Against the warm, yellow lights illuminating Bovard Auditorium, the Thornton Symphony Orchestra began tuning their instruments section by section Friday night. The strings, winds and brass all mimicked each other, perfecting their pitches until synthesized in unison. Then, silence. 

The lights dimmed and the audience applauded as conductor Donald Crockett and concertmaster Charlie Lin took the stage and began playing sophomore Gibson Mahnke’s “Frisson,” the first of a repertoire of six composition students’ works being performed throughout the evening. 

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As the fanfare of the brass instruments filled the room, Bovard momentarily transformed into another era of grand introductions through the trumpets and percussion, imitating a march-like beat. 

About a minute and a half into the composition, Crockett silenced the orchestra and faced the audience. 

“You know, we record these pieces for the composers. We’re going to start again,” he said.

As he turned to the orchestra once again, the audience applauded loudly, and the piece was restarted with a new vigor and clarity as the marriage between brass fanfare and melodic strings became more pronounced in this second rendering. 

“I wanted to invoke just the right amount of thrill, excitement, and even a little bit of danger; the perfect amount of Frisson,” Mahnke, a sophomore majoring in composition, wrote in his artist statement.  

Starting with a consonant melody in the strings, Mahnke expertly wrote the piece filled with tension and dissonance without losing the continuity of the music. By the end of the performance, the audience had been taken on an emotional ride of power, joy, tension and discomfort, and erupted in applause.

Variation in style became a common theme as the performance went on. Immediately following Mahnke’s experimental classical work, the orchestra retuned for Grace Miedziak’s “Coil and Venom.” The quiet lightness of the strings juxtaposed with the sudden bursts of powerful, dynamic chords created a cinematic effect to the concept of coil and venom. Yeji Kim, a junior majoring in popular music, similarly felt the thematic imagery in Miedziak’s piece. 

“It had an ominous vibe,” Kim said. “She captured it really well with the coil and the imagery of the snake and danger.” 

Each composer managed to synthesize unique elements into their respective compositions. Anuj Bhutani, a master’s student studying  composition, fused Western melodies with classical Indian melodies as well as experimented with rhythmic layering in his piece “After the Freeze.” 

Bhutani arranged the piece to include the string orchestra as well as the drum set and electric bass in order to “bridge the orchestra more directly with the worlds of funk, pop, and rock music (with a hint of jazz).” 

“I can’t imagine writing this many parts … I was just so inspired by all the risk-taking,” Kim said. 

Risk-taking seems to have been another common theme between the compositions. One of the most abstract performances of the evening was master’s student Hannah Rice’s “ae,” a commentary on the rigidity of composed music with the freedom of the natural voice. Rice, a master’s student studying vocal arts performance and composition, juxtaposed screaming with symphonic composition and played on the dissonance and tension between the two while including moments of operatic freedom in the vocals.

Tension between what is expected from music and what is natural was also a prominent theme in senior Theo Strich’s “A Mechanism,” as the clockwork-inspired melodies eventually burst into a freeform, melodic dialogue between the various sections of the orchestra. 

Closing the performance was senior Erika Poh’s “Have You Seen Her,” a piece arranged for both symphony and voice, which Poh sang herself. 

“First it came to me as a tune,” Poh said. “Then it became a whole process of reimagining the song into something orchestral.” 

The entire performance was a culminating moment for the composers, whose process took seven months, Poh said. 

The longevity and dedication to their respective pieces was evident in the nuance of each performance. From the variety of styles to the individual narratives behind each piece, a sense of individualism and love for the music was constantly palpable.

“The most exciting thing was seeing how much work they put in,” said Julia Levin, a junior majoring in popular music.  “Eight people is the most I’ve ever played with … so seeing the amount of work and detail is so inspiring.” 

The synthesis of a variety of skills is what shone in all the composers’ pieces: From voicing a vast spectrum of instruments, to venturing outside the stereotypical confines of symphonic composition, to performing their own works with the symphony’s accompaniment, these composers managed to combine layers of technical skill with the simple sensibility of human emotion. For all the complexities of arranging and crafting new music, emotion is still at the core of each piece.  

“That’s why we do it,” Poh said. “We are composers so that we can be heard by people and reach them.”