Two concerts, two nights, all student works. That was about all these concerts had in common.
Saturday night was the 24-hour Composition Marathon Concert produced by the Michigan Student Composers organization. The participating composers were emailed at 8pm on Friday night with an instrumentation assignment. Their piece for that instrumentation would be performed at the concert that began at 8pm on Saturday. They had 20 hours to write a piece and four hours to rehearse with their ensemble. I'm sure it was stressful, but the end result was a pretty decent concert.
There were 11 pieces, all but one composer were undergrads. The ensembles were small, mostly duets with a few trios, but were chosen to be challenging: bass and percussion, oboe and viola, flute and tuba to name a few.
The spirit of the concert was pretty casual, and I was pleased to see that some composers took risks with the project, or approached it with a genuine sense of humor. One had a "surprise" speaker jump out of the audience and join the players on stage. One piece was dedicated to a friend who saved the composer's life earlier that day by alerting him to oncoming traffic. The crowd favorite, titled "The Drunken Sparrow," featured a visibly drunk (acting, of course) flutist trying to prove how "sober" he was while playing.
My heart goes out to those artists brave enough to tackle a challenge like this. I am constantly editing my work, so writing a piece for performance in 24 hours would give me a stroke (mostly because I am crap at writing music, but I speak in general terms).
Side note: I mentioned that most of the composers were undergrads, yes? Well it also gives me a mild stroke to see a birth date of 1993 on a college concert program. When did these kids get so young?
Stay tuned for part 2, The Master's Thesis Concert! (or, Corey: What have I gotten myself into?)
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