December, 2002

It was seven years ago that MacDowell began coordinating a program that allowed students from the greater Peterborough area to listen and learn from some of the 240 artists the Colony hosts each year. Composers, visual artists, filmmakers, and writers volunteered to share their art and teach what they knew to students at ConVal, Great Brook, South Meadow, and Peterborough Elementary. The overwhelming response to these visits inspired a new initiative this year called MacDowell Downtown, an evening program intended for the older, but no less eager, art lovers in Peterborough. For the month of December, the new meets the old when MacDowell Downtown presents composer Alvin Singleton and the students of Great Brook faculty member Johna Moncrief's afterschool string program.

On December 5, 2002, at 7:30 pm, three of Moncrief's students will perform Singleton's 10-minute composition “Be Natural,” which he wrote in 1974 and for which he won Germany's prestigious Kranichsteiner Musikpreis. After the performance, Singleton will take questions about the piece and his accomplished and diverse career.

Born in 1940 in Brooklyn, NY, Singleton received degrees from New York and Yale universities. After leaving Yale, he spent a year in Rome as a Fulbright scholar, studying at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Since then, Singleton has been a true tour de force, his music having been commissioned and performed at a number of well-known venues, including Tanglewood, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Koussevitsky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Kronos Quartet, the Orchestre de Paris, and symphonies in Albany, Detroit, Chicago, Alabama, and Oregon. He has also been composer-in-residence at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Spelman College, among others.

His music in general, and “Be Natural” in particular, impress musicians and critics alike for their imaginative and innovative sonority. The New York Times called Singleton's work “a bright, engaging collection of floating sounds,” and in hearing recent compositions, the Village Voice said, “Singleton's scores are full of colorful, unusual textures that [we've] long wanted to hear live.”

Jahna Moncrief agrees. For her, “Be Natural” was both a challenge and inspiration. “The parameters set by Mr. Singleton in this piece are new and different to these students. There is a lot more room for thinking 'outside the box,' and that can be daunting to a musician that has been focused on learning the traditional rules of classical playing. As a conservatory student, I spent a lot of time listening outside dorm rooms to the students who had never taken a music lesson in their lives, couldn't read music, and were making incredible music anyway! I always felt there were hidden rules that I didn't know. How I wanted to have the courage to do that! I feel that part of my job as an educator is to encourage students to try new things, and this is an awesome opportunity for students to explore some very new and different music.”

For Singleton, the prospect of having “Be Natural” played by students is one that he welcomes for precisely the reason it was conceived. “'Be Natural' is really about imagination. And kids have that in abundance.” Singleton is a longtime Colony Fellow, having been hosted at MacDowell seven times, starting in 1987. MacDowell has been a place where he has accomplished much, he says, and where he has pushed his music in richer directions. “The MacDowell Colony lives in my music,” he says.