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The terms “modern” and “organ music” may seem unrelated, but a concert Saturday in Setnor Auditorium showed the two can indeed go together.

Each modern organ piece was different than the last, with five student performances and two performances by Anne Laver, an organ professor at Syracuse University.

“Part of what we’re trying to do is demystify the instrument and get modern-day composers interested in it again,” Laver said.

The New Music Concert was the final event of the Setnor School of Music’s Discover the Organ initiative, which aims to teach local high school students about the organ and expand their portfolios.

The oldest piece performed was “As God Imagined,” written in 2022 by composer B.E. Boykin, while the newest was the world premiere of “Perpetual Motion” by Natalie Draper, who’s a music composition, theory and history professor at SU. Other pieces ranged from a commentary on Canadian wildfires to an Indigenous composition about living with “balance, harmony and beauty,” titled “Hózhó.”

The Discover the Organ program began early this semester with an organ composition workshop for the participating high school students, which was the first of its three events. After the workshop, the high schoolers composed their own music, which SU students then played and recorded before the concert.

The students were invited to attend Saturday’s concert to round out the program and get a sense of what modern professional and aspiring composers write for the organ.

“We wanted to show young people that this is an instrument that has so much potential and is not necessarily connected to a sacred setting, though some people connect to it very strongly in that way, and we embrace that,” Laver said.

Draper began composing pieces on the organ for Laver during the pandemic. These new compositions encouraged her own music composition students to work with the instrument too, leading them to try something they normally wouldn’t. Laver played two of Draper’s pieces at Saturday’s concert.

“After I’ve been writing so much for the organ, a lot of the students have been like, ‘Oh, you don’t have to write church music, you can do other things,’” Draper said. “And now there’s been a lot of interest just in our composition department and writing music for the organ.”

Jessica Hallock, a senior studying music composition, attended an organ composition workshop that Laver hosted last spring and started writing music for the organ this year. She said she worked to avoid traditional sounds, like from worship songs, in her “Seasons” suite.

Abigail Wood, another SU student, performed Hallock’s song, “Autumn,” on the organ during the concert.

“I decided to write about the four seasons, so in fall I made the sound and rhythm like the changing colors and the leaves falling down, and for winter, I wanted it to sound like snow falling and having fun sledding,” Hallock said.

Wood, who has been playing the organ since she was in eighth grade, is one of the few organ performance majors at SU. Before performing Hallock’s composition, she played one of the high school student compositions.

Wood believes the organ has low exposure in the new generation of composers. Many younger musicians have only seen the instrument in shows like Looney Tunes or in places of worship, so they aren’t aware of its musical possibilities. She thinks that’s a shame because of how special the instrument is.

“With the piano or violin or a clarinet, you know what sound you’re gonna get,” Wood said. “But on the organ, there’s endless possibilities of what kind of sound you can get out of the instrument.”

Laver emphasized the importance of spreading awareness about the organ, as fewer people interact with it in a traditional worship setting nowadays. But, she also expressed hope because of the interest she’s personally seen in the younger generations who are trying new things with the instrument daily.

“We just want to break open the doors a little bit and make sure people have an open mind about what this instrument can do,” Laver said.

Published on November 10, 2024 at 7:46 pm