Music is fundamentally a social art form — it brings people together to listen, sing, and move. Yet for many piano students, music-making becomes a solitary endeavor: meeting 1-on-1 with a teacher, practicing alone, and playing solo in concerts or studio recitals. Compared with a trombonist who plays in the school band or a violinist who plays in a youth orchestra, a young pianist encounters few opportunities to make music as part of an ensemble.
Social connection and collaborative music-making are central principles of Oclef’s mission and curricular design. One major project that we’ve instituted to give more young pianists the opportunity to perform with a chamber orchestra is the Oclef Contemporary Music Festival — a biannual competition open to any student in the area. This past November, we hosted the latest festival performance at 8VA Hall, featuring beginning-, intermediate-, and advanced-level pianists performing with string players from the San Jose Youth Symphony.
How does this festival competition connect student musicians with each other and their audience?
Accessibility
Traditionally, the scarce opportunities to play a chamber trio or a concerto are reserved for the most advanced student pianists. Aside from the time and logistics required to bring an ensemble together, a significant limiting factor is the repertoire available: student musicians must be able to approach a virtuoso concerto or lengthy chamber piece intended for experienced professionals. Many advanced students often compete to play on ONE slot in a larger concert program.
We at Oclef have addressed this issue in two ways:
First, we’ve opened opportunities to beginning and intermediate pianists by transforming standard solo repertoire into what we call “Classical Covers” — well-known piano literature re-imagined as a concerted work with string orchestra. Responding to entries in the most recent competition, I created Classical Covers of Clementi's Sonatina, Op. 36 No. 1 and Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, which joined a number of previous pieces in our growing library. Classical Covers meet students where they are, while presenting a novel challenge and experience coordinating with a conductor and ensemble.
Second, my colleague Ludwig Treviranus and I have written entirely new music for intermediate-to-advanced pianists to perform with larger ensembles. So far, these pieces include Dr. Ludwig’s Fantasy Etudes, solo pieces which were later reconfigured for soloist and string orchestra; two sets of 24 Heroes, concerted works conceived as portraits of notable men and women from history; and Immortals, two sets of pieces for choir, orchestra, and solo piano illustrating stories of Polynesian and Ancient Greek gods.
Each piece delivers the excitement and virtuosity of a traditional concerto in a more compact runtime, allowing many student pianists to contribute to a single concert program. Furthermore, Dr. Ludwig and I have worked to represent a range of different musical styles for students to choose from; this diversity of musical language invokes the personality or historical era of the piece’s subject. Our most recent festival featured the premiere performance of all twelve of Dr. Ludwig’s Fantasy Etudes; one competition winner selected my piece celebrating Oprah Winfrey as their entry.
Both the Classical Covers and new music collections permit many students, at every stage of learning, to play with a larger ensemble. Most importantly, the scope of each piece allows one program to accommodate many soloists, letting each student showcase their ability and build their performance experience in a single concert.
New Repertoire
We’ve noticed that our creative work holds an additional benefit for student performers: the experience of premiering a new piece of music.
The format of a traditional concerto competition steers pianists towards only the most well-known pieces. When the competitors are all aiming for a single spot available on a winners’ concert program, they may tacitly choose to play it safe by focusing their energy on the most recognizable and established works. This (understandable) focus on a few canonic showpieces can be a path into the so-called “museum” trap, wherein classical music and its performance seem frozen in the past.
There are many ways that present-day musicians can break free of this trap. When we instituted the Oclef Contemporary Music Festival, we prioritized the creation of newly composed works to serve the needs of intermediate and advanced pianists. My colleagues and I have written music to model our vision of what new music can offer students — and it is our intention that this festival continues to be a vehicle for other composers to write new music that connects with students and their audience.
Anyone who has played new music before can attest that it can make for a challenging and rewarding experience. As the performer of a new piece, you have the power to make choices that shape how the audience hears the music — they’re hearing the work for the first time, rather than comparing your rendition to another recording or performer. That sense of freedom also comes with a challenge: you bear the responsibility of engaging the audience with something unfamiliar.
In our past festivals, student pianists have risen to this challenge, working with string players, percussionists, and vocalists to deliver convincing interpretations of new pieces.
Agency
Ultimately, the most important thing pianists develop through their participation in the Contemporary Music Festival is a sense of personal agency.
The most straightforward source of confidence for students is the satisfaction they feel after working hard to prepare a piece and deliver a collaborative performance with an ensemble. This feeling of accomplishment is a significant reward of any musical competition. It’s important to us that the Oclef Contemporary Music Festival affords this opportunity to many young pianists — not just one first-prize winner.
A sense of agency doesn’t just develop on the stage; it also unfolds behind the scenes, at rehearsal and in the green room when pianists and string players chat, improvise together, and discuss their favorite music or artists. At one recent performance, students provided impromptu pre-concert entertainment by reading through some of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. At another rehearsal, high school seniors preparing for college offered advice to sophomores and freshmen. At each festival, it’s clear that the student performers enjoy the social spontaneity that results from strings, percussion, and piano coming together just as much as the official performance.
Most notably, the experience of the Contemporary Music Festival has inspired students to exercise their own creative power: our past festival in November featured the work of Naman Siddheshwar, who wrote and performed his own trio piece, Post Victoriamque?, as part of the program. Not only did Naman get the opportunity to hear his music come to life — he also gained valuable experience in writing instrumental parts and coordinating the ensemble from the piano. To encourage more of this kind of creativity, we’ve planned to open a parallel competition for young composers, in addition to our piano competition. Naman’s experience was undoubtedly valuable; we’re excited to open this type of opportunity to more student musicians in the future.
Beyond Solo Practice
Through the Oclef Contemporary Music Festival, we’ve continued to build a platform for student pianists to play with a larger ensemble. This experience has an undeniably beneficial effect on the education and development of young musicians. Through the accessible Classical Covers, and collections of newly-composed works, multiple students — at varying stages of learning — can contribute to a single, collaborative concert program with a large ensemble.
The journey of a solo student pianist can be a lonely one — but it doesn’t have to be. When pianists collaborate early and often, they add a significant new dimension to their musical experience, learning to connect with each other, their audience, and their own creative potential.