Student composers featured in concerts, May 11, 12, 14 and 18

The Department of Music will present four concerts featuring music composed by graduate and undergraduate students at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, May 11; Wednesday, May 12; Friday, May 14; and Tuesday, May 18, in Taplin Auditorium, Fine Hall.

The Composers' Ensemble at Princeton will feature the work of graduate students May 11 in a performance titled "The Person Sitting Next to You Will Explain Everything." It will include the compositions "Beastie" by Newton Armstrong, "October Skies" by Brooke Joyce, "Scordatura Suite" by Andrew Lee, "Without Stopping" by John Supko and "Big Red" by Stefan Weisman. The works will range from a piece for four flutes to a laptop electronic composition.

The May 12 concert, based on the graduate course "Ends and Means: Issues in Composition," will include compositions by graduate students Alan Tormey, Scott Tormey, Andrew Lee and Nathan Michel.

The annual concert of compositions by undergraduate composers will take place May 14. It will include four pieces by graduating seniors: "Three Psalms for Chorus, Wind Septet and Piano" by Ryan Tibbetts; "A Page of Madness" (a rescoring of a silent film for traditional Japanese bamboo flute and string quartet) by Andy Friedman; "The Fir Tree" for flute, clarinet, violin and cello by Kathleen Bader; "Bendeve's Advance" for string quartet, electronics/tape and narrator by Daniel Iglesia. Works by juniors Michael Coenen, Dan Ruccia, Thomas Johnston and James Shin also will be performed.

Another Composers Ensemble concert will be held May 18, featuring the works of graduate students Oscar Bettison, Tae Hong Park, Alan Tormey, Miriama Young and Sharon Zhu.

The concerts are free and open to the public.

The music department has had a leading graduate program in composition for more than 40 years and has recently expanded its offerings in the undergraduate arena. The department has a variety of resources related to composition, including music theory courses that stress compositional work, electronic and computer synthesis facilities, beginning and advanced compositional workshops, independent projects and senior theses in composition.