New Music Festival, featuring all original music, at Goshen College May 16

GOSHEN, Ind. – In an opportunity for student and faculty composers to showcase their original work and for the community to hear their new ideas for music, Goshen College’s third annual New Music Festival will be held in the Rieth Recital Hall on May 16 at 7:30 p.m. The festival is free and open to the public.

At least 30 performers will be involved in the music extravaganza of all new works composed by Goshen College students, faculty and a few guest composers from other schools, with works for solo piano, solo violin, string quintet and trio, choir, guitars and percussion. There will also be a piece to be performed by the audience.

Andrew Histand, a senior music and math double major from Goshen, and an event organizer, said, “This is a great opportunity for composers to share their work with the community. It’s also a great opportunity for concert-goers to see that new music is created right here at Goshen College, proving that classical music is much more than Bach and Beethoven and other dead composers.”

This is the only performance at Goshen College dedicated entirely to new music. In its third year, this is the first time the performances will feature entirely student and faculty compositions, rather than some works by more famous modern composers.

Among the performance highlights, Histand’s composition “Binary Fractal” is a minimalist work for string trio exploring mathematical themes; Jesse Miller’s (Sr., Bristol, Ind.) “Shoup-Parsons” is an electronically composed work featuring recorded sounds of nature, bicycles and guitars; Matt Clemens’ (Sr., Harrisonburg, Va.) “Five Sketches for Solo Piano” are five tightly composed character pieces which reflect on similar musical themes; Robin Wenger’s (Sr., Lancaster, Pa.) “Choral Piece no. 1” is a choral work featuring spoken text and nonstandard vocal technique; Mike Shank’s (Sr., Goshen) “Music for Guitars and Drums” is noisy ambient music for four electric guitars and four percussionists; Dan Stutzman’s (Jr., Goshen) “Approx. 5 min.” is an improvisatory work for solo piano; Assistant Professor of Music Lee Dengler’s “Be Still And Know That I Am God” is a choral piece with arbitrary rhythms and pitches to be performed by the audience.

Goshen College, established in 1894, is a four-year residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” Kaplan’s “Most Interesting Colleges” guide and U.S.News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit https://www.goshen.edu/.

Editors: For more information, contact News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

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