
Among the new works to be premiered at the fall Emerging Sounds Composers’ Concert on Saturday, November 17 is a piece created on behalf of an international human rights project. Graduate student Ellen Taylor Seldin composed "A Lost Girl" for the Gendercide Awareness Project, a Dallas-based organization dedicated to raising awareness of “the silent elimination of females, young and old, through sex-selective abortion, infanticide, gross neglect, and, for older women, lack of access to food and shelter” in such countries as China, India and Afghanistan. The six-minute piece will be used in a video about the Gendercide Awareness Project and in an art installation the group plans to open in 2015.
Seldin says her new work is scored for clarinet, viola and harp, and uses Asian tonalities to reflect that part of the world. “The goal is to evoke compassion and a sense of beauty,” she says. “The title was chosen because it is a gentle way to remind us of the tragedy of the problem. The harp has the life theme, and at the end of the piece it is triumphant.”
The Emerging Sounds Composers’ Concert takes place at 8 p.m. Nov. 17 in Caruth Auditorium, and admission is free. Offered once every fall and spring, the concert presents new works by students in the SMU music composition program. Pieces may be traditional or experimental, and range from chamber music to electronic music, with brief introductions provided by each composer at the concert. For more information, contact the Division of Music at 214-768-1951 or see the website.