed at how hard these students worked."

MU students performed the new compositions at a public concert on June 30, the final day of the workshop. The featured pieces were "Nighttime by the Lake," by Victoria Yu of Columbia; "Summer Comp," by Austin Hernandez of Pittsburg; "A Drunken Path," by Spencer Meadows of St. Louis; "120 Hours," by Brad Smelser of Hillsboro; "Reflections," by Meghan Berry of Union; and "Spanish Serenade," by Elizabeth Salley of St. Robert. Salley is a two-time winner of a COMP award.

"They made us look really good," Freund says of the students.

Philanthropist Jeanne Sinquefield of Westphalia, Mo., provides funding for the workshop and the COMP Festival through the Sinquefield Family Foundation. Her gifts support scholarships and prize money for the student winners as well as $1,000 cash awards for their schools. Sinquefield attended the concluding concert.

The Composition Institute is modeled after MU's School of Music band and choral camps. Graduate students serve as mentors and camp counselors.

Links:

School of Music
COMP