UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music has produced some musical stars over the years. Paul Chihara, professor of music and chair of the Visual Media Department, was one member of a team of musicians responsible for bringing the works of Hayao Miyazaki (including “Spirited Away”) to the United States. Cris Velasco is a multi-award winning composer for music in video games, including the “Mass Effect” series.
Tonight, though, professors and alumni take a backseat to undergraduate student composers with this quarter’s Undergraduate Composers Concert.
Every year, UCLA’s composition students put on three concerts featuring original undergraduate compositions – one each quarter. Students are required to present music in at least one of the concerts each year.
Writing the music isn’t the only responsibility these undergraduates take on for the concert. In fact, they take on all of the responsibility, said alumnus and adjunct associate professor of composition Mark Carlson, who is facilitating the performance. Each student must encourage their peers to compose for the concert, find individual musicians to play their pieces and even serve as the stage crew during the concert.
Fourth-year piano performance and composition student Howard Chen is in charge of overseeing this year’s concert series, and said he believes it is a reality check for composition students, who get the chance to interact with other composers.
Chen said interacting with the performers also helps students because it forces them to learn how to articulate exactly what the composer intends for the piece, as well as adapt the piece in order to help musicians.
In contrast to prior concerts, which Chen said tended to be heavy on string quartets, this concert promises to feature a wider variety of instrumentations.
“Originally, I think a lot of people wanted to submit string quartets, which is a nice combination … but can get a bit overly thematic. We actually have some string quartets … and a few different combinations of woodwind instruments, string instruments, trios and some piano music with voice.”
Chen was originally planning on playing a piece he wrote for the xylophone and piano, but decided to perform a set of solo piano pieces.
Third-year music composition student Jack Lipson found inspiration for his performance close to home. He said he will perform two pieces from a musical he’s been working on called “For Honor,” based on the true story of a youth uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. His mother, also a performer in his musical, will accompany him while he plays piano. Lipson will also sing.
In addition to UCLA’s rigorous audition process for the major, he said the culture of music composition before college is changing in part because instrumental music reaches more people through contemporary films.
“People my age and younger have encouraged our kids to compose, even if it’s just for fun … a lot of people who are forty-five and younger have actually looked up to film composers,” Carlson said.
Though Lipson said composing is a typically solitary pursuit, he also said these concerts give composition students the opportunity to learn from their peers.
“Not only do we get to hear our stuff … but we don’t (usually) get a chance to hear what our classmates are doing … ” Lipson said. “We leave learning a lot of things (because) … otherwise, we wouldn’t really have heard it.
Email Bain at abain@media.ucla.edu.