Take a nine-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.
Held annually for the last five
years, the project gives fourth and fifth graders the opportunity to compose
their own music. Starting Jan. 5, 30 young composers are enrolled 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 will have 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 School bands, Rosen said. All the student compositions will be performed in a free, final concert on Monday, Jan. 26, at 4 p.m. in the Noel Fine Arts Center Room 221.
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.
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, 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, Emily Kiefer of McKinley Center and Schuyler
Gardner of Madison Elementary.
In addition to the endowment grant, the project also
won a $1,000 2014-15 Robby D. Gunstream Education in Music Award through the
College Music Society Fund. The award recognizes programs that focus on
community engagement.
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,” said Rosen. “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, said Rosen. “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.”
Overall guidance and support is
provided by Very Young Composers, Inc., a local nonprofit organization.
Additional support has be 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.
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