Sinquefield Music Composition News in Print and on Air Last Weekend

February 15, 2010

Jeannie SinquefieldKTRS - Saint Louis Talk Radio
February 13, 2010
5:05

Philanthropist and string base player Jeanne Sinquefield could be heard discussing her dream of making Missouri a mecca for new music composition during the 6:00 p.m. Shaw Spotlight on Saint Louis Radio Station KTRS. The Sinquefield Charitable Foundation-sponsored Mizzzou New Music Initiative offers young composers countless opportunities.

Click below to listen.

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Find more information on any of the programs referenced in the audio by visiting the New Music Initiative section of the University of Missouri: School of Music website.

To learn more about Jeanne Sinquefield and her passion for making Missouri a mecca for new music composition, read her full bio on the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation website.

KTRS Website

Columbia Tribune - Daily Mid-Missouri Newspaper
February 14, 2010
By Aarik Danielsen

Excursions for the ears and heart

Bruce Gordon is a soft-spoken, unassuming gentleman. Consequently, when a steady stream of superlatives rolls off his tongue — in the service of saying he’s more excited about the Columbia Civic Orchestra’s upcoming concerts than he’s been in his entire 15-year station with the group — it’s worth finding out why.

For the orchestra’s manager and a member of its French horn section, joy springs from the one-two programming punch CCO is poised to deliver. Starting with Saturday’s set of “Modern Excursions,” Gordon said the cumulative creative effect of this season’s final two gigs will potentially be greater and more electrifying than any pairing he can remember.

A CCO-guided jaunt through works from the past 100 years, the concert begins with an incredibly recent offering — Alex Blanton’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Commissioned for the CCO by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, the MU graduate’s piece “alternates between languid, slow sections and driving, fast passages” in “schizophrenic” fashion, a CCO news release said.

German master Paul Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber” follows; based on themes from 19th-century predecessor Carl Maria Von Weber, Hindemith’s piece “has the distinction of being as loved by musicians that play it as by audiences,” Gordon said. The evening concludes with MU faculty member Natalia Bolshakova at the piano for Prokofiev’s “Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major.”

“This is the kind of piece where audiences generally stand up and shout,” Gordon said. “Unconventional” harmonies resolve in the “glowing” finale of a piece that’s “so exciting … beautiful … strange in its own way,” he said.

CCO’s final performance of the season — slated for April 23 — includes a work whose magnitude is unparalleled. In tandem with the MU Choral Union and with Paul Crabb on the conductor’s podium, the orchestra will present Bach’s “Mass in B Minor.” Gordon said he unequivocally believes the masterwork, written between 1724 and 1749, to be the single most important piece of sacred music ever composed. NPR’s Ted Libbey seemed to agree when he wrote last year, “The Mass in B minor is as lofty in design, scope and expression as anything written by the hand of man.”

Pulling off the piece Gordon called “a pillar of light” will require a collaboration between hundreds of musicians and the procurement of at least one very rare instrument — Bach’s score calls for two oboes d’amore, which Gordon described as something of an ancient hybrid of the oboe and English horn. The piece also employs three piccolo trumpets, also atypical. “It’s a tremendous undertaking — the scope of this has not been attempted in the volunteer musical segment in this town ever, as far as I can tell,” he said.

“Modern Excursions” begins at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts, 203 S. Ninth St. For more information on this program and the rest of the CCO season, visit cco.missouri.org or call 442-1042.

Find this article in the Sunday paper or on the Columbia Daily Tribune Website

Can Missouri produce another Mozart? A Unterrified Democrat Article

January 29, 2010

By Ralph Voss
Unterrified Democrat

Can Missouri produce another Mozart?  Can Missouri produce a series of great composers?  Can Columbia, Mo., become another Austria, which produced such great composers at Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven?

Those are questions that frequently pass through the mind of Jeanne Sinquefield and invariably the answer she comes up with is, “Yes, it can happen,” and then she tries to make it happen.

Sinquefield is a lady with an abiding interest in music that goes back to her childhood.  She currently plays in three symphonies – Columbia Civic, 9th Street Symphony and the Jeff City Orchestra.  And since 2005 when she and her husband Rex retired to their farm in western Osage County along the Osage River after an extraordinarily successful career in the mutual fund industry, Sinquefield has been devoting more and more time to helping young composers.

In 2005 Sinquefield launched the first of her efforts to support young would-be Mozarts when she came up with COMP – the Creating Original Music Program.  This is a music composition competition for children in kindergarten through high school that offers cash to the winning composer and additional cash to the winner’s music program, which is normally a school.
COMP has been very successful.  In 2006 the second-place Sinquefield Prize winner of the competition here in Missouri went on to take first place in national competition sponsored by the Music Teachers National Association.  The following year the first-place winner in COMP later captured second in the nation.

In 2007 Sinquefield was instrumental in the launch of a high school summer camp for young composers.  That first year there were six students, 10 the second year and 12 this year. Sinquefield’s son Randy, a film-maker who recently moved to Columbia from the state of California, shadowed the students attending the 2008 summer camp and filmed the award-winning documentary “Genius Among Us: Young Composers in Missouri.”

Sinquefield feels both COMP and camp (which is now referred to as “Summer COMP”) have exceeded her expectations and she is greatly impressed with the quality of the students.  “They all say ‘I can hear it in my head,’” she says in amazement at the talent these young people demonstrate.

In addition to encouraging the younger students, at the college level Sinquefield sponsored the $3,000 Sinquefield Prize where the winner is commissioned to write a new symphony for any of Mizzou’s large ensembles – the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Symphonic Wind Ensemble and the University Singers.  Past Sinquefield winners have written for all three ensembles over the years.

