Each season, Fellows of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the premiere training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony, are provided with resources to develop and implement a creative project of their own design. In 2020/21, Civic Fellows Joe Bricker and Hannah Christiansen used this opportunity to launch "Chicago, From Scratch," a collaborative composition program presented in partnership with the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative and Guarneri Hall.
Maine West High School Junior, Sophia Luong, learned of the program and decided to enroll. The "Chicago from Scratch" program afforded Sophia four weeks of training in music composition. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sophia wanted to write a piece that captured her experience of this unprecedented and challenging time, and used the process of writing music to reflect on some of her thoughts and feelings spurred by the pandemic. She began her compositional process by sitting at a piano and improvising, writing down musical ideas from her improvisations as they caught her interest. The result is her composition, March 2020. The piece portrays the emotions Sophia was feeling as a result of the pandemic, captures some of her observations of others' feelings and responses to the pandemic, and recognizes the political and social unrest that was occurring at the time, specifically giving attention to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Her piece, March 2020, was recorded at Guarneri Hall in Chicago on May 31, 2021, and it premiered on YouTube on September 17, 2021.
Listen to Sophia's piece, March 2020, in the video below. Her piece is the first featured in the video. Also featured is music composed by Brandon Harper, Malik Ali Muhammad, Nazeeh Shahid, and Noëlle Streuber-Eden. All of the pieces are performed by Joe Bricker, percussion and Hannah Christiansen, violin.
Congratulations, Sophia! We are so proud of you!
