By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
As the spring semester wound down music composition students and graphic design students had a chance to bring projects that involved outside collaborators to fruition.
Students in Collaborative Digital Art Development class, taught by Professor Bonnie Mitchell, worked with a national, state, and regional environmental groups to create short animated to help them communicate their messages.
And four graduate and undergraduate music composition students had a chance to worked with icarus Quartet on creating and performing their pieces.
Design for the greater good
This is the third year that Mitchell has teamed up her students with outside groups to create these public service announcements. In the past, the class has worked with NASA, the Toledo Opera, and a number of environmental groups.
This year Algalita in California, Ohio Citizen Action and the Black Swamp Conservancy worked with the students has they developed the spots.
The students in the class were divided in four teams, with some students working with more than one group. They did the direction, drafting of storyboards used to pitch their concept to the organizations, animated them, and provided the voices.
On Friday, during a Zoom meeting, the representatives from the organizations viewed the final products.
Anika Ballent of Algalita, a group that works with young people to develop ways of eliminating plastic pollution in waterways, was impressed with what the BGSU students created. The team of director John Fowler, Megan Smith, Claudia Hoerr, Kiriana Byrd and Savannah Baileys wrote and animated a story about the world’s addiction to plastics and how it could overcome it.
“This could be such an incredible way to spark people’s imagination,” Ballent said.
Algalita and the other advocacy groups plan to post the videos on their websites.
The other teams were:
- Director David Bloom, Carl Northrup, Alexa Mahajan, and Tynea Swinton who created a spot of the Black Swamp Conservancy about the crucial role wetlands play in the environment, especially in their ability as carbon sinks.
- Director Noah Diehl, Sara Pescosolido, Tynea Swinton, Savannah Baileys and Kiriana Byrd developed a spot for Ohio Citizen Action urging citizens to contact their legislators to tell them to support environmental programs that not only clean the environment, but create jobs and reduce costs.
- Director Felix Bangert, Ally Henlein, Claudia Hoerr, Kiarra Reynolds, Claudia Hoerr and Kiriana Byrd did a second spot of the Black Swamp Conservancy that introduced to some of the characters who inhabit the swamp.
All the work had to be done within the restrictions on meeting and social distancing. This added another layer of difficulty for the teams, which they were able to over, according to Mitchell.
Part of the goal of the class is to teach problem solving, critical thinking and team work, qualities that employers are looking for, Mitchell said.
Composers hammer out new works
On Thursday, the icarus Quartet – Larry Weng and Yevgeny Yontov, piano, and Matt Keown and Jeff Stern, percussion – set up on the Kobacker Hall stage to work with student composers who had been selected through a competitive process to write pieces for them.
The quartet was on campus under the auspices of the Klingler Electroacoustic Residency. This is the first time an ensemble has filled that role.
Elainie Lillios, BGSU composition professor who coordinates the event, said in the past the KEAR residency has brought in composers. But with the pandemic that was proving difficult. Joe Klingler, the BGSU graduate who founded the residency in 2013, suggested to Lillios that they could bring in an ensemble. The icarus Quartet has a close relationship with the university –Yontov is on the piano faculty. The ensemble was already booked for a Music at the Forefront concert, but that was canceled because of the pandemic. Klingler had seen the group perform and as impressed.
So in fall a call went out for student composers to submit proposals and four students – Delanie Molnar, Steven Naylor, Benjamin Damann, and Cory Brodack – were selected to compose for the ensemble and electronic media.
During the semester they met virtually with the students to discuss their pieces. On Thursday, the rehearsed the pieces with the composers both giving and getting feedback.
Much of the commentary has to do with practicality, Keown said. It’s difficult if the composer isn’t a percussionist to get a handle on the way the instruments are set up. At one point, he said, he was called upon to activate the electronics with his left foot while at the same time reaching in the opposite direction to play in the upper register of the marimba.
Universities are prime venues for the quartet to perform, Stern said, because they will have two grand pianos and the array of percussion equipment the group needs.
Helping to develop the next generation of students is part of their mission, he said.
The members of the quartet all attended Yale University, though not necessarily all at the same time.
The group has its roots in 2015 when it performed Paul Lansky’s “Textures” at a Yale percussion studio concert at Carnegie Hall. That was followed by a performance of Bela Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, the seminal work for this instrumentation.
Keown said they decided to pursue making the ensemble of going concern. There are only a few ensembles dedicated to this instrumentation, Yarn/Wire and Hammer/Klavier, which performs less frequently. Both those other quartets have also played at BGSU. Pianist Thomas Rosenkranz performs with Hammer/Klavier. He formerly taught at BGSU, and Yontov filled that faculty vacancy when he left.
Stern said icarus Quartet has been on campus several times, but never specifically to work with student composers. They have given master classes, talk about musical entrepreneurship, and coach. They haven’t run out of ideas of how to interact with students, he said
Molnar said that working with icarus was “an incredible opportunity.”
She was impressed by their professionalism and how “tight’ they were as a group with a very efficient approach to rehearsing.
Molnar’s composition, “Breaking in Torrent” was inspired by poet Tacey M. Atsitty’s poem “River Sonnet.” A graduating master’s in composition student, this was her thesis work.
Molnar said she loves contemporary poetry and was struck by Atsitty’s use of straightforward language to reflect on loss and regret.
She tried as well to evoke these emotions as well as the river and landscape in her music.
“They’re very much bringing it to life,” she said of icarus.
Steven Naylor said this was also “one of the coolest composition experiences” he’s had at BGSU. Naylor is a double major in composition and piano performance. He’s in his fourth year and plans to graduate in spring, 2022.
He’s performed many of his previous compositions himself. The icarus sessions are “a way for me to get rid of the nerves of giving away my baby to somebody else.”
He had a similar experiences early in the semester when he composed a micro-opera for two singers.
Hearing others internalize and performing his music is “just insane joy,” he said.
His piece, “Susurration,” evokes the soft whispering sounds of humanity within the cosmos.
As a musician and composer, he loves the aspect of collaboration.
“In writing for people or playing for people ,that’s where I get my greatest joys and highest highs.”
On Friday, the quartet recorded and video of all four pieces, and Mike Laurello, manager of recording services, will create a series of videos that will be posted on the College of Musical Arts YouTube channel in a virtual concert in fall.
