Wind Symphony

George Mason student composers create original pieces in this ongoing collaboration between School of Music and Special Collections

Shayla Brown — Wed, 28 May 2025 17:12:08 +0000

George Mason student composers create original pieces in this ongoing collaboration between School of Music and Special Collections Shayla Brown Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:12

�� music professor June Huang sees connections between musical collaboration and peacebuilding, and she and her students demonstrate those connections with The Spheres Project, a strings faculty and student collaborative space established in 2021.

The project aims to foster connection and conversation between different communities and the name emphasizes its constant state of evolution.

“I looked at how creativity is at the heart of peacebuilding and experimented with this concept with five of my string pedagogy students. We started exploring compositions of these concepts and having rehearsals,” said Huang, who is the director of strings and associate professor of violin in the Dewberry School of Music.

A string quartet including Professor June Huang (left). Photo by Emily Schneider/CVPA.

Huang earned her master’s certificate in contemporary dispute resolution from the Carter School of Peace and Conflict Resolution in spring 2023. She was part of the very first cohort, which focused on principles of conflict resolution as they pertain to our domestic front.

“I started to draw connections between music and the peace building concepts I was learning about in class. Studying conflict resolution inspired me to listen with curiosity, not assumptions, which helps parties appreciate different perspectives and discover solutions,” said Huang.

The group’s most recent event, Spheres of Engagement was a collaboration between project, Dewberry School director of composition Andrea Reinkemeyer, and the University Libraries’ Special Collection Research Center (SCRC), where the students sourced images on which to base their compositions.

“Classical music tends to be grounded in tradition, so our interpretation of a piece of music is essentially imitation. On this project, we worked with new compositions that had never been performed before,” said Huang.

“The writing in some of these student compositions was not idiomatic, so the project challenged us to create musical interpretations and explore a wide range of possibilities. The connection between curiosity and creativity was a significant component for both composers and performers in this project,” she said.

Abigail Onstott is a junior composition major and one of the students who presented their original works for written for electronics or a string quartet at the Spheres of Engagement performance in April. Onstott’s composition was based on soldier-medic Gustav Klemp’s World War I archive collection.

“Getting to look through all the archives was the coolest thing ever for me because one of the areas I really like to focus on with music is culture, history, and politics, so this project was right up my alley,” said Onstott.

The students learned how to search through the collections as well as how to properly handle the archival materials from Mieko Palazzo, SCRC’s research services coordinator, and Cindy Badilla-Meléndez, George Mason’s music and media librarian.

The string quartet presents Onstott's composition. Photo by Emily Schneider/CVPA.

The center also assisted Onstott in translating Klem’s letters from his native language, German, to English.

“Klemp was also a painter, so a lot of the things in the collection were actually artwork that he had done while he was overseas. As a composer that really fascinated me because it's not easy to work off of a physical artwork, but it's something that definitely helped with inspiration,” said Onstott.

Senior Stellan Hinz took an alternative path in the creative process, composing a fixed media piece using only electronics and human voices. Hinz gravitated toward a collection of letters that were sent to C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb.

“I wanted to explore compositionally using the human voice as the musical material. I got my roommates and some friends together to record a bunch of these letters and then chopped up the audio in order to bring voice to these letters,” said Hinz, a music composition major.

“You could see the progression of how people communicated [from the years 1809, 1978-2012], because there were some handwritten letters, some from a typewriter. It was from a very early stage of the world that we are now living in now where we're all connected and able to communicate all the time,” said Hinz, who plays the saxophone in George Mason’s Wind Symphony.

Another goal of this collaboration was to teach the students about the business side of composition. Students worked with their individual applied composition instructors to write project proposals, said Reinkemeyer, an associate professor in the Dewberry School.

“We tried to make the process very similar to applying for a grant,” said Reinkemeyer.

“The student composers loved working on this project, and I hope we get the work with The Spheres Project again soon,” Reinkemeyer said. “Our goal is to have events like this one every semester if we can. Music can interact with every discipline in surprising ways—data sonification, astrophysicists, biology. It's a really enriching place for connection.”

In This Story

Dr. Andrea Reinkemeyer

Prof. June Huang

Prof. Cindy Badilla-Meléndez

Topics

Dewberry School of Music

dewberry composition

Special Collections Research Center

A Contemporary Composer Fuels a New Mason Collaboration

Emily Schneider — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 19:19:10 +0000

A Contemporary Composer Fuels a New Mason Collaboration Emily Schneider Tue, 03/07/2023 - 14:19

In This Story

Lawrence M. Jackson

Dr. William Lake, Jr.

Growing up in the Black church, Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Concert Bands, Dr. William Lake, Jr., deeply understands the power of music and movement.

