Striking a chord

“Composing is a messy process,” Schultz says. “You don’t know how it’s going to sound until it comes to life.” But, he jokes, Exeter students always appreciate a deadline. “Now there are 25 new pieces of music in the world that weren’t there before, which is beautiful,” he adds.

More important, the competition redefines musical opportunities at Exeter, welcoming students who create music but may not participate in traditional voice and instrument classes, lessons and group performance activities within the Department of Music. “This competition brings student composition into the mainstream of the Music Department,” says Kristofer Johnson, Michael V. Forrestal ’45 Chair for Music, “and places it on stage, where student work will increasingly be centered. It enables them to take risks.” 

Exeter’s rich musical tradition is rooted in classical voice and performance. “Appropriate, when one considers that Mozart was walking the earth when the Academy was founded,” Schultz says. There are numerous opportunities for students to make music, including orchestras, jazz bands, a cappella groups and choirs, as well as rock and multi-me-dia performance clubs. One-quarter of the student body engaged in at least one musical ensemble this academic year. Musical alumni include a Pulitzer-Prize winning composer, Tony and Grammy-Award-winning singer-songwriters, and top-40 musicians. Johnson notes that many students feel that they’ve found a creative home in the Department of Music.

Now the department is intention-ally broadening its musical offerings to welcome even more students. Schultz, a composer and musician whose work includes acoustic and electronic music, joined the faculty in 2020. A year later, Music Instructor Marcus Rabb joined the faculty as director of bands and jazz, expanding the department’s jazz and contemporary music options. Rab will take on the role of chair of the Department of Music in the fall. “We’ve seen a huge increase in student interest and performance level of groups like the Exeter Association of Rock and others,” Johnson says. The Pittman Family Student Composition Competition is yet another opportunity to showcase student talent.

“There are so many students creating or making music here,” Johnson says, “but they’re writing music on the fringes. They don’t have a platform to grow in the same ways as our Music Department students.”

The composition competition is one of Schultz’s first efforts to showcase different musical styles, including electronic music. Coming to Exeter after directing a community college music program in California, he was struck by the talent he found in his students. “They are writing about things in a way that goes well beyond the years they’ve been alive,” he says. “That’s certainly true of the pieces submitted for the composition competition.”

For the competition, students could submit works in any of three categories: electronic music, notated music (notes on a score) and song-writing. “We were looking for any kind of student musical expression that is original,” Schultz says, “inviting songwriters and others who make more popular styles of music that are technology driven.”

Three musicians and composers, colleagues of Schultz’s from California, served as judges. They provided detailed feedback on each composition and were surprised by the quality of the student submissions. “They could not stop texting me during the judging process,” he says. “They asked: ‘Who are these kids? Where did you find them?’ Because every piece is amazing. It was a real challenge for the judges to figure out what to do with so much talent. It’s a good problem to have.”

Schultz hopes that the competition inspires more students to pursue composition. “Learning music by making it yourself is a different way to become a musician,” he says. It also requires vulnerability, a tall order for any aspiring performer but even more so for adolescents. “If you go out and sing the song you wrote that reflects what you feel, any judgment of that song is a judgment of you,” Schultz says. “To have received that commitment during this competition from 20 young artists is a big win.” One that he hopes to see repeated often.  

A gift of music

The Pittman Family Student Composition Fund was established in 2021 by Joan and Fred Pittman ’51 to inspire student composers and music creators at Exeter. A talented student who was valedictorian of his high school class in rural Cleveland, Mississippi, Fred secured financial support to attend a postgraduate year at Exeter. It was a year that changed his life, according to his son, Tim Pittman ’82, and inspired future support of the Academy.

After receiving his undergraduate degree at Yale, a medical degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, England, Fred pursued a career as an academic physician, holding teaching positions at Tulane University and later at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and its VA hospital.

Fred enjoyed singing, a talent he furthered as a member of the Yale Glee Club as well as the Whiffenpoofs, the university’s a cappella group. He and his wife, Joan, also performed with the Yale Alumni Chorus. In his later years, Fred was an enthusiastic supporter of Charleston Stage and appeared in such productions as My Fair Lady and Of Mice and Men.

In the spirit of non sibi, Fred and Joan endowed a scholar-ship fund for students from South Carolina and Mississippi to attend Exeter. When approached to create the Pittman Family Student Composition Fund, Fred, recipient of the Founders’ Day Award in 2003, and his family readily agreed. “Dad was less interested in capital projects and more inter-ested in supporting students directly,” Tim says of Fred, who died in 2021. Music Instructor Eric Schultz says: “The beauty of this gift is that this competition isn’t a one-off. Students who didn’t enter this year or weren’t named finalists have something to think about for next year. In essence, with this gift, the department is saying, ‘We support you creating your music, and with this infrastructure that wasn’t here before. So take those lyrics and finish that song.’”

The Pittman family’s gift aids efforts by the Department of Music to encourage student creative expression across all musical styles and media, including the Pittman Family Student Composition Competition. “I think dad would’ve appreciated the students’ enthusiasm to compete and challenge themselves (in the composition competition),” Tim adds. “He would have some measure of satisfaction and joy that this happened.”

These stories were originally published in the Summer 2023 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.