By Rachel Goff
This April, professional musicians will perform pieces written by Harwood Union Middle/High School students.
Harwood band director Chris Rivers got the idea for holding a composing competition from a statewide program called Music-COMP, which hires outside composers to teach Vermont students to write music. "We thought we'd try our own in-house version of that," Rivers said.
After learning how to make their own musical arrangements, over 100 students submitted a final composition and the staff selected 12 that will be performed at a concert, Harwood Opus 1, on Thursday, April 16.
The students whose compositions were selected are Curtis Wilcox, Malayna Johnson, Zach Pratt, Matt Seaberg, Harrison Russell, Brendan Magill, Ben Burr, Merrill Woodruff, Matt Skelly, Ella Holter, Erin Magill and Talia Frankel.
In putting together their pieces, students could choose to incorporate a variety of instruments, including two trumpets, a tuba, a trombone, a French horn, a clarinet, a piano, percussion and vocals. The selected pieces include combinations of up to five instruments and are between three and five minutes long.
For many of the students who participated in the contest, this was their first time composing music. "It's definitely hard to get started," Harrison Russell said, "but once you get started, it just kind of flows."
"This was my first time actually writing a piece," Matt Seaberg said, "but now that's all I do when I come home after school. I can hear a song from a movie and figure out all of the notes and write them down pretty easily."
The students used Music First software to simulate the sounds of the different instruments when making their arrangements, "and it's pretty cool to hear something you wrote," Malayna Johnson said, even if it is coming out of a computer.
On the day of the Opus 1 performance, the 12 students will have the chance to rehearse their pieces for the first time with musicians, "and the look on the faces of the kids when they're sitting next to the pros when they're playing their own music is pretty remarkable," Rivers said.
Based on descriptions of the different compositions, the Opus 1 performance is sure to provide a lot of variety. "Mine has a Latin feel but the words are in French," Johnson said of her piece, which features a brass quintet, voice, piano and percussion.
"I don't want to say cutesy ... but mine's kind of Ingrid Michaelsson-y," Merrill Woodruff said of her voice and piano piece.
"Mine's probably more serious ... not dark but medieval maybe," Zach Pratt said of his piece featuring tuba, vibes and percussion.
"Mine's like a Yiddish Klezmer," Seaberg said of his piece featuring clarinet, tuba, piano and percussion. "And I'm not even Jewish."
The Harwood Opus 1 performance takes place Thursday, April 16, at 3 p.m. at the school.
