August 26, 2024 - In May of this year, I graduated from Oberlin Conservatory with two bachelors degrees in Organ Performance and Computer Science. Unfortunately I didn't remember to write any blog posts to document all the things I did for the last few years at Oberlin, but here I'll try to remember everything I can.
For the last year or so I have become interested in renaissance and baroque organ music from Poland. This is an area that I can tell has recieved minimal attention, and the small number of manuscripts that we know of from this region had many treasures for me to discover. For this research, the Oberlin conservatory library was invaluable, and I found all of the books and scores I was looking for there.
For my senior organ recital on April 13, 2024, I played in two halves, the first half at Fairchild Chapel and the second half at Finney Chapel. For the first half I played all Polish organ music by anonymous and lesser-known composers. The most difficult part of this process was cutting down all the music that I had discovered into a 30-minute performance. For every piece that was included I had to cut at least three other pieces that were quite beautiful and fully deserving of being performed. I just hope that I and other organists will be able to perform the rest of these works in the future.
In addition to early organ music from Poland, I performed a piece for organ and electronics titled "greenscale" co-written by gwendolyn (a TIMARA student) and me. Over the last few years I have been extremely lucky to get to know so many amazing TIMARA students at Oberlin. In all of their performances and other projects the TIMARA students are overflowing with creativity in a way that is not found in any other department or major at Oberlin. It's something that is really inspiring to me.
For the second half of my senior recital, I played a piece by Jean-Baptiste Robin, Marina Voinova, and the 1991 piece "Mort et Resurrection" by Jean Langlais. I'm thankful that Jonathan Moyer let me play these three pieces in this order, because I know I'll never have another chance to play three pieces like this for an organ concert.
In the final academic year at Oberlin, I struggled with taking five classes each semester (plus organ lessons) to finish my degrees. But the most amazing part of my last two years at Oberlin is being in the historical performance department (I was allowed to do all of the following things for no credit). While I had started playing the harpsichord when I lived in California and played in baroque ensembles in my first year at Oberlin too, I didn't start becoming more involved until some of the students asked me to accompany them for lessons and studio classes in my third year. After that, I'm really happy that became more involved in all aspects of the historical performance department, including playing in the Baroque Orchestra, assisting with moving the harpsichords around on stage, and helping with studio class including making recordings and sending them to the students who performed.
In my final year at Oberlin we were graced with the presence of the extraordinary visiting harpsichord professor Lillian Gordis. I won't have time to list all the amazing things the students and her did together, what we learned, and what she told us about early music and the profession, but suffice it to say that she had a big impact on us and was a great role-model for us in coachings, lessons and outside of class and made the historical performance department much better in every way, I am lucky that I'm not around Oberlin this year now that she is gone, and we all wish her the best and are rooting for her as she goes to University of Colorado Boulder this fall.
I was lucky to be part of so many amazing baroque ensembles during my time at Oberlin, including "Baroque Skrrt-Skrrt", "Mystery Ensemble", and "Musica Ignota". In the last ensemble (Kailah Grace Robbins, Gabe Roth, Amanda Vosburgh, and me) we played the trio sonata from the Musical Offering by J. S. Bach. After we weren't able to play in the HP divisional due to illnesses, we quickly arranged a non-degree recital the next week at the same time, titled "Crisis Consert" (we talked with the professors so that this would satisfy the ensemble requirement for credit) which was a joint performance with "Talea Baroque".
On the Thursday before graduation, on the last day that we were allowed to reserve the hall for non-degree recitals, I played the harpsichord in a recital of Italian cello sonatas with Amanda Vosburgh and Maya Ridenour. There wasn't any recording made of this. I'm glad that I could finally get this recital done (which we had been talking about since the summer before) with my cello-playing friends who are both coming to Juilliard with me. In addition to playing the organ for the commencement recital, I took part in the "Oberlin Baroque" concert with all the graduating seniors. This included a performance of the Christmas Concerto by Corelli with all of us as an orchestra.
I think that getting to know all of the amazing historical performance students, all the projects that we did together (including student recitals, recording projects and sight-readings) and forming really strong friendships with them for the future are the things that I will remember the most about being at Oberlin.
In addition to all this, I also composed some pieces, which I had stopped doing for the previous few years. In Spring 2023 I took composition secondary lessons with Rolando Gomez, a composition student at Oberlin. I wrote an organ piece "Clair de lune", which was about as grand and drawn-out a piece as I can manage at the moment. In addition to this and "greenscale" which I co-wrote for my senior recital, I also wrote some pieces for other instruments for some of the professors and my friends in historical performance and the organ.
Now I'm going to the historical performance department at The Juilliard School to play the harpsichord. I already have met all of the HP students and Peter Sykes, my harpsichord professor. I'm still very anxious for how things will go and what adventures await, but we will find out soon enough.