this is total composition camp Coming up on Gallery America.

Eight students face a tight deadline composing classical music for a string quartet in just five days.

Under the guidance of world renowned composer Jared Tate.

Can they beat the clock?

That and more coming up now.

Hello, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Gallery America.

Today we're stepping aside the first American museum composition academy under the instruction of world renowned composer Jared Tate.

Eight students lear how to craft their own classical The only catch is they only have five day to complete their compositions before they get performed by renowned string quartet.

Can they finish in time?

Let's check it out.

So.

*Speaking in Chickasaw* Hi everyone.

My name is Jerod Impichchaachaaha Tate and I'm a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.

And I'm also your composition teacher for this week.

What you're all doing is you're writing new music for string quartet.

That's going to be performed next Saturday.

It's a professional quartet called the Dover Quartet.

So that's the whole goal, i that you're only going to write a short pieces for string quartet and have them played, and it's going to be awesome.

What I encourage kids to do is to start thinking in basic terms of melodies and rhythms going to start on the keyboard, and you're going to start messing around like, I like this melody or whatever.

Melodies are a really, really great place to start.

One thin that's really important for me is that you come out of this class never hearing music like you did before.

We are going to do something that I love doing to kick off Composition Land.

Okay.

Here.

What I do is the very first day I give them an initiation of like, we're going to break down a piece of music so that you can start to deconstruct sound because you're going to reconstruct it on your own terms.

I put on a piece of pop music and I'm like, all right, we're going to totally break this down.

What are themes or motifs?

And so now you're startin to think critically about what you're doing.

A lot of kids have played like clarinet and band or piano violin.

I will be in contact with them beforehand and let them know, hey, start brainstorming.

So they're already on board, you know, take that idea and run with it.

I just watched the Indiana Jones series.

I really wanted to compose a piece that was I could Ventress like the Indiana Jones theme.

I thought it'd be really funny.

My piece was calle The Adventures of Oklahoma joke.

A melody is probably the easiest to write.

Making the supporting lines could sometimes be a little bit more tricky.

Another variable is that it's bringing out well so far.

Experienc is like a really good teacher.

He has definitely taught me a lot.

We want native cultures to be presented as something exciting and living rather than just historic.

Jared has been a long time supporter of First American's museum.

He's a very celebrated and well known classical composer he brought m this radical idea that he wanted to bring in students for a week long intensive.

our role as a museum is t provide exhibitions and programs that share the stories of the 39 tribes in Oklahoma today.

The kids have the freedom and the flexibility to work with intent and purpose.

With such a supportive mentor like Jared Tate.

idea is is an awesome idea.

And there's been composers who've done that, and it's a really great feeling to bring back themes that when you play them all at the same time, it's I'm very, very blessed in that I have several commissions in the queue, and so I get to continue to express what I like to express in the field of music.

This is my violin concerto that I'm composing for, a violinist named Irina Muresanu.

It's about our homelands back in Mississippi.

It's our legend that our spirits go into the clouds and live up there and watch over the people and fight off bad spirits.

And that's how you get thunderstorms sometimes.

It's a very energetic concerto.

What it means to be a composer is that I am literally absorbing the world and processing i in my own spirit, my own mind.

Then I am abstracting that reality ou for somebody else to experience.

People do that on a daily basis.

In everything that we do, we process it and the we express that to other people.

And that's what I do with sound.

I didn' start composing until I was 22.

That was a ballet scor that I composed for my mother.

I'll give you a little bit of background about tha to kind of fill in some blanks.

My father, Charles, is a tribal judge, and actually he has come out of retirement and he is back on the bench the age of 86.

My mother, Patricia, was a professional choreographer and dancer.

She decided to do original ballet based on American Indian stories.

I was about to graduate Northwestern University as a piano performance major.

She got done.

She turned to me and she said, you know, you're my Chickasaw pianist kid.

I want you to write the score.

This was a beautiful window that my mom opened.

She was literally asking me to be all of who I am at the exact same time.

