This week we feature original award-winning compositions by 17 year old Jonas Tarm. Photo credit: Mike Canale

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The second of two programs featuring Highland Park High School senior Jonas Tarm. This week, we’ll hear some of Jonas’s award-winning original compositions. In November, we featured him in a violin recital featuring music by Beethoven, JS Bach, Rachmaninoff and Estonian composer Heino Eller and you can listen to it here.

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Jonas Tarm, 17, was born and lived in Tallinn, Estonia for ten years and has studied violin starting at the age of seven. Jonas is an active chamber musician, orchestral musician, soloist, composer and arranger in the Chicago area. He currently is a scholarship recipient and member of the Music Institute of Chicago’s Academy program where he studies violin with MIC faculty member Gerardo Ribeiro and composition with Matthew Hagle.

Jonas was a highly active member of the Midwest Young Artists program for 4 years; there, he soloed with the I’Solisti Orchestra and was part MYA’s Symphony and intensive chamber music program. Jonas also has soloed with the Highland Park High School Symphony and Chamber orchestras. Summer programs include, MYA Chamber Music Camp, International Haapsalu String Festival, Meadowmount School of Music and more. A senior, Jonas currently serves as concert master of the Highland Park High School Symphony Orchestra and Honors Chamber Orchestra; he also has served as co-principle second in the 2011 IMEA All-State Honors Orchestra.

Currently Jonas is the Illinois State Representative for the 2012 MTNA National Composition Contest. He also at the moment has a merit fellowship, the Kal Novak Musicianship Award, with Mischa Zupko and the MIC Composer’s Lab. As a composer, Jonas has collaborated with musicians and composers from Chicago Symphony Orchestra MusicNOW, Eight Blackbird, Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, Fulcrum Point New Music, Chicago Lyric Opera and more. Jonas has won an award for arranging in the IMEA composition contest and has been a finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould prize and BMI Young Composers Competition. He currently is looking forward to record one of his compositions with Grammy winning new music group “Orchestra of Our time”. Jonas’s playing and composition, “Las Ruinas Circulares”, has been previously featured on WFMT Introductions. Jonas is a member of ASCAP.

Jonas is also a current member of the Ravinia Festival Student Marketing Board, part of a mission to promote classical to younger audiences.

Program:

• Las Ruinas Circulares

Jorie Butler-Geyer (violin), Letitia Chim (flute), Yong Park (cello) and Anne McLaughlin (piano)

1st place in the IMEA Composition Contest Instrumental Category, currently the Illinois Representative for the Music Teachers National Association Regional Composition Competition, finalist in BMI Young Composer Competition and won the Orchestra of Our Time Call for Scores.

This work is based on a short story by the celebrated Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges. Since the story is from Argentinean culture, I was also influenced by Latin and Argentinean music, such as the tango, and also by the composer Astor Piazzolla. Borges paints a landscape of a surreal world and he challenges the concept of what is real and what is not. To incorporate this, I decided to put different types of music against each other: tonal, chromatic, atonal, graphic, messianic and more. Each one tries to find the answer to the question – “What is real?” -JT

• World Premiere: “Nachtmusik: Vokalise der Nacht” for High Voice and String Quartet

Henriët Fourie (voice), Zach Spontak and Allie Switala (violins), Devon Naftzger (viola), Ye Young Yoo (Cello)

Finalist in the ASCAP Young Composer’s Competition.

• World Premier: “Two Pieces for Violin and Piano”

Laura Park (violin), Matthew Hagle (piano)
Recorded in WFMT’s Levin Performance Studio for this broadcast.

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