Among the many events that the DePauw School of Music offers, hosting a Grammy award-winning composer is surely one that stands out.
Guest composer Libby Larsen was on campus Feb. 27 to March 3 for the annual Music of the 21st Century residency, a program that hosts outstanding composers on a yearly basis.
The series has allowed students and faculty to have personal interactions with the composers. Larsen, who is one of America's most prolific and most performed living composers, offered a full calendar of master classes and coaching sessions throughout her five-day stay at the university.
There were three concerts during her stay, which focused on some of the composer's chamber works. The closing concert on Sunday featured the DePauw University Band alongside music faculty member Scotty Stepp as an alto saxophone soloist.
School of Music students valued their personal interactions with Larsen, given her impressive background and success in music. Her numerous awards include a 1994 Grammy for her production of The Art of Arlene Augér, a CD which features Larsen's "Sonnets from the Portuguese."
"Libby Larsen contributed a fantastic energy to the School of Music," Laura Neel, junior School of Music student said.
Fellow music school student, sophomore Brooke Addison added, "The fact that Larsen is a successful and ambitious female composer is inspiring to me."
Both Neel and Addison commented on Larsen's importance in the series. "Her interpretation of music form is unique...her music just isn't notes on a page," the two said.
Freshman School of Music student Stephen Shannon agrees. According to Shannon, Larsen taught students in her master class about how to be inspired by everyday things around them, like traffic noises or nature.
"She helped us how to get past writer's block that composers typically experience."
USA Today also selected Larsen's opera "Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus" as one of the eight best classical music events of 1990, hailing her as "the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively."
Dean Mark McCoy also praised Larsen at the closing concert, stating that the School of Music was "graced and inspired by her presence." The concert featured pieces composed by Larsen; the sounds of the songs were unique and unexpected.
"Libby Larsen's music could only have been written by an American composer," Amy Lynn Barber, coordinator of the Music of the 21st Century program and a percussion professor at the DePauw School of Music, said. "It is so steeped in American folklore, history, mythology and literature. Audiences connect immediately to the beauty, expressivity, color, rhythm, wit and humor in her music."
Larsen spoke at the concert, telling the audience that she is looking forward to the future of technology and music.
"Music exists in an infinity of sound," Larsen said. "It is the composer's task to order and make sense of sound, in time and space, to communicate something about being alive through music."