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-- OPINION --
One year later, Mumbai's spirit undimmed
By
Shagorika Ghosh
in MUMBAI, India
-- For me, the 26th of November began as normally as
any other.
I
reached Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus, or CST, and then ran the short distance to
my college, St. Xavier’s College.
At the end of the day, I walked back to CST and caught a train back home.
A
scant five hours after I walked into the railway station, 52 people lay dead and
more injured as two terrorists opened fire there before walking out to wreak
more havoc on the city I love.
What followed was 60 hours of fear, anxiety, uncertainty and sheer terror as
dozens of people were shot in some places and dozens of others held hostage in
one of the city’s most famous landmarks: the Taj Hotel.
Altogether, the terrorists opened fire on eight places: CST, the Taj Hotel,
Leopold Café, the Oberoi Trident, Nariman House, Cama Hospital, the lane behind
St. Xavier’s College and Metro Cinema.
There was also random shooting on the roads as the terrorists managed to steal a
police vehicle and shot at people walking on the streets.
Read more
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Metro Cinema in Mumbai
Shagorika
Ghosh/Youth Journalism International |
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-- JOURNAL --
Bristow Middle School Band
Premiering a new piece
By Kiernan Majerus-Collins in WEST HARTFORD, Connecticut, U.S.A.
–
When Bristow, a former slave in Colonial America,
finished signing his will that deeded his property to his former
owners, he probably never imagined that nearly 200 years later,
a middle school band would perform music in his name.
But that’s exactly what happened.
Composer David Macbride honors Bristow in a new
work, Bristow: A Life, which the Bristow Middle School’s
seventh and eighth grade band premiered last May.
Bristow’s inspiring story of rising from slavery
to being a landowner and a free man was the reason the new
middle school in my town, Bristow Middle School, was named for
him.
Bristow: A Life,
was written for the school’s seventh and eighth grade band to
play in the spring concert of my eighth grade year.
It’s an unusual piece. It has narration and is
written in a contemporary style. It’s nothing like the marches,
pop tunes or classical work that my band typically played.
Read whole story
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-- NEWS --
Connecticut composers Robert Karl, a
professor at the Hartt School of Music at the University of
Hartford, and Neely Bruce, a professor at Wesleyan University.
(Photo by Kiernan
Majerus-Collin/youthjournalism.org)
From opera to Jefferson, an American
composer makes his mark
By Kiernan Majerus-Collins in MIDDLETOWN,
Connecticut, U.S.A. --
With curly
salt and pepper hair and a casual style, Neely Bruce looks like
a composer. It’s no surprise he’s spent more than half his life
as a composition professor at Wesleyan University.
Bruce, 65,
who has a warm Southern charm to match his slight accent,
started making music early in life.
“I started
composing when I was nine years old,” he said outside an
auditorium where an orchestra rehearsed his work. “By the age of
12, I wrote a suite of piano pieces.”
Read whole story
Bill of Rights set to music
By Kiernan Majerus-Collins in
NEW LONDON, Connecticut, U.S.A. – It
is unusual, to say the least, to set a
government document to music.
But composer
Neely Bruce pulled it
off, when a packed
audience at the historic Pequot Chapel at Mitchell College gave
him a standing ovation after a spirited
performance of “The
Bill of Rights: Ten Amendments in Eight Motets.”
Bruce used a
variety of compositional techniques to make the piece work,
including mirroring the style of music with the specific text
that is sung at the same
time.
In the part that
covers the amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment,
there are “cruel and unusual dissonances that will punish your
ears,” Bruce quipped,
in his introductory remarks to the audience.
Bruce said a
conversation with the late
composer Henry Brant prompted him to write this unusual piece.
The two
composers liked to walk and talk together, Bruce said. On one
walk in 2005, Brant, who was then 90 years old, stopped
him and asked, “Neely,
what can we, as composers, do about the current political
situation?”
In response, Bruce
decided to put the Bill of Rights to music.
Read whole story
A can-do composer: Robert Carl
By Kiernan Majerus-Collins in WEST HARTFORD,
Connecticut --
Composition Professor Robert Carl of the Hartt
School at the University of Hartford, came to writing music late
in the game.
“I started playing piano towards the
end of high school,” Carl said. “I play piano, but I'm not a
great performer.”
In fact, Carl didn't major in
composition when he studied at Yale, but in American history.
But during Carl’s sophomore and
junior year, Yale was celebrating the 100th birthday
of Charles Ives – who many say was America’s greatest classical
composer.
Around campus, musicians at Yale
performed works written by Ives.
“I went to these concerts and I
heard this amazing music and I sort of flipped out,” Carl said.
It inspired Carl to write his
own music.
Read whole story
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-- PHOTO --
Nutmeg Symphony Orchestra rehearsing at St. Joseph
College in West Hartford, Connecticut for a concert featuring
the work of Connecticut composers Neely Bruce, Robert Carl and
Charles Ives. (Kiernan
Majerus-Collins/youthjournalism.org) |
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