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School of Music faculty
members Stefan Freund and Leo Saguiguit (with saxophone),
rehearse Freund's award-winning composition, "Screams
and Grooves." Kyle Ahrens photo
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Professor
Earns Major Composer Award
By Nancy Moen
A faculty member in the School of Music has won a distinguished
national award in music composition with a piece that was inspired
by the virtuosity of a fellow faculty member and a student.
The Music
Teachers National Association announced in late January 2005
that its judges had selected Stefan Freund’s original composition
“Screams and Grooves” as the top work among the 24
pieces that had advanced to the national competition.
Freund, a visiting assistant professor in
composition and music theory in the MU School
of Music, receives a title — 2004 MTNA-Shepherd Distinguished
Composer of the Year — and a $3,000 stipend for his achievement.
The MU professor and student who inspired the 11-minute piece
for saxophone and piano will perform the work April 3 in Seattle,
Wash., at the association’s national meeting.
Freund wrote the piece to suit the virtuosity of the two performers,
Visiting Assistant Professor of saxophone Leo Saguiguit and Patrick
Dell, a senior majoring in piano and composition.
“I wanted to take advantage of the virtuosity of the players,
and this does,” Freund says.
“Screams and Grooves” integrates a combination of
styles — jazz, pop and rock — in two distinct sections.
“Screams” is a disjunct movement that becomes a dialogue
between the saxophone and piano as the saxophone plays in altissimo,
an ultra-high range that is above the key range of the instrument;
“Grooves” displays a more flowing style with the two
instruments playing together.
In addition to the notation, an intricate mixed meter adds another
level of difficulty to the composition. Still, Freund figured
his chosen performers could handle it.
As Freund wrote “Screams and Grooves,” he would ask
Saguiguit to come over to his house to try the music. “Leo
would say something was impossible,” Freund says, “but
a few minutes later he’d have it figured out.”
Freund has known Saguiguit since high school and for years has
admired his skill on the saxophone. Likewise, Freund considers
Dell an “incredible talent.”
“They deserve a lot of credit,” he says. “Their
performance impressed the judges.”
Freund attended a performance of the work in Columbia for the
Women’s Symphony League, where he could observe the connection
the music was making with the audience. “It’s the
greatest feeling in the world getting this music realized,”
he says. “It’s nice to like your own music, but it
adds sugar when other people do, too.”
Freund is the second MU professor to win the
MTNA Distinguished Composer Award. Professor Tom McKenney won
the award in 1970 with his composition Three Miniatures for
Piano.
“I am pleased that Stefan was declared the winner,”
McKenney says. “He is a talented young man, not only as
a gifted composer, but as a fine cellist as well. I am proud to
have him as a colleague.”
Freund teaches composition, ear training and an alternating set
of courses in band arranging, choral arranging and orchestration.
He came to Mizzou in fall 2003 from the Eastman School of Music,
where he taught for a year after receiving a doctoral degree in
composition and cello.
Cello is Freund’s principal instrument. He doesn’t
play the saxophone. Although he does play the piano, Freund says
he’s no expert; he quit lessons during high school.
Freund is the recipient of two William Schuman Prizes and the
Boudleaux Bryant Prize from BMI, five ASCAP Morton Gould Grants,
six ASCAP Standard Awards, a Music Merit Award from the National
Society of Arts and Letters, and the Howard Hanson Prize. He is
principal cellist of Alarm Will Sound and serves on its production
board.
He has received commissions from the Phoenix Symphony, the New
York Youth Symphony, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and, most
recently, from the Lincoln Center for a debut performance by Alarm
Will Sound for Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Freund’s music has been performed at such venues as Carnegie
Hall, the Kennedy Center, the National Gallery of Art and the
Royal Irish Academy of Music.
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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