The Bible and Music

Today in class, April 23, we had a guest speaker. I was excited for our guest speaker because I unfortunately  missed the last class period when we had a guest speaker. The last time in class we had a guest speaker and I attended it was when we had the cantor come speak to our class. I enjoyed listening to the cantor’s background story and how he connected it to our class. Our guest speaker today, Gabrielle Cerberville was a graduate from Butler University in 2014. I believe she said her major was composition and theory and she has resided in Indianapolis since graduating from Butler. One of the first pieces to her presentation was about the Skammdegi Artist Residency that she helped build in Iceland. Gabrielle lived in Iceland for a period of time. When I saw Artist Residency structure, it immediately grabbed my attention, due to the fact that I had never seen one before. She focused on attracting it to children because of how picky they are. This is an interesting way of design but one that seemed to work well.

Gabrielle continued her presentation by sharing some of her music. Her music was a good kind of different and one that could be listened to for several minutes. Gabrielle mentioned that she encouraged her listeners to step away with listening it and come back, which could allow them to hear something new. Each piece of music that Gabrielle allowed us to listen to had its own melody and individuality with harmony and instruments. I enjoyed listening to the “Messier 83” and how she brought in the violin. Gabrielle also stated that she has not found her exact style as of now and that is something that stood out to me. Gabrielle had some great advice on how she goes about composing her work. One of the quotes that she said that helped me was when she said, “Most of my most memorable and cherishing work was the most frustrating making.” This is relevant to our final projects and creating some that reveals our own creativity. Overall, I enjoyed the class time hearing Gabrielle’s story and accomplishments!