Acclaimed Musicians Offer Rewarding Masterclasses to Students
Cellist Hanna Rumora and violinist Magnolia Rohrer of Hub New Music Ensemble cheer on students' performances during a strings masterclass in Rubendall Recital Hall. Photo by Dan Loh.
Students respond to Hub New Music
A fresh perspective can mean the difference between struggle and breakthrough. That’s why artistic residencies are baked into Dickinson’s arts education. Following on the heels of an impactful visual art residency, Dickinson students again discovered the value of varied approaches when artists-in-residence in Detroit's Hub New Music ensemble came to town.
Hub held masterclasses for music students who play string and wind instruments, worked with music-composition students and assisted in a creative exercise for students studying dance. The ensemble completed its residency with a public concert in Rubendall Recital Hall.
Dubbed "contemporary chamber trailblazers" by The Boston Globe, Hub New Music has brought dozens of new commissions for flute, clarinet, violin and cello to the stage since its founding in Boston in 2013. Currently based in the Motor City, Hub was nominated for a Grammy Award for its album Requiem for the Enslaved. Combining Eastern and Western musical traditions in innovative ways, the ensemble's fourth and newest album, a distance, intertwined, is a collaboration with Silkroad Ensemble's Kojiro Umezaki.
Artists-in-residence like clarinetist Gleb Kanasevich provide individualized feedback. Photo by Dan Loh.
Students in Adjunct Professor of Dance Amanda Chesnut’s classes were treated to live music in the studio, while students studying dance moved to contemporary music and discussed the interplays between music and dance. Students learning choreography created new works on the spot, with Hub performing the work several times. The students shared their choreography, again to live music, at the end of class. "For the choreography class, Hub specifically chose a piece of music that was multifaceted and complex to really stretch the students," Chesnut said.
The wind and string masterclasses provided chances for student violinists to perform for the professional musicians and receive individualized feedback. Violinists Eddy Chow ’27 and Landon Reeder ’26, both students of Contributing Faculty of Music Emmanuel Borosky, were among them. Chow is a biology major on the pre-med track, and last week he marked his second masterclass at Dickinson. Because of it, he learned to consider not only how he approaches, or begins, an individual note but also how he completes it.
Reeder, a physics major with a music minor, says that the exercises he learned, which release tension in the whole body before performing, are particularly helpful. “It enables me to be more open to identifying important postural and technical issues and address them efficiently,” Reeder explains.
The residency was a perfect opportunity for Delaney Bloom ’27, a double major of dance & music and educational studies who appreciated the chance to connect with all four ensemble members. “We got to talk about their work and how I hope to utilize both of my backgrounds in the future,” Bloom says. “I’m so thankful to be at a school where we can co-create and meet with professionals from different fields.”
TAKE THE NEXT STEPS
Published November 11, 2024