Sigma Alpha Iota

P A N P I P E S Summer 2021 15 15 COMPOSERS that the music director of the orchestra, Nan Washburn, is an SAI. So is their executive director, Catherine Byrd. During intermission, I also learned that some of the audience members had driven in from another state to hear the concert. ey were also SAIs! I'm sure that some audience members were surprised to hear a few bars of the SAI Chorale in the lobby that evening. In March 2020, just before the pandemic closed down all public gatherings, I spoke to the Des Moines Alumnae Chapter about the upcoming premiere of my latest orchestra work, a flute concerto titled Diversions, that was to be premiered in April by the Southeast Iowa Symphony Orchestra. at was the last in-person gathering for a very long time and, of course, the premiere is pending until it is safe to resume normal concert activities. Now to the music on the cd: during my tenure as Composer-in-Residence with the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra, a professional regional orchestra now known as Orchestra Iowa, I was commissioned to compose For a Beautiful Land as part of the Iowa Sesquicentennial Celebration. e music began as an expression of my love of Iowa's spirit, essence, and its beauties. I live in Des Moines and, for many years, regularly commuted the 140 miles through Iowa's beautiful countryside to attend meetings, rehearsals, and performances. ose journeys to and from Cedar Rapids inspired me. I wanted to celebrate the richness of the land and its people, past and present. I soon realized that this symphonic poem was not only about Iowa, it is a song of love to our beautiful planet, nature, and life. Tonal, rhapsodic, and free-flowing, it reflects sounds, sights, impressions, and memories dear to me. Bird calls are predominant throughout, as are the wind and the weather. Following the premiere in 1996, For a Beautiful Land has been performed more than a hundred times throughout the United States and Europe." Unlike For a Beautiful Land, the inspiration behind City Trees has been lost to time. Ms. Alden Beach began her career with an auspicious pedigree from Smith College and the Eastman School of Music. However, aer a fellowship at Juilliard, it seems that her life changed course and she le the field of composition. Few of her works remain. In order to facilitate this performance, the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music produced a new edition of this work, edited by Clinton Nieweg. e final work in this collection is Behemoth, in five short movements. It uses a late 20th century idiom with some jazz references. Ms. Pierce has remained musically active throughout her life. She has composed more than 175 works and spent many years as Professor of Music and Movement at the University of Redlands. e Landsdowne Symphony is a community orchestra that was founded in 1946 and serves Delaware County, PA. ey meet weekly for rehearsals and perform several concerts a year. ey also host a concerto competition for young musicians. is is the orchestra's second CD. e first is part of Mr. Blundell's "American Romantics" series which featured compositions by Romantic era composers whose works were held by the Fleisher Collection in Philadelphia. at CD was met with critical acclaim and has played on radio stations across the country. It was awarded the American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music. is CD is the first in a new series, "American Discoveries." is series will focus on the works of underrepresented composers with the hopes of bringing their work to a wider audience. It is available through Naxos, Amazon, iTunes and New Focus Recordings. For more information about the performers, you can visit their websites: Linda Robbins Coleman: lindarobbinscoleman.com Reuben Blundell: ReubenBlundell.com Landsowne Symphony: landsdowneso.org Karen Blundell is a New York Alumnae Chapter member and wife of conductor Reuben Blundell. An oboe and English Horn performer, Karen is a member of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic and a faculty member at Eastern Music Festival (in Greensboro, NC). All of Eta Delta's current virtual choirs can be found here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEHNh16xic_MaMlQnYolSjM3_ntq3QEe_ MUSICALITY MUSICALITY continued from page 4 continued from page 4 amount of storage on your computer for this step. Import all of the WAV files of one voice part into an Audacity project. Use the clap at the beginning of each singer's recording to line up their audio. ere will be a noticeable spike in each person's soundwaves which clearly indicate where the claps occur. Once the audio has been lined up, it is time to balance the choir! Some singers may be noticeably louder than others, so you should adjust each singer's volume accordingly to achieve a nice blend. Repeat this process for each voice part. Once all voice parts have been aligned and balanced, export each section as a WAV file. Create one last Audacity project and import each section into the file. Line up each section using the clap, balance the volume of each section, and you are finished with the audio portion of the project! You may have to lower the volume of each section in order to avoid clipping/distortion of audio. e last aspect of creating a virtual choir is creating the video itself. is may be the most difficult step, as Movavi Video Editor forces you to crop, resize, and place each individual video instead of automatically doing it for you. Once you have set up the spatial placement of all of the imported videos, you can focus on aligning the visual aspect of mouth movement. One of the easiest methods to achieve this is by trimming each video to line up all of the singers claps with one another once more. You should then mute/delete the audio of each singer's individual video and import the choir track created in Audacity. Once you align your choir track with the video, you are officially done with your virtual choir! While it was a long journey to complete each piece, the results are certainly rewarding and reflect the hard work of our chapter this past year! We hope that these performances inspire other chapters to continue finding creative ways to make music with one another. — Lindsey Sanders, Song Leader, Eta Delta Chapter at Kennesaw State University

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