Spending a lot of time at the university brings Sinquefield into contact with many college students.  Noting what Sinquefield had done for K-12 students, in 2008 some students from Mizzou said, “What about us?”  Her answer was to give UMC $1 million to be used in part to set up eight full scholarships for undergraduate students, a graduate level new music ensemble, support for faculty and plans for expanding concerts and a college-level summer camp.   That program starts next summer, with an extension course in composition being offered this fall.

“There are very few full rides given anywhere,” Sinquefield said of the college scholarship program.  “This will attract the best and even those who do not receive scholarships will want to go to Columbia to study with the best.”

From 2005 when Sinquefield initially made her interests known and offered financial support, the university has been cooperative and responsive, Sinquefield says.  The music department tapped two of their faculty members to help implement Sinquefield’s ideas.  Dr. Stefan Freund and Dr. Tom McKenney were chosen to run COMP, and later to conduct the summer camp.  Freund and McKenney, both of whom are award-winning composers, have taught the high school summer camp and will teach next year’s summer camp for college students.

To make the summer camp more meaningful for the young composers, at the end of the camp their compositions are played at a concert.  This year the 12 high school composers had their works performed on July 18 at MU’s Whitmore Recital Hall.
To showcase the talent of the composers and also to help with next summer’s high school and college summer camps, Sinquefield has enlisted the help of 20 of the country’s most talented musicians, most of whom are graduates of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and who perform and record together under the name Alarm Will Sound.  Freund is one of the founders of the group.

Six members of the group performed the high school composers’ works at the July 18 performance.  The others in the group assembled at Sinquefield’s house at Folk July 17 through 19 for a performance at her home and also to prepare for a concert in New York on July 22.

Next summer Alarm Will Sound will be in Columbia for 10 days.  The first few days will be spent performing the high school composers’ works, while the remainder of the time will be spent working with those attending the college summer camp.  Sinquefield is delighted Alarm will be in Columbia to help with the summer camps.  “The college kids can get a lot of good advice from Alarm,” she said.

What is Sinquefield’s ultimate goal?  “Wherever in the world there is a great young composer, I want that person to want to come to Columbia, Mo., because he or she feels that is the Mecca for composers,” Sinquefield said.  “I want Columbia and the University of Missouri at Columbia to be where young would-be-composers from all over the world come to write their great music.

“We have great teachers in Dr. Freund and Dr. McKenney and with the Alarm group we have great musicians to help those great teachers.  This is a personal dream that I hope to see become a reality.”

The above story appeared in the Sept. 2, 2009, issue of the Unterrified Democrat, a weekly newspaper published since 1866 at Linn, Mo.

New Music Initiative

October 21, 2009

Robert Shay, Director of the School of Music, looks on, as Stefan Freund presents the music for “Fanfare for Jeanne” to Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield.

Mizzou New Music Initiative brings together a diverse array of programs intended to position the University of Missouri School of Music as a leading center in the areas of composition and new music.  The Initiative is the direct result of the generous support of Dr. Jeanne and Mr. Rex Sinquefield and the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. The Sinquefields’ vision is to create an incubator for the composition and performance of new music, and to position Missouri as a major center for the music of tomorrow.


NEW MUSIC INITIATIVE COMPONENTS:

Undergraduate Composition Scholarships

New Music Ensemble Graduate Assistantships

Mizzou New Music Summer Festival

Creating Original Music Project (COMP)

Composer Connection (a distance-learning initiative)

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Initiative Seeks to Make Mizzou a ‘Mecca’ for Young Composers

September 29, 2009

The University of Missouri at Columbia has created the Mizzou New Music Initiative, a diverse array of programs intended to position the school as a leading center for music composition and new music. The initiative is a direct result of a $1 million donation by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, headed by Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield.

Jeanne Sinquefield has long envisioned turning the university into a “mecca” for new music. In addition to the donation, she and the foundation fund and sponsor a statewide competition for young composers called C.O.M.P., or Creating Original Music Competition. The competition is aimed at students from kindergarten through 12th grades.

“I see the Mizzou New Music Initiative as a truly ground-breaking effort to help spur creativity among young composers,” Jeanne Sinquefield said. “I couldn’t be more excited about this initiative and what it means for so many talented young people. I think Missouri could become the hub for turning out world-class fine arts composers.”

The components of the New Music Initiative include:

  • Starting in 2010, two full-tuition scholarships will be awarded each year to incoming freshmen seeking a bachelor’s degree in composition. The recipients of the scholarships will have an opportunity to work with the young people in the C.O.M.P. program.
  • Three graduate assistantships will be offered each year to talented performers dedicated to promoting new music. The graduate assistants will play in the New Music Ensemble under the direction of faculty composer Stefan Freund. The assistantships include a full tuition waiver and an annual stipend of about $5,000.
  • The Sinquefield composition prize, which is eligible to all undergraduate or graduate students at the University of Missouri who submit a fine art composition. The winner is given the opportunity to have his or her work performed by one of the university’s large ensembles.
  • The New Music Summer Festival, which will feature eight to 10 composers from around the world creating a composition to be performed by Alarm Will Sound, an internationally acclaimed new music ensemble.
  • The C.O.M.P. program.
  • Composer Connection, a program that allows young composers from throughout Missouri to receive instruction from a graduate student in composition at University of Missouri. Under this distance-learning program, young composers can email works in progress and questions about composing to the graduate student.

For more detailed information, please check out a website devoted to the New Music Initiative: http://music.missouri.edu/newmusicinitiative.html.