We began the first official day of classes today, though we eased into things so that no one felt too overwhelmed (except our directors, Spencer and Andy, who have been feverishly working since they arrived). Breakfast runs from 7:45-8:45. Ordinarily, we’ll have a short Italian lesson with Stefano, but today, we spent about 90 minutes going over orientation information, answering questions, and taking a quick tour of the campus. Several of the chamber groups rehearsed at noon and later at 2 pm, while the composition studio had our first seminar at 1:15.

We have a terrific group of accomplished composers at IMFA this year, all of whom have great creative plans for their time here. After some introductions, we embarked on our first project: an electro-acoustic etude comprised of sounds gathered from the Duino area. To start, we did a 15 minute sound walk along the Rilke trail, listening to the sounds of nature, the motorboats below us in the Adriatic, and the many hikers who passed by, speaking all manner of Italian, German and Slovenian. We then listened to fragments of works by two important composers in the musique concrète tradition, Luc Ferrari and Gilles Gobeil. The students’ assignment for tomorrow is to gather their own sounds, using handheld recording devices, and load them onto their computers. This is called “hit the ground running.”

In other news, the Harrington String Quartet arrived today in advance of their concerts here on Friday and Saturday. We are fortunate to have a panoply of string players here this month, which will be a real treat for our composers!

Alex Umfleet admires the sea.

A view of the castello from the Rilke path, where we took our sound walk.

IMFA 2014 composers: Max Lafontant, Grant Strom, Rachel Lee, and Alex Umfleet.