S t r i n g    P r o j e c t

Composition Festival

2005-2006

“If we only taught grammar and never taught students how to compose sentences, the goal of learning grammar as a tool for communication would never be realized.

Similarly, the goal of leaning music theory as a tool for creating and for understanding musical expression, is realized in music composition.”  

To focus on the process of composition this year, we invite all String Project students to submit compositions for the Composition Festival. String Project  is fortunate to have University of Texas composition faculty members involved in this very special event.  Please ask your MSC teacher for more information. The three main components of the festival are :

Part 1- Theory Through Composition

Composition is incorporated in all String Project MSC classes. Students will be instructed how to use free downloadable notation software from Coda Music. Go to: http://www.finalemusic.com/notepad/

Part II- Composition Masterclass

All students in MSC Classes will be invited to participate in a composition masterclass presented by UT composition faculty member, Donald Grantham following one of our regular Saturday schedules. Date TBA.

Part III- Composition Honor Performance

Students who attend the masterclass will be eligible to submit their composition(s) for evaluation to the Composition Festival Committee. The committee will choose compositions to be performed by members of the String Project faculty at the Spring Convocation and Honors Recital. The submission deadline is December 3^rd. The compositions should be emailed to Martin Norgaard at Martin@JazzfiddleWizard.com by the deadline.

Donald Grantham, Professor of Composition, is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in composition, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the Nissim/ASCAP Orchestral Composition Prize, First Prize in the Concordia Chamber Symphony's Awards to American Composers, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and First Prize in the National Opera Association's Biennial Composition Competition. Dr. Grantham's music has been praised for its "elegance, sensitivity, lucidity of thought, clarity of expression and fine lyricism" in a Citation awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In recent years his works have been performed by the orchestras of Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta and the American Composers Orchestra among many others, and he has fulfilled commissions in media from solo instruments to opera. Dr. Grantham's music is published by Peer-Southern, E. C. Schirmer and Mark Foster, and a number of his works have been commercially recorded. With Kent Kennan, Professor Grantham is coauthor of The Technique of Orchestration (Prentice-Hall).