Classical music has always been the love of my life. From the moment I went to my first concert with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, I knew that I wanted to be a composer. There’s something about classical instruments and the precision and work that goes into a classical performance that I obsess over, something about the familiar and personal emotions that each piece can convey so effectively.
As I grew up, on the cusp between being a millennial and Generation Z, I grew a heavy appreciation for electronic music, especially electronic music akin to rap and r&b. I knew that this was a world of music that I wanted to be apart of as well, so I would play around with my sister’s GarageBand application on her old computer when I was about ten years old. As I would start to become more skillful and efficient at it, it became more clear to me that this is a thing that I could do for the rest of my life, and that really secured my aspirations for being a composer.
I’ve been caught between two completely different cultures, two completely different worlds of music, and that fascinates me. In fact, it elates me! I want to spread my music across all of the genres that I love and that have influenced me.
This coming semester, I will be having premiered “ode to rings of light”, a piece about the delicacy and beauty of love. In this piece, the feature instrument is the Alto Flute, which waits until halfway through the piece to finally enter. All of the instruments work together, but the beauty and delicacy is in the gentle flourishes of piano part. The pianist in this piece truly is the star of the show whenever they are playing. I wanted these unexpected shifts of power between the instruments to represent the instability and ever changing feeling of control in love.
In the summer, I will hopefully be finishing and releasing my first mixtape as HALF MOON. It is heavily influenced by 80’s R&B, the modern rap scene, and the elusive world of vaporwave, a movement of music that has emerged in the early 2010s. I want this project to be as collaborative as possible, I want to involve all of my talented friends and all of the exceptional students here at the University of Colorado. Not only do I want the pieces to each tell their own individual stories, but I also want the stories to weave together to make the overarching theme of what it is like to experience a great loss, and the stages of grief that follow.