Callum Robechek: Music-COMP is the reason I'm here today as I am, and not just in composition, in everything music.
James Stewart: As Vermont’s premiere composition mentoring program, Music-COMP has offered amazing opportunities for students of all ages to realize their musical creativity. I’m James Stewart and for this month’s Student Composer Showcase we’re speaking with one of them.
Callum: I'm Callum Robechek. I am a senior at Montpelier High School and I do music. I mean, I try and engage in as many ways as I can. I would call myself a composer but also a performer in a number of contexts on a bunch of different instruments. I really enjoy music production and recording as well and singing.
James: We’ve featured Callum’s music on the showcase before. He’s been involved in many different Opus concerts with Music-COMP and has had works premiered by various Vermont ensembles and orchestras. Callum graduates in a matter of months and I had a chance to catch up with him and talk about the experiences and opportunities he’s had with the program.
Callum: Yeah, So I started with Music-COMP in sixth grade in Hillary Goldblatt's orchestra class. I wasn't actually even in orchestra. I just saw that some of my friends were writing music and I wanted so badly to do that, that I got my parents to send the school an email to let me get out of band class to go do composition.
With Music-COMP I know I've premiered more than 10 compositions through camps and other opportunities as well. Last year, my junior year, I got to write a piece for the Vermont Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. This year, I got a similar opportunity to write a piece for the VSO chorus and orchestra called “Water Buries Too” and it's written about the flood. That was definitely the most special thing that's happened to me.
James: Music-COMP pairs student composers, like Callum, with professional mentors to help them realize their musical ideas. Callum has spent quite a bit of time working with Vermont composer Erik Neilsen.
Callum: I have had multiple mentors. Erik has mentored a vast majority of the compositions I've worked with, especially given I've done the summer composition camp that they run a number of times. So he's mentored all of those pieces. Another mentor who I've worked with a lot in Music-COMP but also outside of Music-COMP is Kyle Saulnier. He's just been an instrumental jazz educator. I play in one of his youth, big bands that just started, which has been fantastic.
James: As a senior in high school Callum is spending quite a bit of time thinking about his future.
Callum: So, I wanna study music. But something that's really important to me is not boxing myself in. It's really important to me that I keep playing jazz piano and that I keep doing production and that I keep singing and that I keep moving forward all of these skills. A lot of my best work comes from drawing inspiration from very different fields of music and from very different concepts. For these reasons I really don't know what I want to end up doing. I would like to find a way to just follow my path where it leads because to me that's all I've done so far.
James: I asked Callum what advice he’d give to a young student who might be interested in composition. How would he encourage them to reach out to Music-COMP or their music teacher at school to make that first step?
Callum: As I've grown as a composer, I've grown away from and then back towards the realization that none of us really know what we're doing and we're all just hearing ideas and then realizing them and as you get more experienced, you get faster at doing that. But there's nothing fundamental that has changed about the way I write music from the first time I started writing. What I mean by that, is that you can do it too.
It's just, it's freeing. And I think also that everybody has an equal right to this. You have a right to write music.
We often don't think of composition in the same sense as like, drawing or painting, you know what I mean? And that's because it has historically been so inaccessible. And Music-COMP is giving you an opportunity. Like, this is not a thing that exists anywhere. You know what I mean? This is such an amazing, unique program here in Vermont to have this opportunity to write. And to me, it has given me a bunch of valuable lessons as well as skills. You should take advantage of that. You should accept this opportunity because it is unlike anything you'll find elsewhere. But also because if you apply yourself to it and if you take the opportunities you're given, you can succeed. So in that sense, Music-COMP is really breaking some big barriers for a lot of people, for a lot of young people.
James: Are you interested in learning more about Music-COMP, Vermont’s music composition mentoring program? Perhaps you’re a student who’s been inspired by Callum’s story or maybe there’s a student in your life that could benefit from the opportunity to explore their musical creativity in the program. You can find out more by going to their website, Music-COMP.org.
The Student Composer Showcase is produced in collaboration with Music-COMP, the music composition mentoring program and Lake Champlain Access Television. The Music Composition Mentoring Program (Music-COMP) is a Vermont non-profit started in 1995 that teaches students in grades 3-12 how to compose original music. Students are paired with professional composers as mentors, and over 50 works are premiered each year with professional musicians.
Production support for the Student Composer Showcase is provided by Lake Champlain Access Television, a community media center serving eight towns in Chittenden, Franklin, and Grand Isle Counties, providing a free forum for expression, and a link to local government and training. More at lcatv.org
