The Heard Museum hosted the Catalyst String Quartet as it showcased original music composed by students from the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project in a concert Friday.
The concert is part of the 35th season of a bigger presentation known as the Grand Canyon Music Festival, running from August 24 to September 8 with a new group performance almost every day. Groups performing include The Bonfiglio Group; A Flute, A Recorder, 10 Strings, and 64 Reeds; School of Rock (a student concert); and the Catalyst Quartet.
NACAP was started in 2001 and was created out of a desire by the organization to expand educational outreach concerts to schools. This concert highlighted pieces of music composed by students from the six high schools, representative of the Navajo, Hopi, and Salt River Pima-Maricopa Nations in Arizona and Utah who participate in the program NACAP.
“[We wanted to] have a more lasting impression…(and music) like that with Native kids,” said Clare Hoffman, the Festival Artistic Director.
The project immerses students in a music-based learning environment for a week where they are taught how to write music and mix varying sounds. Once their music is drafted and named, the quartet-in-residence-in this case, the Catalyst Quartet-comes to the school to play what the student has written to get a feel for the student’s emotion behind the music.
In some cases, the project also brings in music directors to the lower-funded schools to teach music to kids.
At the museum, the students illustrated different moods through their pieces. Xavier Ben’s “Nuclear Crystal” mixed harmonies between the two violins, whereas Ashlynn Nelson’s “Lonely Winter” stings of bitter minor notes that channeled her feelings of a girl sitting inside a cold house in the middle of winter.
Other pieces played were “Confrontation”, a piece where the plucking of strings and fast rhythm mimicked the tiptoeing and beating heart of a child, and “Whole Lotta Gloomy Hearts,” where the cello notes are accented to reveal the deep sense of dread.
The students included stylistic techniques such as plucking strings, tapping on the base, and sliding their fingers across the fingerboard without playing any notes.
The featured evening piece was composed by Zoe Burden entitled “Streets to Confine You.” Composed mainly in the key of D major, the piece jumps between several fast, upbeat sections where the violin sings its melody high and proud.
NACAP director Michael Begay was one of the first students to graduate from the project. He said he finds it very rewarding to be able to work with students several years in a row because he is able to see their musical growth.
Raven Chacon is the composer-in-residence for the group. He said some students are part of schools with good music programs or have musical background on instruments like the guitar, but most of the time this is the students’ first exposure to notating music.
“I’m not trying to impose Mozart or anything,” Chacon said, “I’m not concerned about the rhythms or the pitch [as much as] the experience composing.”
“The first year they’ll start off with pieces in C and G (key signatures)…and by the second year they will start experimenting with sharps and flats,” said Chacon.
Chacon hopes the students in the program are able to connect with the music they write.
“Where they are coming from, they are surrounded by a lot of new experiences,” Chacon said, “I hope all of [those experiences] end up in their music.”
The NACAP will be holding concerts at the Heard Museum weekly, featuring a different students’ piece each concert.
Contact the reporter at evandene@asu.edu.
