The University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance’s second Student Composers’ concert of the year took place this last Monday, November 15. A hefty buffet of close to two hours of music, I found the evening passed by quickly and satisfactorily because each work was strikingly self-confident and virtually every moment of music was significant such that it never seemed like the pieces were treading water. Beyond this, the concert was particularly remarkable because of the prevalent display of composition students’ performing abilities. Only three of the night’s eight pieces lacked a composer-performer, and two among the other five were doubly notable because the works’ composers delivered solo performances.
Given his enormous contribution to the concert – appearing in three works on cello, and writing another, the chamber concerto Nephelopolis – I must first mention Jeremy Crosmer, a masters student in Music Composition and a doctoral student in Cello Performance. I asked Mr. Crosmer – along with the other three composers who performed Monday evening – to comment on the relationship between his performance and his composition. Interestingly, Mr. Crosmer does not often perform his own music, though he cannot deny the strong influence performing has had on his writing, namely in the area of notation:
I’ve learned to write with the intention of leaving many musical nuances up to the performers, rather than specifying every last detail. I find that this is a very important way to keep the music alive… [by] allowing the performers freedom, I think the music can adapt to the circumstances of any given day and any given audience and concert.
From working with Mr. Crosmer on my piece, Clavdia, the opening work on Monday’s concert, I believe this perspective has informed his playing and helped him become a gifted interpreter of new music. His other performances second my observation, namely David Heetderks’ Stratus, a beautiful duo for cello and piano. Stratus decorated the clear pandiatonicism and modality of its melodies with captivating textures and a friendly, yet unpredictable, form. Mr. Crosmer and his companion, pianist Justin Snyder, presented Stratus in a light and charming manner, perfectly manifesting the program note’s claim that the work “reaches for the sky”.
Mr. Crosmer’s final performance came on the last piece of the first half: Roger Zare’s string quartet Road Trip. Explained in detail in its program note, Road Trip is a musical depiction of a cross-country vacation from Mr. Zare’s youth. The work was cinematic in its portrayal of the journey, beginning with ostinati to capture the forward-moving monotony of car travel and – in the second movement – using references to jazz and mariachi music to more clearly state the distance covered in the piece’s narrative backdrop. Contained within the demands of the quartet, Mr. Crosmer’s virtuosity emerged most prominently in the final movement – Pacific Coast Highway – which featured the cello as a soloist against cloudy figures in the rest of the quartet, meant to represent fog.
