American Composers Forum

Last spring, composer Chris Patton worked with students at Sherwood (Md.) High School through a Community Partners residency sponsored by the Washington D.C. Chapter. This article originally appeared in the May 8, 2002, issue of the Olney Gazette of Montgomery County, Md. It is reprinted with permission. - Ed.

(Olney Gazette, May 8, 2002) The Sherwood High School music department, working with a local independent composer, won a grant from the American Composers Forum for the creation of a song cycle. The composer, Chris Patton of Silver Spring, Md., came up with the idea for the work, "The Points We Encompass: Four Songs of Global Unity," after the events of Sept. 11.

He said he and Sherwood's choral music director, William Evans, had been talking that summer about doing a project, but the events of the fall gave shape to the idea. "I thought, instead of focusing on the events of Sept. 11, let's talk about global unity," he said.

The song cycle set poems and quotes by writers from China, India, South America, and North America to music written for vocalists, piano, percussion, and soprano saxophone. The work was debuted by the Sherwood High School Chamber Singers and instrumentalists, on April 29 at Oakdale Emory United Methodist Church in Olney, Md.

Composer Chris Patton and Sherwood High School Choral Music Director William Evans.

The Composers Forum's Community Partners Program enables cultural and educational institutions to work with composers to create musical works around topics of local interest. Patton worked with Evans on the grant proposal, which was matched by the state. Grants, which pay the composer's fees and other costs, are typically made for $1,500 to $3,000, said Jonathan Matis, director of the American Composers Forum's Washington D.C. Chapter.

Patton said he worked off and on for three months on the song cycle for Sherwood, keeping students updated on the progress. The work was finished in March. "We only had a month [to practice], so that was pretty intense," Evans said.

The poems, drawn from different points on the globe, include works by the fifth-century B.C. Chinese philosopher Lao Tse; Rabindranath Tagore of early 20th-century India; and Ernesto Cardenal, a Catholic priest and former Sandinista. The absence of copyright restrictions was a factor in the selection, although Patton said he contacted Cardenal, in his 80s and still living in Nicaragua, and got enthusiastic permission to use his work.

Patton, whose son was a Sherwood student in 1996, has worked with local students before. He's interested in, and teaches, the ways in which technology, including digital recording, has changed the way music is created. "It's made it fantastically easy to write bad songs," he said. But, "[technology] can also be very liberating."

Patton said the program benefits students not only by enabling them to perform original musical works, but also by giving them insight into the creative process, encouragement, and role models. "I think it's very important for young people to see that it's just people who compose, because it empowers them," he said. "It's [also] important for them to work with professional musicians" to dispel the idea that creating music is a mysterious process that few can do.

He said the students did a great job of performing the songs - even the more technically complex ones. "There is an illusion ... that somehow there are certain people who have a direct link to the muse," he said. "What an enormous crock that is."