By: J. Donald Feagin Professor of Music and Professor of Film Joseph Rivers
The composition and film scoring emphasis has had a very active year. In February, six University of Tulsa student composers competed in the 21st-annual Béla Rózsa Music Composition Competition. Here are this year’s winners:
- First place: Caleb Taing, for his composition The Ocean’s Motions, for clarinet quintet
- Second place: Zachary Noland, for his composition III. Ode to the Space Within, from Doomsday Clock, A Song Cycle from the Last Generation, for baritone voice and piano
This year’s judges for the competition were Ann Moore Miller, Paul Knight and James Kirk.
During the 2020-21 academic year, the composers met twice a month for Composition Seminar. For most meetings, the seminar hosted guest film composers, musicians and conductors from Los Angeles, New York and other places. During fall 2020, students had the opportunity to meet on Zoom for conversations and presentations with several guests:
- Tim Sharp, director of the Tulsa Chorale and past director of the American Choral Directors Association
- Sonny Kompanek, New York film music orchestrator and composer
- Angel Velez, conductor, percussionist and director of the Los Angeles Film Conducting Institute
- David Spear, Los Angeles film composer and orchestrator
- Kevin Puts, Pulitzer Prize-winning concert and opera composer, Peabody Conservatory
- Michael Paraskevas, TU alumnus and Los Angeles film composer
- Paul Humphrey, TU alumnus and Los Angeles film and video game composer and studio musician
Seminar guests during spring 2021 were:
- Ann M. Miller and Lisa Bloom, film composers and orchestrators based in Tulsa and Dallas
- Paul Cristo, Los Angeles film composer recently relocated to Tulsa
- Massimo Sammi, Los Angeles film composer and orchestrator
- David Friedman, New York composer, film orchestrator and songwriter
Students also took on special topics for analysis and discussion, including the St. Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach and the passions by Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki and Arvo Pärt. In addition, Cristo and Sammi visited the Introduction to Film Scoring class to provide workshops on using the technology to produce more effective film scores.
Two music composition majors – Taing and Noland — graduated in May 2021 (both also completed film scoring minors). Taing is planning to do professional projects in film scoring and Noland will continue on to graduate school to pursue an MM in composition at Illinois State in Normal, IL.