Mia Laurenti, a student in Penn State's Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, created today's “Slice of Pennsylvania” on WPSU. It's a series where people in central and northern Pennsylvania talk about the everyday sounds and stories that are meaningful to them.
Laurenti talked with music fans who had just attended a concert at Penn State by a “new music” ensemble, Black Box Ensemble. It was organized by the student group Living Music, which is dedicated to the promotion and performance of new music.
Baljinder Singh Sekhon:
Hi, my name is Baljinder Singh Sekhon. I'm an associate professor of music composition at the School of Music. I think music is very powerful and speaks to people in all kinds of different ways.
One thing I love is the difference between different compositions. So, every composition has a different thing to say or express. So, it really depends on what the piece is, whether it's something that I'm finding a personal connection to or something I'm learning about something from the outside from.
The great thing about the concert tonight is every piece was so different. There were some pieces that were familiar and some that really weren't familiar. That didn't sound like other things that maybe I've heard before. And that was really intriguing to me. So, I found the concert to be sort of riveting in that way.
Jonathan Domow:
My name is Jonathan Domow. I am a meteorology and atmospheric science major here at Penn State. My entire life I've been a fan of music, playing music, listening to music, and I just have a really deep appreciation for listening to live music.
I actually have this condition, it’s called synesthesia, which I interpret sounds as colors. And which is why I love being in the audience for live music.
It was a vibrant color scape of just all these different sounds, blending with all these different colors. I was getting a lot of yellows. I was getting a lot of oranges, a lot of lighter colors. And then somewhere in the middle, it just started getting very dark. Very dark greens, dark blues, dark reds. And I would just say overall it was just a vibrant experience – explosion even – of color.
I think music is a universal language that everybody can understand to some degree. And it's such an important thing in society that we have to make people feel things.