Talented, Young Women of Music & Art

While it’s always sad to say so long to graduating seniors, I couldn’t be happier for Pat and Shamitri - two of my long-time students who are heading off to experience new academic adventures this fall.

Pat

Shamitri

Pat, who has studied with me for 6 years, will enroll in the Computer Science and Arts program at Carnegie-Mellon University. Shamitri, who I’ve taught for 9 years, will start her first semester at Cornell University and is planning to major in Chemistry.

In addition to sharing a love of music, Pat and Shamitri both happen to be talented sketch artists. Just check out these drawings! 

Pat S. (Esther and Ezra)

Shamitri B. (Through my eyes)

It’s worth mentioning that the characters represented in these works served as inspiration for collaborative composition projects that we recorded a few years ago (Stay tuned to my website’s blog page for updated music and stories about each project). 

It’s been amazing to witness Pat and Shamitri’s development over the years. These two young women grew up right before my eyes - literally and artistically!

Although I’ll really miss both of them, I know that Pat and Shamitri will continue to appreciate music for a long time to come. And what a great feeling that is!

Benjamin's Double Collaboration

There were so many reasons to celebrate musical accomplishments during our end-of-year playing party this past June (see our June 17th post: "Student Showcase Success").  All of our participating students soloed with professional musicians and some of them composed musical ideas too.

Benjamin (pictured above) happened to be one of those young composers. In fact, he wrote most of the music for our piece: "BC's Swing Thing" (the first collaboration).  If you haven't already, take a listen now by clicking the audio button above!

The second collaboration came about when Benjamin had the opportunity to share our piece with the showcase musicians and then later again in our project studio with tenor saxophonist Rowan Wolf.

Benjamin and Rowan

Benjamin's curiosity has a way of being contagious. During our work together on this composition, he expressed an interest in learning more about music arranging so that he could apply his knowledge to future projects. Well, that happened to make me curious! As a way of demonstrating how another chordal instrument could add more depth to the piece while helping to keep the momentum of the melodic ideas moving forward, I wrote and recorded an additional vibraphone part. Here's a sample of the modified version: 

I happen to know that Benjamin already has some new ideas cooking. Be sure to stop back to sample more of our creative music-making!