The Festival of New Musics will culminate tonight in the Hopkins Center's Spaulding Auditorium with "A Celebration of Music at Dartmouth," a wide-ranging showcase of the student performers and composers who organized the four-concert festival. The festival was organized by undergraduates, graduate students and professors as a forum to share the variety of music created at Dartmouth, including classical, improvisational and digital pieces.
The festival began April 28 with "A Celebration of Student Composition," featuring pieces for quartets and trios largely composed and performed by undergraduates. Many of the performers and composers had only met each other several weeks before the concert, lending an air of novelty and freshness to the music.
"It's a different experience, in that you are the first person to be playing the piece that someone else has written in front of an audience, which is really exciting for the composers," cellist Julia Floberg '11 said. Floberg performed pieces composed by Patricia Lee '12 and Evan Ross '13.
On April 29, student composers had the opportunity to hear their pieces performed by the professional string quartet Del Sol at a concert in the Spheris Gallery on Main Street. The intimate concert was a collaboration between the Dartmouth organizers and the Spheris monthly series "The Way To Go Out," which seeks to bring together student musicians with professionals from as far away as New York City, according to graduate student Chris Peck
Del Sol, which has won the Chamber Music America award for Adventurous Programming twice, strongly emphasizes education and collaboration, according to the group's web site. At the concert, the quartet performed four pieces by Dartmouth students, including the plucky and playful "Scott" by Adam Reed '11 and graduate student Patrick Barter's atonal and suspenseful "Vitula."
James Lee '11, the festival's undergraduate coordinator and featured artist, believes such experimentation and collaboration is the most vital part of the program.
"New composers have a hard time getting their works out there just because people want to listen to what's tried and true," Lee said.
The Festival of New Musics is certainly aiming to change that reality. In addition to the many live performances during the week, the Hop showcased digital music projects created by students and professional composers on Sunday in "Digital Music and More."
Sunday's program featured an eclectic collection of sounds. "Silmarillion" by Bob Greer '11 was an intriguing blend of angelic background vocals and a crescendoing mix of piano, synthesizers and drums. Graduate student Paul Osetinsky's "Stratovinsky" made full use of Faulkner Recital Hall's elaborately arranged speaker system. Each speaker growled out an industrial rhythm that grew into a furious and dizzying sound before calming and fading out. "Action" by Peck was an auditory collage of footsteps, snippets of conversation and ambient noise backed by a combination of tones and rumblings.
The show on Sunday ended with a longer experimental piece composed by Thomas Miller and performed by clarinetist Matthew Marsit, director of the Dartmouth Wind Symphony. The work, called "Abyss," combined Marsit's live clarinet with prerecorded digital music and a vibrant abstract film of colors and movement.
Marsit described the work as "pairing essentially good versus evil," with the live music embodying good and the warped digital recording representing evil. The beauty of the film did not diminish the feeling of entering into some hellish hallucination as the live music and the recording battled for dominance. With interspersed rapid cuts and bursting colors, the nightmare softened into a calm dreamscape as the performance ended.
Tonight's conclusion of the festival will attempt to combine all the previous concerts' variety into a final celebration featuring individual pieces as well as group performances by the Dartmouth Glee Club and the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble. The show will take place in Spaulding a much larger venue.
"It's a little daunting because it's in Spaulding. I'm more excited than nervous," said Nicholas Chuaqui '12, who will perform his original piece in front of an audience for the first time.
Chuaqui, like many other participants, is also looking forward to hearing the music of his peers, especially the KDE Ensemble of Free Improvisation. Floberg, also a member of the KDE Ensemble, explained that the group was inspired by an improvisation class taught by professor Kui Dong. The acronym previously stood for "Kui Dong Experience," but the group recently got rid of the referent.
Tonight's program will also include performances by Emma Alexander '10, William Lowry '13, the Dartmouth Percussion Group and the Dartmouth Wind Symphony. "A Celebration of Music at Dartmouth" promises a showing by a diverse group of performers and composes to end Dartmouth's week-long tribute to music and creativity.
Alexander is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
"A Celebration of Music at Dartmouth" begins at 7 p.m. tonight in Spaulding Auditorium.
