Posts tagged benn

In under two weeks, I have to register for Field Work Term.

A lot of people do their FWT abroad.  Last year I went to London to work on an original theater piece called Fish and Fowl and Flesh and Blood, which was performed at the Barbican center in Islington, London.   The show is about two people who come into work one day after everyone in the world has died but them, and how nature starts to claim her last victims holed up in this office.  It’s a dark comedy, and the three theater artists I worked for—Geoff Sobelle, Charlotte Ford, and Jay Dunn— are bar none the funniest people I’ve ever spent time with.  I’m going to have stories about my adventures in London for the rest of my life, and I can’t wait until I can see one of their shows.

My primary duty was to puppet the various plastic vines and taxidermy animals needed to create the illusion of nature taking over this office.  I don’t want to show too much, since the show is still in rotation and so much of the joy of it is in the slight of hand that Geoff, Charlotte and Jay have worked so hard to create.

So I’ve offered a few snapshots above!

Enjoy,

-Dmitri ‘12

FALL.  Oh Em Gee FALL.

I’m from Southern California, and I’m moving to the East Coast because of FALL IN VERMONT.

Goodness gracious it’s beautiful.  Also I went on my first apple-picking with Bryan.  That’s his silhouette in a tree, shaking down apples.

-Dmitri ‘12

what about Bennington would you change? — Asked by Anonymous

When you’re studying at a place that asks you to direct your own course of study and monitor your own self-behavior, you naturally develop a sense of ownership over your own life as a student here.  That I wouldn’t change.  It’s the fact that invitation of ownership starts to meet resistance when students who have a deep passion for the college itself—and the continuation of its legacy—try to get involved in the decisions of how the college will grow and become “more itself”.  I’m starting to get it now that I’m a Senior; at a place like this where the educational model is so unique, it meets a lot of criticism from those to whom it seems foreign and therefore something to be feared.  I just wish there was a way for current students to inform the continuous development of the college and its programs.  

So far there’s no forum for that, but there are some of us who are trying to create one.  It’s kind of hard to articulate, but what I hope to see in the future is something of a hybrid between a student council and a steering committee made of up current students who are passionate about the school and its messages, mature enough to understand the pressures on a non-profit institution like Bennington, and constructive in their ideas about how to best serve our common goal of furthering Bennington’s ability to serve its diversely talented student population, and its reputation in the world.

-Dmitri’12

Visiting colleges is a crapshoot.  Bennington was probably the biggest one I took when I flew here from California about…. oh goodness, 4 Novembers ago to look at schools on the East Coast.  I pretty much knew nothing about it when I visited Initially I was pretty set on Sarah Lawrence.  I was fairly certain I wanted to study creative writing and maybe do music on the side, but I thought I’d stop by Bennington on the way since we started at UVM and we had to pass through Bennington to get from Burlington to Yonkers.   So we stopped , I had a tour, I slept over, and I just got this whiff of a place where people cared about what they were doing for the sake of doing it, and that because they got to choose what they did, they felt a sense of ownership in their studies.  That, mixed with the genuinely friendly vibe, the feeling of open sharing and interest in the deeper parts of people made me really get into this place.   The next day I sat in on a class, which (though I didn’t know at the time) sealed the deal.  I went to Allen Shawn’s Beginning Composing class, where they were getting a taste of what soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones sounded like, as well as an intro to bass clarinet.  Bruce Williamson, who teaches jazz ensemble and theory classes here and, oh yeah, plays ALL of these instruments, blew my mind that day, and continues to disturb me as, each term, he reveals that ” oh yeah I play flute/piano/guitar too.”   But that day, the mixture of Bruce’s wizardry and Allen’s infectious enthusiasm for opening new pathways for music stirred something inside me I knew was half-there, but had never fully acknowledged, which was my urge to write music. After I visited Bennington, I went to the “Open House” at Sarah Lawrence, which gave me an ‘official’ view of their Don system and other things, but I really missed that sense of ownership and community through sharing.  It was weird, when I went to Sarah Lawrence every face I saw just about looked downturned and unhappy, and the campus layout for whatever reason just didn’t gel with me. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I’m a sucker for forests, and man do we have woods. So when it came time to decide, I chose not only Bennington, but music at Bennington, and just because I sat in on a class. Now for a reality check:  when I got here, Allen went on sabbatical.  I took Beginning Composing with Su Lian Tan, who teaches at Middlebury, who was inspiring in her own right and a joy to learn from.  It made me upset, and even now there’s a part of me that really misses that seminal experience of having someone in a room with you, showing what their instrument can do, and writing what those sounds look like on paper.  A few of my younger friends are taking the class with Allen, and man, there’s just nothing like it.  The man just draws music out of you.  I know, because I eventually took Comp Intensive, and after that class I couldn’t stop writing a Violin Sonata, which turned out to be 20 minutes long, only 5 of which I wrote for ‘credit’. I think that’s all I’ll write for now.  Next time I’ll talk about how my studies in music have progressed since, in a funny way, I’m a rather ‘mono-disciplinary’ Bennington student, —and a happy one at that, too. Cheers! —Dmitri ‘12

Visiting colleges is a crapshoot.  Bennington was probably the biggest one I took when I flew here from California about…. oh goodness, 4 Novembers ago to look at schools on the East Coast.  I pretty much knew nothing about it when I visited

Initially I was pretty set on Sarah Lawrence.  I was fairly certain I wanted to study creative writing and maybe do music on the side, but I thought I’d stop by Bennington on the way since we started at UVM and we had to pass through Bennington to get from Burlington to Yonkers.  