After hearing Come Sunday by composer Omar Thomas, Lake dreamed of bringing this work to life with movement, bringing together the �� Bands and the School of Dance. Working on such a project would not only expand his students' musical vocabulary but also create an authentic and expansive cultural experience for the Mason community. Associate Professor of Dance, Lawrence M. Jackson, had similar experiences, growing up in “the southern Black church, a very charismatic church” and reflected on his own upbringing and research into African diasporic dance forms. This collaboration came to life onstage in the Center for the Arts on Mason’s Fairfax �� on February 28.

Students from Mason's School of Dance performing with the Mason Wind Symphony to Omar Thomas's Come Sunday on February 28. Photo by Will Martinez.

As a composer, arranger, and educator, Omar Thomas works with some of the most respected names in composition and education, including multiple GRAMMY-winning composer and bandleader Maria Schneider, Ken Schaphorst, and Frank Carlberg. Born to Guyanese parents in Brooklyn, New York, Thomas pursued music diligently, completing his Master of Music at Berklee College of Music and becoming the first Black composer to ever receive the National Bandmasters Association/Revelli Award for Come Sunday. His compositions are described as “thought-provoking, multi-layered masterpiece[s],” which made embarking on a partnership around this piece even more exciting for Jackson and Lake.

“I really hold dear my experiences as a musician in the Black church (I started playing the piano for my children’s choir around age 6) to my musical upbringing. Since I know gospel and other sacred music intimately, I can infuse the music with the extra nuances that can’t be described using notation but are true to the style. This piece has been performed by many great ensembles across the country… however, there hasn’t been a performance that centers movement and these great sounds.” said Lake.

Professor Jackson’s career often includes collaborations, a hallmark of his practice at other universities before coming to Mason in the fall of 2022. While the invitation to work with Dr. Lake at the end of the fall semester was a surprise, it also felt reassuring to find this partnership so early on and to begin exploring what this experience would mean for Mason students from both the School of Dance and the Dewberry School of Music.

A student from the School of Dance smiles at the audience during the performance of "Come Sunday" by Omar Thomas, performed by the Mason Wind Symphony. Photo by Will Martinez.

Building a vocabulary for the dancers was an opportunity for Jackson’s students to explore the storied culture of the Black church's sacred space and develop an understanding of the types of movement vocabulary that would reflect the energy and history of these spaces and traditions. From watching Alvin Ailey’s Revelations and clips of a particular scene from the movie Blues Brothers, Jackson offered context to his creative process, “blending contemporary dance forms, African diasporic dance forms, and pedestrian movement that is derived from the Black church, all merged into an amalgamation of movement vocabulary uniquely designed for this work.”

“The Mason School of Dance students are excited to work with the musicians,” said Jackson. “These dancers, most of them, if not all of them, have never had the experience of working alongside a symphony or a band. I’m excited for them to experience the unique energy of the symphony and adapt in the moment.” All of the dancers performing in this piece are seniors in their final semester with the School of Dance, which made Jackson that much more eager to share this experience with them before they embark on the next stage of their careers.

The dancers are not the only ones expanding their understanding and skills with this performance. “The jazz and gospel musical vocabulary is foreign to my students,” said Dr. Lake.

“It’s inspiring to see how invested our students are in something that they realize is new and different. My hope is that through music and collaborations, my students have a gateway to appreciate cultures different than their own,” Lake adds.

Dancers from Mason's School of Dance perform Professor Lawrence M. Jackson's original choreography to Come Sunday by Omar Thomas, performed by the Mason Wind Symphony on February 28. Photo by Will Martinez.

Unlike most concerts, the Wind Symphony will be moved further upstage than normal and without the acoustic shell to allow for the choreography to be presented downstage. This has resulted in the assistance of the Center for the Arts Artistic Staff to add audio, lighting, and stage-managing support. This unique concert has been chosen as one of the Mason Arts at Home features that will be captured via six cameras in the hall and even GoPros! Dr. Lake shared, “I’m jealous of the audience, I won’t get to experience the concert from their vantage point – I’m thankful that the School of Music and the College of Visual and Performing Arts have agreed to record, edit, and professionally mix our hard work”.

The duo is optimistic that this is just the beginning of collaborations between the Mason School of Dance and the Dewberry School of Music.

You can watch an in-depth interview with Jackson and Lake on the College of Visual and Performing Arts YouTube channel, including behind-the-scenes footage of rehearsals leading up to the performance.

The Wind Symphony’s performance from February 28, 2023, including Come Sunday featuring the School of Dance, will be available to watch from March 28 through April 28, 2023 exclusively through Mason Arts at Home.

Topics

College of Visual and Performing Arts

Mason Arts

Dewberry School of Music

College of Visual and Performing Arts School of Dance