Young composers to premiere works, Cazenovia Counterpoint to conclude

By kATE HiLL Staff Writer

On July 30, seven budding composers will premiere their new music during the Young Composers Corner (YCC) Concert at Cazenovia’s Lakeland Park pavilion at 4:30 p.m.

Now in its 15th year, the YCC is a free, five-day music composition workshop for middle and high school students from across Central New York.

The mentoring program is a cornerstone of the Cazenovia Counterpoint festival of the expressive arts, an annual monthlong celebration of artists in all disciplines.

During the YCC, students interested in or currently writing music get the chance to work with a professional composer to develop and refine their writing skills, to think and talk critically about music, and to develop a new piece of music in any style for the instruments available to them.

The program is led by Paul Leary, an associate professor and chair of the music department at SUNY Oswego, where he teaches electronic music, theory, composition, music business, and popular music.

This year’s YCC participants are Finn CarruthersColes, Alex McGlauglin, Nathan Schierer, Grant Gilham, Clark Durant, Che Richmond, and Jack Picciano.

The workshop ran from July 17-21 at the First Presbyterian Church of Cazenovia.

“We spend part of each day listening and talking about music,” Leary said on July 19.

“I pick a piece that we listen to, then we discuss it. There’s often an element of music theory as well. They also have at least one hour a day for just breaking off into their own space to compose.”

According to Leary, the students wrote their compositions for saxophone, violin, cello, piano, clarinet, soprano voice, or a combination of those instruments.

Schierer, a rising junior at Cazenovia High School, participated in the YCC for the third time this year.

“I decided to participate in the program again this year because I feel like it’s a fun way for me to be creative in a way that I enjoy,” he said.

“Plus, as I found the program enjoyable the past two years, why not do it again?”

Last summer, he composed a piece for violin, cello, and piano titled “<Reminder to make a good title later>.”

“The piece I am composing this year doesn’t have a title yet, seeing as it’s still named ‘ycctest2’ in MuseScore,” Schierer said. “Although, when compared to my first year where the title was effectively a keysmash with no significance, it may end up staying that way. It’s being written for two cellos, and its inspiration comes from all the music I have listened to before. As a composer, I try to recreate the sounds I’ve heard from other composers that I enjoy, and each year I get closer to being able to create a sound I enjoy.”

All the completed works will be performed by professional musicians, the Society Players, during the July 30 concert, and the students will have the opportunity to speak about the music they created.

“It’s very rewarding to work with such motivated and talented students,” said Leary. “Each student is doing excellent work and is pretty self-motivated. It’s been a joy to work with these kids, as always.”

The YCC Concert is presented in collaboration with the Greater Cazenovia Area Chamber of Commerce and is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to bring blankets or lawn chairs for seating.

In addition to the YCC, Cazenovia Counterpoint includes a juried art show, solo and group musical performances, a plein air art event, a poetry round-robin and writers’ corner, new music at the Cazenovia Farmers’ Market, performances at the Fourth of July parade, the premiere of a Cazenovia native’s new film about a rock star, and a meditative music session.

“We just had our first sound bath last night and had a really good turn-out for it,” said Cazenovia Counterpoint Committee member Neva Pilgrim. “. . . This festival does indeed help bring people into Cazenovia, and all those performing are paid.”

Another highlight of Cazenovia Counterpoint has been vocal, piano, organ, violin, trombone, and alto saxophone performances by “Rising Stars,” prize-winning high school students from across CNY.

The Rising Stars are Dominic Fiacco, Elijah Gebers, Heather Buchanan-Wise, Sean Alvaro, Frank Wang,

Our Voice

What we can achieve

The summer of 1969 is 54 years ago now, but in the grand scheme of things, 54 years is not a great deal of time, but a lot has happened in those five decades and a great deal was achieved in the years leading up to that summer.

Thinking of this particular point in time, images of events like Woodstock or antiwar protests might be the first images to come to mind.

Others may look at the things taking place on a sociological level and the divide that existed at that time may seem the most obvious from a historical perspective as the country was torn over the issue of American participation in Vietnam among other issues like the civil rights movement

It was a turbulent time, the culmination of a decade that saw the assignation of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert as well as Martin Luther King Jr.

But in the midst of all that was taking place, there were things that, at least for a few moments, could bring the country together.

July 20 marked the anniversary of first moon landing.

At least for a few fleeting moments, much of the country, if not the world, watched with its collective breath held as Neil Armstrong took those tentative steps down to the lunar surface from Apollo 11.

While there is some debate about what exactly he said and how his words were transferred across hundreds of thousands of miles of space back to Earth, the intent of his words ring true.

The steps he took were small for one person, but the steps represented a monumental leap for the entirety of the human race.

Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin along with all the other members of the previous Apollo missions that orbited the moon and returned home, were farther away from Earth than anyone had every been or has been since.

The space program was gradually taking shape with the Mercury program and by the early ’60s orbits of the planet had been completed, but the moon was still very far off.

In 1962, just nine years before Armstrong took those historic steps, President Kennedy posed a challenge to the scientific community.

As he noted other explorers who went before, crossing oceans, searching for new lands, climbing insurmountable heights and odds in the search for new experiences and new knowledge, Kennedy set forth an aggressive timeline for American space exploration with a goal to land and return from the moon by the end of the decade.

While speaking at Rice University, Kennedy said, “But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? ... We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills; because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win ...”

There was a lot of learning that had to happen along the way, a lot of creation and discovery. There were also losses as the crew of Apollo 1 lost their lives in a fire.

And there would be challenges after. Most famously Apollo 13.

But through this all there was incredible perseverance that continued to push forward and follow Kennedy’s mandate to seek new knowledge and climb new mountains.

Looking back on that incredible moment of July 20, 1969, it was an amazing feat of human ingenuity accomplished with less computing power than the average cell phone or laptop has these days.

It was because of space exploration that much of the technology, like cell phones and GPS to name a few, have come to be common place.

But more than any of these creations, it represents all that we can accomplish when humans set a goal and work together to achieve even that which may seem impossible.