Jessica Nave ’06 (left), a clarinet player since she was a child, hears the instrument in her head when she writes music. The Music Theory major collaborated with Senior Music Lecturer Linda Kirkpatrick to write an original five-movement flute and clarinet duet called “Metallic Resonances.”

“When the flute is playing one note and the clarinet is playing another, you hear a pleasant metallic resonance, which ties the movements together,” says Nave. “I wrote it to explore sound and harmony more than melody.”

Nave and Amanda Franklin ’08 will premier the duet during their senior recital at 7:30 p.m. April 7 in Levine Recital Hall. The event is free and open to the public. For more information call 410-857-2294.

The project began with a class exercise that inspired Nave to write a composition for a College concert. She calls music an “expressive language” and says that understanding the theory behind Mozart and Brahms helped her build composition skills.

“I’m part of watching this whole thing grow,” says Kirkpatrick. “It’s like nurturing a garden, you plant a seed and watch it sprout, and soon we’ll get to listen to the final product.”

After graduating this spring, Nave intends to go to graduate school for Music Cognition and eventually become a college professor. But first, there are hours of rehearsals in front of her and an original composition to present.

“There is joy in creating something and hearing other peoples’ interpretations of it,” Nave says. “All art is labor intensive, but in the end, it’s art.”

For a list of student-faculty research projects completed in the 2004-2005 academic year, click here.