Conservatory of Music Summer Scholars Excel

Pushing creative boundaries. Expanding skills. This year's Conservatory of Music Summer Scholars are making their mark in a big way.

Just ask Genevieve Kramer ’23 of Lakewood, Ohio, who is working with Dr. Clint Needham on “Electroacoustic Storytelling.”

A music composition and flute performance major, Kramer is making the most of her Baldwin Wallace Summer Scholars 10-week living-learning opportunity. The ambitious and talented Conservatory of Music student is taking important steps in preparing for a career.

“My goal is to write music for film and animation. This opportunity will help give me experience in combining musical and visual art. Becoming fluent in electronic music software is a very important skill to have in the TV and film industry,” she noted.

But like any artist who revels in stoking a fire for self-expression and creative challenge, Kramer also saw the opportunity as something more.

“I wish to explore and experiment with my own creative freedom and allow my imagination to run wild. I wish to push my own creative boundaries and get out of my musical comfort zone,” she emphasized.

To achieve her goal, Kramer is using her existing musical compositions written for acoustic instruments and reimagining them in an electronic soundscape. After creating the synthesized electronic tracks, she will implement places for acoustic instruments to join the soundscape in a performance setting. In addition, she will be implementing film into this project to create a multimedia experience featuring original music and filmography.

Brain Gain

Left-brain, right-brain – when it comes to creative and critical thinking skills, Olivia Caraccio '23 not only has them, but can understand them in a more scholarly way. The Rochester, N.Y., native is bridging a double major that includes a B.A. in music and B.S. in neuroscience.

Her career focus is music cognition, which is a growing field that studies how music is perceived by the brain. Through Summer Scholars, Caraccio is working with Dr. Kent Cleland on “How Better Understanding Absolute Pitch Can Guide Musical Pedagogy in new Techniques that Include Everyone.”

"For my project,” said Caraccio, “I am studying the ability of perfect pitch and how students with this ability can be better catered to in college-level music classrooms.

“I am currently pursuing a career in academia/research in music cognition with the eventual goal of earning a Ph.D. This opportunity will aid me in achieving these career goals because it gives me hands-on experience that will allow me to be a competitive candidate when applying for graduate school programs. This project also will show my initiative in seeking out my own unique and enriching research opportunities." added Caraccio.