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Student composers find success

By Mara Kumagai Fink '11
May 25, 2011

Student composers (from left) Eric Choate '12, Egemen Kesliki '12, and Sonja Midthun '11 have recently found success with their work.

Three St. Olaf students are taking their music out of the classroom and to the next level: one recently had his music performed by a professional orchestra and two have been selected to participate in a summer program in Paris.

Egemen Kesikli '12 had one one of his pieces premiered by the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra and beat a doctoral student to win the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival Composition Contest. Sonja Midthun '11 and Eric Choate '12 are among a dozen Americans who have been invited to Paris to take part in the prestigious European American Musical Alliance Summer Program.

"The music coming from these three demonstrates a strong technical grounding in the craft of composition combined with a meaningful and communicative artistic flair," says Professor of Music and Composition Timothy Mahr '78.

Eric Choate
Choate, who started composing while taking a piano class as a ninth grader at the Arizona School for the Arts, is looking forward to a summer at the European American Musical Alliance Summer Program. 

The one-month program, held at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, focuses on counterpoint (using several melodies rather than just one melody with an accompaniment). Choate and Midthun will also have time to complete homework, compose, and do some sightseeing in the evenings and on weekends.

The European program comes on the heels of Choate's work composing the score for the St. Olaf production of Arabian Nights. He began the composition process last fall by researching Middle Eastern music. By January he had some motifs written down, but it wasn't until rehearsals started that Choate was really able to nail down the score.

"The special thing is the collaboration, because without the input of the director and choreographer, it wouldn't have been nearly as special," he says. "It was a tremendous pleasure."

Next year will be a big year for Choate as well. He will have a piece premiered by the St. Olaf Orchestra during its spring Senior Soloists Concert. He hopes to attend graduate school to study composing or conducting and to one day conduct a university or professional band or orchestra.

Sonja Midthun
Midthun came to St. Olaf as a vocal performance major with no theory background, but soon found that she wanted to understand music on a deeper level in its entirety. "I wanted to know music from a technical standpoint, so I started to take composition classes and loved it," she says.

Recently, the St. Olaf Band percussion section and the percussion ensemble premiered her piece Tapping, based on her experience as a tap dancer as a child, and she has had numerous pieces premiered at the Fresh Ink composition recitals on campus.

She says that while she enjoyed having her piece performed, the earlier stages of the composing process are her favorite. "The best feeling in the world is overhearing someone practice your piece," she says. "The performance itself is really nerve-racking, but the rehearsal time with your piece is just a blast."

As a senior, Midthun is looking forward to Paris because she hopes it will shed light on her future plans. "I want to grow with my writing style. It will be a push to figure out whether I want to go to grad school," she says. "It will answer how I feel about the composing process because it's a lot of alone time. Do I want that to be my life?"

Egemen Kesikli
Kesikli, a native of Turkey, came to St. Olaf with the intention of majoring in political science and music. However, he soon decided to focus solely on music and is now majoring in music and theory composition.

The Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra recently premiered his piece at one of its regular subscription concerts instead of at the children's concert, as had originally been planned, which Mahr says shows the merit of Kesikli's work. "There are professional composers struggling to have an orchestra at this level pay attention to their music. Egemen already got them to notice his," he says.

Kesikli says that winning both the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra composition contest as well as the Belvedere composition contest has given him a confidence boost. "It builds some courage," he says. "I have always enjoyed writing music, and now other people also appreciate what I'm doing."

Next year Kesikli hopes to premiere a piece for handbells and tenor voice with the St. Olaf Handbell Choir. He plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career in conducting and composing. "Another person's music usually cannot make me as happy as my own. I like listening to other people's music, and sometimes I don't like my own, but the process is still incredible," he says. "You get to write what you really want it to sound like."

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.