An Indivisible Whole

Weiss Prize concert features novel fusion of text and music

May 1, 2007

Joel Usher '07 (center) "plays" his laptop, accompanied by Leah Beshore '03 (violin) and Michael Cameron (cello), music instructor.

"I had never undertaken such a large project before and I knew it would be challenging," said Weiss Prize recipient Joel Usher '07 a few days before the April 27 concert that featured his composition The Future Becomes Much Closer.

The Emil R. and Tamar Weiss Prize in the Creative Arts, established in 1986, is awarded annually to a junior(s) majoring in English (with an emphasis on creative writing), art and art history, music or theatre and dance. The winner receives a $1,000 grant to present the project publicly during his or her senior year.

Usher wanted his creation to combine elements of his two majors, music composition and sociology, in a piece that also would fuse text and music.

Working at his laptop on stage, he synchronized recorded student interviews about their relationship to time and other universal human experiences with the music being played by an acoustic sextet that included a clarinet, tenor saxophone, violin, viola, cello and piano.

One challenge in composing his piece, he explained, was to combine the music and text into an indivisible whole—where every part reinforced the other parts and the synthesis evoked a more profound sensory experience than any part one heard separately.

"When I set out to compose the Weiss Prize piece, I wanted to learn a lot and grow artistically. And if people liked it, that's even better," said Usher.

Usher, a percussionist and pianist, has written at least one major composition every year he has been at Dickinson. He also plays in the college jazz band, which he says provides the "primary outlet for [his] drumming."

As for his post-graduation plans, he is considering several projects—including one that involves going to Ghana and recording music for MTV-University—before making any decisions about which of his twin loves of music or sociology he would study in graduate school. Eventually he knows he may have to choose between them. As his composition title suggests, "the future has just become closer."