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ARTS & CULTURE
KANSAN.COM
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Music in Focus: Senior composer inspired by high school experience
Baxter Schanze/KANSAN al music in his free time
Alex Lawson, a senior from Lawrence, is a music education student who writes choral music in his free time. Baxter Schanze/KANSAN
▶ COURTNEY BIERMAN
@courtbierman
It was a school night, and choir rehearsal had been canceled. Alexander Lawson, then a senior at Lawrence High School, was in his basement with friend Cal Young. Instead of rehearsal, they decided to try writing their own piece of choral music.
Long after Young went home, Lawson continued working. The result was a piece titled "Silence and the Star," written for eight voice parts and now available on Lawson's website.
Four years later, Lawson is a senior studying music education at the University who writes music in his spare time.
Lawson was in choir all four years of high school, which he said was an extremely formative experience. The music he writes now is an attempt to recreate what he felt as a freshman in high school, when he first fell in love with choir.
"The love that I had found for music in those brief four years of high school alone, it was something that I wanted to be able to share," Lawson said. "It was something I wanted
to continue."
Most of Lawson's compositions are written with large choirs in mind. In the spring of 2014, when he was an underclassman, two University choirs sight-read Lawson's original work at the end of a rehearsal. The recording is still available on Lawson's SoundCloud.
The love that I had found for music in those brief four years of high school alone, it was something that I wanted to be able to share."
Alexander Lawson Senior
At Lawson's senior recital in December, Young, now a senior studying vocal performance, sang Lawson's "Amarilli, mia bella," a reworking of a famous Italian madrigal. Lawson said he wrote the piece with his friend in mind. Young said it was a great experience to sing something written especially for him.
"It sounded really nice,
but it was completely different," Young said.
Lawson's creative process is usually jumpstarted when he gets a melody stuck in his head. He then opens his laptop and uses software with different plugins to write the piece. As he begins to compose, he also searches for text to pair with it, often a poem within the public domain.
It's mostly trial and error, writing notes and trying various instruments until the song sounds like it should.
"The melody is the most important part, obviously," Lawson said. "But if the harmony doesn't sound right to my ear, I'll rewrite it a million times until it just sounds perfect."
Lawson composes for voices rather than instrumentals because of the freedom the human voice allows. He said the combination of multiple voices and text makes a song more emotionally driven, which is exactly what he prefers.
"The way that the voice acoustically works, there's something really cool about it and the way it all blends together," he said. "I think it's miraculous, for lack of a better term."
Contributed Photo
"Penguins Mirror," by artist Daniel Rozin, is being featured at the Lawrence Arts Center through Feb. 25.
"No two people will ever
Interactive 'Penguins Mirror' exhibition comes to arts center
"Penguins Mirror," by New York City-based artist Daniel Rozin, is one of the more surreal works the Lawrence Arts Center has hosted. One of three exhibitions currently on display, the piece includes 450 motorized stuffed penguins that stand several inches high. The piece is interactive, rotating to reflect the viewer's movement in silhouette.
COURTNEY BIERMAN @courtbierman
Rozin's work explores the ways an audience can participate with and perceive an image. If there's not anyone in front of his art, it's usually "static and boring," he said. In addition to a series of "mirrors," often made out of unconventional materials such as pompoms and Troll dolls, Rozin makes prints that display different images, depending on one's distance from the piece.
see one of my pieces the same," he said.
Rozin said he decided to use penguins this time because they're cute and their high contrast colors make movement more obvious. Each figure must be wired individually. The wires are connected to a control box, which is connected to a computer, which is connected to an Xbox Kinect camera to sense movement.
Rozin builds everything himself. "Penguins Mirror" is site-specific, meaning he must travel with the piece wherever it's installed to set it up. Rozin said installing a piece usually involves two days spent on his stomach connecting wires and making sure everything works properly.
"If someone else would try to create this from scratch immediately, if this was their first piece of art, they might find it complicated," he said.
"Wooden Mirror," built in
1999, was the first in Rozin's "Mirror" series. The piece includes 835 individual wooden tiles that spin to reflect the likeness of whoever stands in front of it.
Ben Ahlvers, the exhibition program director for the Lawrence Arts Center, said although using toy penguins as art may seem silly, they serve as an anchor to give the viewer a unique experience.
"To me [Penguins Mirror"] elicits a very immediate reaction, because seeing that many objects moving because of what you're doing, that your actions are manipulating them — where in life does that really happen?" Ahlvers said. "Where you can physically, with your own eyes, see something move with your motion that doesn't exist on a computer screen?"
"Penguins Mirror" will be on display at the Lawrence Arts Center until Feb. 25.
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