News
Young composer to premiere new work
Kalamazoo Gazette | Tuesday, April 15, 2008
By Eric Cook
Portage, MI—A dream will come true and a career will get a jump-start when the Western Michigan University Chorale premieres the work of one local composer on Sunday. More than four years ago, WMU graduate student Adam Reifsteck began writing what would become his first major concert Mass, “Missa Cor Inflammatus,” when he was a music student at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh.
“I spent four years writing, revising, and editing this piece,” Reifsteck said. “It has been a huge part of my life. To hear it performed for the first time will be so surreal.”
Reifsteck said the Sunday performance by the chorale at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Portage will be more than just the culmination of years of work. “It is going to be amazing to hear my work performed. But almost more importantly, it is going to be a great launching pad for my career as a composer,” Reifsteck said. “The struggle for a young composer is to get people to listen to your music and get your name out. This will be a great opportunity for both.”
James Bass, director of choral activities at Western, said the opportunity to feature Reifsteck’s music has been a learning experience for his students. “We so often go towards music of the past, great artists like Bach and Beethoven. The problem with the past, however, is you cannot ask the composer what they are thinking,” Bass said. “It is great for the students to have the composer here to help steer the performance and guide them.”
Bass said the concert will be a great chance for the Kalamazoo community to enjoy a young composer: “It is a very palatable and consumable type of music. It’s an interesting and very dynamic piece will a lot of colors.”
Reifsteck is a recent recipient of the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo’s Irving S. Gilmore Emerging Arts Grant. He said he will use the money to record “Missa Cor Inflammatus.”