This month’s Composer in the Spotlight series is Dr. Sungji Hong. An award- Korean composer now living in the US, Sungji teaches composition at the University of North Texas. Commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation (USA), the National Flute Association (USA), the Texas Flute Association, the Tongyoung International Music Festival (Korea), the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (Korea), the Keumho Asiana Cultural Foundation (Korea), the International Isang Yun Music Society (Germany) and the MATA Festival (USA), Sungji’s music reflects an intelligent, playful exploration of timbre.
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This month’s Composer Spotlight guest is Dr. Zack Stanton – an award-winning composer and conductor from Conway, Arkansas. His music, performed throughout the United States, as well as Ireland and South Korea, spans the gamut from solo and chamber to choral and orchestral. Ensembles that have premiered his work include the Austin Symphony Orchestra, Conway Symphony Orchestra, University of Texas Symphony Orchestra, and Millikin University Percussion Ensemble, line upon line percussion, and numerous respected soloists. Zack received his DMA from the University of Texas at Austin, and he is currently Lecturer of Composition and Theory at the University of Iowa.
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US American consumers can take it as a given that music can live on after its initial creation. After all, it’s how we hear much of our music today (such as streaming services, or vinyl if you are a true audiophile). I love recorded music (as a recording artist myself), yet am also wary of it. I see that recorded music threatens to render the original environment in which the music was created entirely irrelevant to the music itself. Obscuring the original context in which the music was created leads people to believe that all that matters is the product they can consume. My hope is to convince any Christian music listener to resist this delusion and take the original context of music seriously.
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This month’s Composer in the Spotlight guest is Dr. Shawn E. Okpebholo. He is an award-winning American composer on faculty at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music (IL). Shawn’s music is a powerfully expressive integration of contrasting musical languages reflecting an appreciation of non-western artistic aesthetics. His music has been performed throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and he regularly receives commissions from noted soloists, chamber groups, and large ensembles—artists who have performed his music at some of the nation’s greatest venues including the Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the National Cathedral.
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When I graduated from Seminary, one of the first things that I strove to do was to acquire books. I wanted to have the insight and wisdom of great theologians, thinkers, and scholars to guide me around matters theological, ethical, and spiritual. This was, and still is especially the case with commentaries on the scripture. As a pastor, I am expected, on a weekly basis, to lead a community to wrestle with, consider, and delve into a Biblical text, and this is no small task. In one Bible verse are a multitude of meanings, layers of context and sub-context, social influences, rhetorical word plays, and traditions of hearing and receiving the text. With one Bible verse are centuries of tradition engaging with the text, centuries of scholarship that has considered the social, the historical, the literary, and the spiritual nuances that are overtly seen or are to be found more subtly within the text…
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The first musician we would like to introduce in this month’s Composer Spotlight series is Dr. Tatev Amiryan. She is an award-winning Armenian composer and pianist now living in San Francisco. Tatev’s music reflects a love of folk music and has been performed in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East by such renowned ensembles and performers as, German Chamber Philharmonic of Bremen (Germany), CMEA Central Coast Honors Orchestra (USA), Carpe Diem String Quartet (USA), Ensemble Oktoplus (Germany), Metropolitan Choral of Kansas City (USA), pianists Jeffrey Jacob (USA), Hayk Melikyan (Armenia), and thereminist Thorwald Jørgensen (Netherlands).
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It’s a question that is so familiar to those of us involved in and passionate about new music. By “new music” I mean that genre of newly composed contemporary classical music made by living composers that seems to uproot and defy so many labels, so for now please accept this term as an oversimplified but necessary tool for discussion. And to be honest, we know: It is a fair question! New music is not always as “easy on the ears” as other genres. For Christians, the question compounds itself with moral concern. Should we be drawn to this type of music that can be strange, erratic, and harsh? Why would we stray from attractive sounds or traditionally ordered melodies and rhythms? ...Is it even right to do so?
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Young musicians, and artists in general, will often be told by their mentors, or those who are farther down the road in their journey, “you need to find your voice.” But how to do that? And, if you’re like me, you wonder why, in an age when anyone on the planet can present their art to the rest of humanity, why bother adding one more voice to all the music that’s already been composed? Do we really need another voice, specifically your voice?
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In the long journey of my faith in Christ, I have mostly walked along a path set by leaders of what is termed Evangelicalism, and most of my central beliefs are centered around biblically based theology, rather than those based on tradition. However, in the last twenty years I have fallen in love with the liturgy as practiced by many of the main line protestant churches, as well as those used as the main structure of worship by the Anglican, Orthodox and Catholic denominations. I like its structure and its discipline, and love its language. I’ve found that, in the midst of a busy day, taking time out to read and pray the liturgical hours centers my focus back to God, instead of only being caught up in the typical hectic nature of my teaching days: ones that are long, very busy, and filled with the minutiae of academic bureaucracy.
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My mother has a picture of me as a baby plunking the keys of a piano. I began lessons when I was three; I could read music before I could read words. I wrote my first piece when I was five. It wasn’t much, but I placed my notes on the right lines and spaces and used the correct number of beats per measure.
My parents introduced me to music; they also introduced me to Jesus. Music and faith have been essential parts of my being for as long as I can remember. In high school I sensed the two were interconnected and that part of my calling as a Christian included being a musician, so I pursued a music degree in college…
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In Medieval music, the cantus firmus is the principal melody upon which all other melodies are built. These melodies move in consonance or dissonance to the cantus firmus. While a modern equivalent to this kind of music making would be difficult to find, perhaps that of a groovy bass-line or jazz tune provides a near parallel: pop and jazz musicians improvising new melodies based on the original tune or on a pre-existing chord progression. The drama of the music is in the relationship between the original and the new, and this tension has profound significance for Christians. Take a moment to hear Guillaume de Machaut’s use of cantus firmus in his Messe de Nostre Dame. This excerpt from the Kyrie depicts lamentation (“Lord, have mercy”) a particularly fitting excerpt in light of the tragic fire at Notre-Dame cathedral.
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Imagine this scenario with me. You’re an engaged, informed citizen of one of the world’s great cities. You’re active in the city’s flourishing artistic, intellectual, and religious communities. Everything in town is looking up apart from one major social issue. The population has been growing steadily thanks to the influx of immigrants seeking a better life here, but some of them have been less than successful at finding a place. Sometimes this is due to unforeseen socioeconomic circumstances, and sometimes it’s the result of systemic and individual discrimination. After all, many of these people bring with them cultural assumptions radically opposed to your own. Can you picture it?
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Getting out of bed is a simple act for most, but for a paralytic, it is the substance of dreams. To walk, run, and dance is reserved for sleep when a paralyzed person can escape his limitations. There is a story about such a person in first-century Palestine. All he knew was that he’d laid on a stretcher for many years depending on others for movement when along came a stranger named Yeshua who said, “get up, take your mat and go home.” The man did it, and “when the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe…” (Matthew 9:6-8, NIV) I imagine a scene of joyous discovery and humor as this man relearns how to walk, run, and dance. His miraculous return home was the start of a new life free from the previous limitations. I wrote a piece exploring what this journey might have been like, and it takes on the shape of a fugue.
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