When graduate student Corey Rubin was deciding where to go for his master’s degree in composition, he said, he chose IU not only for its strong composition department but also for its choral program.
After winning the 2015 Student Composition Contest for NOTUS, the Jacobs School of Music’s contemporary vocal ensemble, Rubin was excited he would be able to not only compose music but also have the opportunity to have his piece performed by the ensemble, he said.
“It’s an incredible opportunity, and I know from experience that that doesn’t exist almost anywhere else, at least in this country,” Rubin said. “I’m getting to the end of the degree and it’s something that I’ve dreamed about getting to do. This was the perfect culmination of all the work I’ve done here.”
At 8 p.m. Friday in Auer Hall, Rubin premiered his composition “After-Glow” along with other featured work of the last NOTUS concert of the school year.
Before the concert began, Bloomington residents Minh and Arndt Schimmelmann embraced and asked to take a photo with P.Q. Phan, an associate professor of the music school and the composer of the first piece of the concert, “A Vietnamese Requiem.”
Minh said she was looking forward to his piece because she is Vietnamese, and it was an honor to have someone who brings something related to Vietnam to the international level.
“I’d just like to see how it turns out and how it sounds in Vietnamese language sung by American students,” Schimmelmann said.
Dominick DiOrio, DMA and director and conductor of NOTUS, said “A Vietnamese Requiem” is a monumental offering and meditation on Buddhist end-of-life rituals.
“It’s a colorful new piece that makes intense demands on all of the singers and players involved,” DiOrio said in an email.
Following that, DiOrio included “Lay a garland” in the program as a tribute to Steve Zegree, DMA and former choral faculty member of the music school who died in March.
“This piece, different than our usual works, is a small way to remember him and his fondness,” DiOrio said. “It’s a gorgeous musical gem.”
As DiOrio motioned for the ensemble to perform Rubin’s piece, “After-Glow,” Rubin smiled as he took a breath to sing. This was the first time he performed in a piece he composed, and he said it was really fun to be on the inside of the process.
“In the middle of rehearsal, you have to resist the urge to stop singing and just listen because you want to bask in the sound and evaluate how it’s working,” Rubin said.
Rubin said the hardest part about composing was first finding the right text in which to base the voice parts off in the song.
“Finding text for me is frustrating and a long process,” Rubin said. “But once you find one that really suggests a piece to you and that you can get behind, it makes the process of composing a piece so much easier.”
The text in his piece was based off of a poem about the lost friendship between the author and his friend who was held as a prisoner during World War I. The poem was about the author imagining him reuniting with his friend. It’s joyful in a sense that the fantasy is joyful but sad in the sense that the reunion with his friend is not real, he said.
“I tried to mix joy and bitterness together in the piece, and that was kind of my guiding principle,” Rubin said.
The concert continued with a quartet of instrumentalists, “Three Pieces for String Quartet” by Igor Stravinsky, and ended with the piece DiOrio composed, titled, “Stravinsky Refracted.”
The piece included the instrument quartet again and referenced a lot of the elements Stravinsky uses in his works, said Carolyn Craig, a freshman and soprano in the ensemble.
“It’s kind of onomatopoeic as well,” Craig said. “We have kind of bumpety-tong things, and that is a really fun piece.”
Rubin said his favorite part about IU is NOTUS, and he looks forward to continuing his studies on campus because he just committed last week to pursuing his doctorate through the music school.
“There’s so much going on at the Jacobs School because it’s a world of its own,” Rubin said. “Between opportunities in composition, in the choral department and among other things, I just feel like it’s the perfect playground for a composer like me.”
Lanie Maresh
