Vermont MIDI Project News

Announcing the Vermont All State Composition Scholarship - May 2011

Scholarship Performance - Joshua Morris, homeschooled senior, Solo for Viola

Scholarship - Nicolas Chlebak, Springfield High School senior, Northanger Overture

Scholarship - Kyle Quirion, North Country UHS senior, Rondo for Brass Quintet

Honorable Mention - Sylvia Woodmansee, North Country Union High School senior, String Quartet

A composition recital took place at Trinity School at Greenlawn, South Bend Indiana on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 7:30 pm. Eighteen compositions by students in the 9th and 10 grade music classes were performed by professional musicians. Quartets featuring strings, woodwinds and brass instruments were rehearsed in an individual session with each young composer and the musicians. Erik Nielsen, composer mentor from the Vermont MIDI Project was in residence for three days at the school, teaching classes and guiding the rehearsals for the Composition Recital. Congratulations Colleen Pingel for your work in bringing a live performance opportunity for your students.

Tim Woos has been composing with the Vermont MIDI Project since he was in seventh grade in 2005. This winter he was featured on From the Top, taped at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts and broadcast on National Public Radio in mid May. You can listen to the entire show in the From the Top archives. The same program also featured the Vermont Youth Orchestra.

Tim tells us that Christopher O'Reilly told him how much he enjoyed the composition performed in the program for bassoon quartet and wondered if he had anything for piano. Tim presented O'Reilly with his score Here and Now, written for Opus 17 and performed in December 2008. O'Reilly performed Here and Now for the "break" in the live taping in Portland, Maine in March 25th. Here's a video of that performance taken by Joanne Robinson at the dress rehearsal. Her complete blog of the event can be found online.

http://greenroom.fromthetop.org/2010/03/25/on-the-road-with-joanne-robinson-show-215-portland-me/

O'Reilly has performed Tim's piece several times now in his solo piano show in various locations around the country.

Twelve out of some 150 or more Vermont composers gathered in the Ceremonial Office of the State House on February 17th to celebrate Governor Shumlin's signing of the proclamation declaring 2011 the "Year of the Vermont Composer". See the article by Jim Lowe in the Times Argus.