UMD students perform original compositions for New Music at Maryland

By Freddy Wolfe
For The Diamondback

The College of Maryland highlighted unique compositions in “New Music at Maryland,” a live performance showcasing works created by pupil composers, on April 18.

The live performance, hosted at The Clarice’s Gildenhorn Recital Corridor, featured unique works composed by the music college’s music composition majors.

The primary half of the present consisted of 5 solo items composed by 4 totally different college students. A kind of college students was Sean Kim, a freshman cello efficiency and music composition main.

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“It was positively a really surreal expertise,” Kim mentioned. “This was the primary time I really had my compositions carried out dwell in entrance of a extremely massive viewers.”

Kim carried out his piece “Theme and Variations for Solo Cello” and had his piano composition, “New Beginnings,” carried out by piano efficiency graduate pupil Leili Asanbekova on the live performance.

“It’s crucial for a composer to listen to their work performed in entrance of an viewers. It’s crucial for performers to play new items that they’re not essentially aware of,” professor Thomas DeLio, the present’s organizer, mentioned.

Dennis Erickson, a sophomore music composition main, additionally carried out his personal unique composition, “Contour,” on the present.

“It was extra of an experiment to see how bizarre I can get with it but in addition nonetheless make it … nonetheless palatable,” Erickson mentioned.

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After an intermission, the second half was comprised solely of a five-movement piece composed by lecturer William Kenlon. Kenlon’s composition, “Need Paths: Chamber Symphony for Double Wind Quintet and Piano,” was his dissertation for his doctorate, which he acquired from this college in 2017.

Kenlon had the concept for the piece after studying concerning the need paths, which in city planning is a footpath created by continued use of the shortest or most simply navigated path to a vacation spot.

“The piece is my try to discover the concept of a musical need path, the place there’s a important concept that type of works its means by way of the piece … regardless that it’s beset by numerous impedances alongside the best way,” he mentioned.

This was the primary time “Need Paths” was carried out dwell.

Kenlon burdened the significance of this chance for younger composers to have their work carried out.

“Having your work performed dwell is a greater trainer than taking any class,” he mentioned. “You’re gonna study a distinct set of issues from the efficiency of it than you’ll study from simply writing it.”