Newfound Music blog

So this is a little late, but here it is!
It's my blog about the Newfound Music Festival

I attended Derek Charke's lecture "Presentation on his music" and I was really interested in a lot of the topics and examples that he presented. He went through some recordings of various things and sounds that he put together to create an accompaniment to a flute piece. Then he went through the pitch collections that he used to make up the pitch order and ways he varied them. After discussing why he chose them and letting us here some of the electronic samples, he played a recording the piece and it was really interesting to hear how it all fit and presented itself. He then talked about a piece that he composed based on native throat singing of Northern Canada. He showed us some innovative bowing techniques that he devised to emulate the unique sounds that a throat singer can create, for example; moving the bow in both clockwise and counter-clockwise motion; and vertical up and down bowing. He played a couple excerpts of the piece and it was amazing the sounds that the string quartet was able to produce. It sounded unreal!

I was able to only attend the Thursday night concert, and looking at some of the posts about the other shows, especially Saturday night, I'm sad I wasn't able to hear those. But the concert on Thursday was great nonetheless. My favorite pieces were the Toccatas by Crawley, Gustnadoes by Charke, and Gwan by Godin. They were all very different, but really interesting and entertaining. I loved everything in the concert, but these pieces really captured my attention and interest.

I really liked Newfound Music this year, as I do every year, and I really wish that we could have more of these during the course of the semester instead of just being an annual event. Playing in Jess' piece with the concert band was a real treat! I really liked her piece and it was just great to see a fellow students work get promoted and played with the dedication that it received (the wind ensemble did a wicked job!). Our piano concert before the show on Satruday was also a lot of fun. Everyone's pieces were exciting and different, which made for a great concert. It was short and sweet, and we got a great audience! What else could we have asked for? Notable things from past Newfound festivals include playing in Reiley's "In C" last year, which was a lot of fun and a rare experience! These festivals continue to provide top-notch presentations and world class music, which makes us very fortunate to receive and participate in. Personally, it is a great learning experience and continues to give me encouragement and inspiration. It really is too bad that we only get one a year, but hey, maybe that will change in the future!