Posts tagged composition
Omg Wiberlyyyyyyyy! He’s playing a concert tonight, I’m so excited!
The curriculum for next term is still TBD but it will be out soon and we’ll post a link to it, so stay tuned. Most of what Michael teaches is percussion (which involves theory, practice and history) and improv, which is sort of like composition in a way! We’ll just have to wait and see what he is offering next term! If you ever want to talk music at Bennington in detail, send me an email: rileys@bennington.edu
Best,
Riley
I have my first class with him today. INTIMIDATED. (Excited).
Violas AND puppies? HOW. Also, I’m Riley Mae and I’m a senior and a music student and I’m back on the blog where I post a lot about music. <3 
So I had my first interview for grad school on Friday.
I’ll just say I have no idea what to make of it. I sat around a table with four established composers, who sat very quietly examining my scores, asking me questions here and there, and before I knew it they said I was free to go.
I don’t feel great about it. But I’ll know soon enough what will come of it.
Being at Bennington I forget how fraught with competitive energy classical music pedagogy is. It was a rude awakening to realize I was 1 of 14 people auditioning that day, that I needed to go in there and fight. I think I did, but I don’t know if I have a spot at Mannes.
The real story is in my return to school: for the whole day afterwards people were asking me how it went. At a big school that just wouldn’t happen, tons of people wouldn’t be coming up to me in the dining hall or in the common room asking me about my interview. It was a distinctly Bennington homecoming, and though the interview itself left me drained and bewildered, it was nice to come home and to know I was cared for.
-Dmitri ‘12
This FWT I am doing an independent study where I get to sit in a sunny apartment in Brooklyn and play music all the time (BEST THING EVER?!?!?!? Awwww yeah). Every other week I meet with the other people studying with Kitty Brazelton (Bennington faculty and my supervisor) to hear new music and give each other feedback. I also heard we might do some eating, which I feel like I do a lot of in this city. In fact, mostly eating, sleeping and writing music. And hitting the streets for inspiration (and more food) of course. Paradise and learning all in one convenient and FWT shaped package. I haven’t had my first group meeting yet, but I’m really excited about what I’ve been working on so far — an album based around natural vs. man-made lines… and the lines on our own palm. Of course things might change, but for now….lines. Check my old work at www.rileyskinner.bandcamp.com if you’re interested!
Hi there! I study music composition at Bennington.
The first thing I should mention is that I’m surprised by the amount of good musicians who come to study here. I’ve never had any serious trouble putting together an ensemble due to a lack of skill on campus. People come here who could have gotten into conservatory had they wanted that kind of environment.
“Ensembles” at Bennington are spontaneous and, like everything here, student initiated and somewhat ephemeral. The way I get my music played is by networking, putting my feelers out and figuring out who is excited to play new music.
As for singing, we have two fabulous voice teachers. Tom Bogdan, my teacher, was part of Meredith Monk’s ensemble, and is a sage and sweet man who has been a mentor for a wide variety of things besides music. I love him to death.
As for collaboration with dancers and visual artists, it not only happens a lot, but there have been quite a few classes on making new interdisciplinary work (I was in one called Creating Music for Dance).
Check these archival posts out:
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
“Every note is felt and heard and held in your hand in some way.” — Professor Allen Shawn on composing music.
