University Communications and Marketing

Take a 9-year-old’s imagination, add the attentive ear of a University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student, and the result can be beautiful music.

 

Mix in a $12,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant, plus support from various community groups, and the Very Young Composers Project at UW-Stevens Point will inspire an entire orchestra.

 

For five years, the project has been giving fourth- and fifth-graders the opportunity to compose their own music. Each January, 30 young composers take part in a 12-evening course at the university that pairs them with a UW-Stevens Point music major. According to Robert Rosen, the project’s director and UW-Stevens Point music professor emeritus, the university students act as teaching artists. They listen closely to the imaginative ideas of the young composers and put it into musical notation for one of several instruments.

 

By the end of the month, each young composer has created a piece that is performed by the teaching artists. Some creations go on to be orchestrated by the young composers, then performed by Stevens Point Area Senior High bands, Rosen said.

 

In February 2015, the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra will be the first professional or semi-professional orchestra to perform selected pieces created by a Very Young Composers Project.

 

Students representing every school in Portage County, public and private, have taken part in the project during the last five years, Rosen said. This popular program has a waiting list; the January 2015 course filled in two days.

 

“Apart from developing an interest in music, what I hear most from parents is that their child grows in self-confidence,” Rosen said. “They are seeing adults honor and pay close attention to their ideas, and take them seriously.”

 

Knowledge of how to write music on paper is not required for the course, Rosen said. In fact, most of the young composers have little musical background.

 

As with drawing, music can be composed without instruction, Rosen said. “Students create music from their imagination. Very often they start with a story, and we just help them illustrate it as an audible event. They make the decisions, as the teaching artists scribe it faithfully.”

 

The National Endowment for the Arts grant was awarded to one in six applicants in the arts education category. The Very Young Composers Project was the only arts education winner from Wisconsin.

 

In addition to funding an evaluation of the program, the grant will allow Rosen to travel to New York to meet with Jon Deak. Deak’s Very Young Composers Project, part of a school partnership program of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, inspired Rosen to start one here.

 

The grant will also allow Brent Platta, a UW-Stevens Point alumnus who teaches music at Plover-Whiting Elementary School, to serve as the assistant director this year. Three other Stevens Point music teachers will offer guidance and insight to the UW-Stevens Point students during the January course. They are Sandra Weyers of Washington Elementary School, Emily Kiefer of McKinley Center and Schuyler Gardner of Madison Elementary School.

 

Overall guidance and support is provided by Very Young Composers Inc., a local nonprofit organization. Additional support has been provided by the Wisconsin Arts Board, Stevens Point Area Public School District, Women’s Fund of Portage County, Community Foundation of Central Wisconsin, UW-Stevens Point, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Foundation Irving Caesar Fund and the Sentry Insurance Invitation to the Arts, sponsored by the Sentry Insurance Foundation.