So we stopped , I had a tour, I slept over, and I just got this whiff of a place where people cared about what they were doing for the sake of doing it, and that because they got to choose what they did, they felt a sense of ownership in their studies.  That, mixed with the genuinely friendly vibe, the feeling of open sharing and interest in the deeper parts of people made me really get into this place.  

The next day I sat in on a class, which (though I didn’t know at the time) sealed the deal.  I went to Allen Shawn’s Beginning Composing class, where they were getting a taste of what soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones sounded like, as well as an intro to bass clarinet.  Bruce Williamson, who teaches jazz ensemble and theory classes here and, oh yeah, plays ALL of these instruments, blew my mind that day, and continues to disturb me as, each term, he reveals that ” oh yeah I play flute/piano/guitar too.”   But that day, the mixture of Bruce’s wizardry and Allen’s infectious enthusiasm for opening new pathways for music stirred something inside me I knew was half-there, but had never fully acknowledged, which was my urge to write music.

After I visited Bennington, I went to the “Open House” at Sarah Lawrence, which gave me an ‘official’ view of their Don system and other things, but I really missed that sense of ownership and community through sharing.  It was weird, when I went to Sarah Lawrence every face I saw just about looked downturned and unhappy, and the campus layout for whatever reason just didn’t gel with me. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I’m a sucker for forests, and man do we have woods.

So when it came time to decide, I chose not only Bennington, but music at Bennington, and just because I sat in on a class.

Now for a reality check:  when I got here, Allen went on sabbatical.  I took Beginning Composing with Su Lian Tan, who teaches at Middlebury, who was inspiring in her own right and a joy to learn from.  It made me upset, and even now there’s a part of me that really misses that seminal experience of having someone in a room with you, showing what their instrument can do, and writing what those sounds look like on paper.  A few of my younger friends are taking the class with Allen, and man, there’s just nothing like it.  The man just draws music out of you.  I know, because I eventually took Comp Intensive, and after that class I couldn’t stop writing a Violin Sonata, which turned out to be 20 minutes long, only 5 of which I wrote for ‘credit’.

I think that’s all I’ll write for now.  Next time I’ll talk about how my studies in music have progressed since, in a funny way, I’m a rather ‘mono-disciplinary’ Bennington student, —and a happy one at that, too.

Cheers!

—Dmitri ‘12

This summer I studied composition at California Summer Music, a festival that happens every summer at Sonoma State University.

This is the piece I wrote while I was there.  I made friends with some REALLY good musicians, and count my lucky stars that I could go!

The schedule was pretty rigorous: Breakfast at 8am, class with the composers at 9:00, private lesson at 11:00, lunch at 12:15, and mandatory composing/studio time from 1-4pm.  Truth is, three hours of writing a day wasn’t enough for me to finish this piece, I had to sneak a lot of extra time in between activities.

I won’t say much about the music, the video  features Yours Truly giving a little intro in the beginning.  (If you just want to hear the music, you can skip to 2:45).  Enjoy!

Compose compose  compose compose rehearse rehearse rehearse rehearse rehearse WHOSE OPERA VIOLIN SONATA MUSIC FOR ROMEO AND JULIET

Were my brain attached to a live feed, the above would read on the marquee 95% of the time.

Since Romeo and Juliet just finished up, I’ll start there:  our director Jean Randich approached me to write a funeral chant for Juliet in the style of Meredith Monk.  I was so excited, I love the music that is vocal and syllabic yet not really in any language.  For my piece I hummed a lot, thinking from my character’s head what it would be like to lose my daughter (I played Juliet’s father Lord Capulet) and found some syllables I really loved and a lilt that gave me the sorrowful atmoshpere I needed.

When I wrote the piece, I realized I needed to teach it to a cast of about 20, 10 of whom were untrained singers.  I made a score and an mp3, but I primarily taught the song in rehearsal just through sheer aural repetition.

“Mai Lena” is first sung when we carry Juliet’s lifeless (not really, she just took the potion) body offstage.  Jean then decided to have the song sung by student Assistant Director Maria when Tybalt and Paris die.  It was so cool to write music for theater, I’m definitely doing it again.

Then, there’s Whose Opera, the collaborative class where we’re all writing libretto, composing, singing, and playing in our own mini-operas.  I’m playing doublebass in 4 pieces as well as rehearsing my own, maybe even singing in one.  I posted a few pictures of Dan’s rehearsal for his surreal opera about Rita Hayworth.

And then, finally, my Violin Sonata!  I’ve been writing it since September, it’s about 19 minutes long, and I’m finally getting it recorded by Allen Shawn, my advisor, and violin faculty Kaori Washiyama!!!!  So excited, can’t wait to see how it turns out.

In the last five minutes…

I was told I’m taking a tour to of prospective students of chines to a Chinese class here, so I tried to remember what I know of the language.  Wo yao cher nee means “I want to eat you”, wo ei nee means “I love you”.  I was advised not to say this as I greeted my tour, and I agreed. Then we looked up the phonology of chinese, regarding the 5 tones.

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