Quintet to perform New College student compositions

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The Sarasota Woodwind Quartet will play such instruments as the flute, clarinet, oboe, basoon and French horn.

With a strong and evolving music department, New College of Florida is developing a reputation as an important Sarasota music venue.

New Music New College, which has been happening or more than a decade, will soon be featuring the Sarasota Woodwind Quintet, a part of the Sarasota Orchestra. The musical pieces that they will be playing were composed by New College students Sam McCamant, Will Kocsis, Elliot Evins, and Nikita Myullyari. The instruments will include the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and the French horn. The event will be on May 5 at 4 p.m. in the Sainer Auditorium.

“This is a program between New College of Florida and Sarasota Orchestra that has been in existence for a number of years now,” bassoon player Fernando Traba said. “Each year, New College composition students get to compose pieces for a chamber group. The group rotates every year, so the Wind Quintet only gets to perform pieces by the student composers every three or four years.”

The students got to choose which instruments would be played. The music was written for a tutorial class, with a requirement of composing. Those that were deemed ready for a performance were given to the Quintet. Thesis student Elliott Countess is one of the composers for the performance.

“We actually picked three instruments to write for at the start of the tutorial,” Countess said. “I chose oboe, clarinet and bassoon. The goal was to get acquainted with the sonorities of each instrument, and the different timbres we could create using different combinations of instruments as our harmonic palette. This was a particularly funny piece called “Koopa Town” that clocked in at about a minute.”

Countess will also have another one of his pieces performed, the longest one he has ever written, called “Blues for Schoenberg.”

“This tutorial has happened for a few years, I have no idea who began it or how they [tutorial professors] got in touch with them [Sarasota Woodwind Quartet),” Evins, a fourth-year Music student, said. The pieces Evins composed are “Sprezzatura” and “Three Winds.”

Second-year Music Composition and Theory AOC Nikita Myullyari will be having one of his pieces performed, called “Tone Narrative for Wind Quintet.”

“I think like any musician, I am very pleased with the prospect of my piece being performed by a professional music group,” Myullyari said. “Given the area I’m going into, I have to establish a name and reputation as fast as humanly possible. The more my pieces are performed, the happier I’ll be.”

The tutorial students seem to be unanimously excited about their pieces being performed. At least some of these students wish to pursue a career of music composition. With a quintet as prestigious as the Sarasota Woodwind Quartet being involved in New Music New College, this comes as an honor to these students

“My plans are simply to become a composer,” Myullyari said. “I want to write music, and I want it to be known and liked.

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