10 year old Bridport Student
Wins

National Composition Competition

Christina Koller, a fifth grader at Bridport Central School, is the winner of the National Student Electronic Composition Talent Search! sponsored by the National School Board Association and MENC. Her composition will be performed at the NSBA Technology + Learning Conference General Session in Dallas on November 15, 2002. She will also take part in a panel discussion about the use of the computer as a tool for music composition along with the middle and high school division winners.

Christina recalls creating music since she was two or three, using a piano and singing little songs. She writes, “I’ve always loved writing music. When I was little, I used to play around on the piano until I found a tune that I liked. Then I would add a left hand to it and tape record it so that I could remember it, but until my music teacher introduced the midi program at our school, I had no real way of writing it down.”

Christina has participated in the process established by the Vermont MIDI Project of writing music in the classroom and sharing the composition on a password protected website for critique by professional composers, music teachers, and students in the project. Vital to the process is the written description a student posts along with the music files and a request for feedback. Christina takes some of the suggestions she receives and tries them out which often inspires her to explore new aspects of the work and further development of the piece. She has had two compositions played by ensembles of Vermont Symphony Orchestra members in the spring 2001 Opus 3 concert and again in the spring 2002 Opus 5 concert.

Bridport School will receive numerous prizes from this competition: two 5-user lab packs of Sibelius notation software, ear training software from Rising Software, a site license for MiBAC Music lessons, Exploring General Music for the keyboard lab by Carl Fischer, a $100 gift certificate from the Kennedy Center, and a free one year subscription for both the winner and her teacher, Laura Barbieri, to "Electronic Musician" and "Mix" magazines. In addition, Sibelius USA will contribute $1000 towards travel to the Dallas conference for Christina and present her with a copy of Sibelius 2 software.