Published on April 22, 2009

North Country Union High School composers Benjamin Stevens, Sylvia Woodmansee, Owen Tatum and Hannah Chambers discuss the ins and outs of composing. All four participate in the Vermont MIDI Project, which matches budding composers with experienced mentors. Photos by Joseph Gresser

NEWPORT — Four students sit in a second-floor classroom at North Country Union High School.  The room is small and well enough hidden that a visitor would be hard-pressed to find it without a guide.

Around the walls of the classroom are set workbenches, each holding a computer screen, an electronic keyboard and a pair of speakers.  These are some of, but by no means all, the tools of a modern composer.

Under the guidance of their teacher, Anne Hamilton, who sits in the room with them, and a small group of advanced composers, who communicate with the students by means of the Internet, the four are writing serious music.

Owen Tatum, Hannah Chambers, Sylvia Woodmansee, and Benjamin Stevens have an easy rapport among themselves and with Ms. Hamilton.  Their musical backgrounds differ widely, but they seem reasonably tolerant of each other’s aesthetics.

Ms. Woodmansee plays piano and cello, she has already had one of her pieces given a performance by professional musicians at one of the Vermont MIDI Project’s semiannual Opus concerts.  (MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface.)

Mr. Tatum is an oboist, Ms. Chambers plays tuba and sings.  Mr. Stevens is a singer.

Mr. Stevens is just beginning to encounter classical music, while Mr. Tatum and Ms. Woodmansee have well developed taste in music.

Mr. Tatum and Ms. Chambers will have pieces performed starting at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29, at the Haskell Opera House in Derby

Ms. Woodmansee and Mr. Stevens listen as her string quartet is played by computer software. Teacher Anne Hamilton, who is also president of MIDI Project’s board of directors, looks on and listens.

Line.  Their works, a string quartet and a solo composition for oboe, will be performed by professional musicians at the Opus 18 concert sponsored by the Vermont MIDI Project.

The MIDI project connects students and mentors in 37 Vermont schools.  It celebrates its fifteenth birthday this year.

Brianna Grimm, a student at North Country Union Junior High School, will also be represented on the program with a piece for flute and two violins she calls “Festival.”

The students followed very different paths as they worked to bring their musical ideas to a performable stage, but each said the advice and support provided by the MIDI Project’s mentors helped them to clarify their ideas and improve their compositions.  The mentors and students are able to send music files back and forth and engage in discussions on the MIDI Project’s password-protected web site.

Ms. Chambers pulled up an early version of her piece “Dusk Remembrance” and played it, using the music writing software on her computer.  It featured an attractive melody played by the higher strings, with an unchanging rhythmic accompaniment played by the cello.

Ms. Chambers said, “I started with a melody.  Very clearly my issue was the harmony to go along with it.”  Her first idea was to play the same chord over and over again throughout the whole piece.

Ms. Woodmansee said she finds the computer’s ability to play music is a seductive danger.  “I try not to listen to it, because it begins to sound right.  That’s why it’s such a thrill to hear it in performance.”

Anne Hamilton looks over the score for Owen Tatum’s piece “Lullaby for Solo Oboe.” The piece will be performed at the Haskell Opera House on April 29. From left to right, Josh Clinger, Mr. Tatum and Benjamin Stevens listen.

When Ms. Chambers e-mailed an early draft of her composition to the mentors who work with the MIDI Project, she received suggestions that moved her toward devising a more complex harmonic structure for her piece.

By the time she arrived at the version that will be performed at the Haskell, she had gone well beyond the single chord.  The rhythmic figure traveled from instrument to instrument and gained some moments for syncopated complexity in its journey.

“Dusk Remembrance” is still very much Ms. Chambers’ work, but suggestions from the mentors encouraged her to push through the simple pleasure of hearing her first thoughts to a work that can reward repeated hearings.

Mr. Tatum takes a different approach composing.  He began by improvising on his instrument, the oboe, and writing down what he played and liked.

The result was a lengthy and disjointed series of ideas.

Mr. Tatum said that Ms. Woodmansee asked him at one point if his work was a story.  He wrote of the results of that simple question in an e-mail to two of his mentors, Erik Nielsen, a Vermont composer whose works have received wide performance in the U.S. and abroad, and Matt Podd, who is working toward his master’s degree in jazz composition at the Eastman School of Music.

In an e-mail Mr. Tatum wrote, “I was sent into many hours of painful thought and reflection before I came up with a satisfying response:  it (the piece) is not a story.  Instead, it is an expression of feelings or emotions, if you will, that came to me in the moment.  A sort of musical conversation of myself, or a musical journal entry.”

With some gentle prodding from Mr. Nielsen, Mr. Tatum decided that his idea was “kind of selfish.”  He said he failed to provide the listener with a starting place for the journey he was trying to create.

He changed his tack and came up with three words — loneliness, discomfort and love — which he associated with his musical musings.  Those words inspired him to break up the thread of improvisation into three sections.

“Now though the piece doesn’t really go anywhere; each movement stands on its own.”

Mr. Nielsen, Mr. Podd and another mentor, Dominique Gagne, who plays flute and composes in Brooklyn, New York, combined praise for Mr. Tatum’s work with suggestions for adding depth to the piece.

Students are not required to take a mentor’s suggestion, but they are encouraged to give them serious consideration, Ms. Hamilton said.

After a month and a half of very detailed critique, suggestions and back-and-forth discussion about the piece, Mr. Tatum received some good news from Mr. Nielsen.

“Congratulations.  Your piece ‘Lullaby for Solo Oboe’ has been selected for Opus 18.  All your hard work paid off.”

The reward was immediately followed by four paragraphs of corrections.  Mr. Tatum now had to provide a performing score for the soloist who will play the piece at the Haskell.

Mr. Tatum and Ms. Chambers will have a chance to work with the musicians who will bring their scores to life, but only on the day of the concert.  From then on their work is in the hands of the musicians, and from there the ears of the audience.

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