Human beings stand on each other's shoulders as generations go on.

I've learned.

Everything I know about music from my dad.

My son Heloha is both an excellent balle dancer and French horn player.

He speaks our language as well.

He's a great tribal citizen, really proud of him.

And.

It's better for them to read a D-flat in an.

F, okay.

Okay.

Instead of.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

The string quartet is like a, like a symphonic orchestra just with four players.

You can do anything with the string quartet.

It's really, really flexible.

My job is to be your living encyclopedia of answers of.

How do I notate this?

How do I do this?

Technically?

It's a hard thing to do.

I was very doubtful before that I was able to make music.

He helps me realize that it's just being too self-critical.

It's nice being able to express myself.

I'm really engrossed in it right now and I love it.

I was just going for something intense just coming up, like with original ideas.

Sometimes it's a little challenging.

treble Right now I'm working on my four pieces I created for his camps.

They're all there, really fun and I always love going over my scores with You know, the kids are very, very nervous that when they're about to sit in the hot seat and watch their music come aliv for the first time, it's nerve wracking.

All right, so our first couple pieces are by Madison Lee.

Just tear in and go at it and you know what to do.

The hardest thing for everybody to get through is, is their own inhibitions o their own personal criticisms.

I think it's really an amazing experience to be playing so much music by such talented kids.

How are you feeling?

I like that I as they played it, I liked it more.

This is really good.

I think it's really important to emphasize how important it is for kids to have creative experiences like this.

We know from research literature tha engaging in cultural activities supports the through the rest of their lives.

It has positiv outcomes on their self-esteem, their mental health, and their physical wellness.

Could violin one and violin to be louder whenever you have the melody?

What on measures 17.

There's a lot that's going through my mind and my heart.

I get to have anticipatory joy because not only are the kids discovering how wonderful their own music is, but so is the quartet.

I am always surprised by the by the ideas I come up with, and I'm also very inspired.

But again, it's like that's what human creativity is.

It's about a lot of emotion or events that happen in life.

So actually asked the quartet to be really emotional during this piece.

To see them be able to come together like that and to experience a brand new experience that I knew was going to happen, is really beautiful to watch.

Those are the types of moments that are really just the best of humanity.

My inspiration is the Indiana Jones, and I really wanted to create something that like capture, like the emotion of like the adventure What it does is it shows a young person that they can start something that they may never dream that they could do before, and they complete it to a professional level, and that transposes to anything they want to do in life.

Whatever it is they want to do.

This shows that this architecture is the same in any human endeavor.

If they want to stay in music, that's terrific and will always be a life coach for the and that but this does transpose to anything that they want to accomplish in their lives.

So that that is a real dream come true.

And I love being able to supply that.

You can keep up with Jared on Instagram @ Jared Tate.

Now we're going to Florida to see a music camp of a different type.

Adult women come together to start a band and in the process, overcom their own personal challenges.

Let's take a look.

Yeah, right.

Ladies Rock camp is complete magic, and it is a transformational experience for adult women who want to step into thei power and reclaim their voice.

You come in, you learn a new instrument, you're forming bands, you're writing original songs or attending workshops, you're doing silly games and activities, and it all culminates in a final concert at the end of the weekend.

My name is Kristy Carpenter.

It's my first time singing every night.

I hear myself through this.

You're a dirty, dirty maid of your show.

And you got a dirty.

What?

I hope this camp will help me learn about myself is reservation.

I'm all capacities of my life.

I'm going straight at it.

Had headstrong.

I'm the boss.

Everybody has to do what I say.

We all, even my boss.

I feel like Kristy became a little bit softer through the camp experience because she was already seemingly so brave and so forward and so confident.

But I think that we got to see a side of her that was a little bit softer and a little bit or quite a bit less of a facade of strength, and I just thought that she really embraced what it meant to be a ladies Rock camper.

people are very critical of people.

Thing doesn't matter how good you are.

In my world or in my culture, they are very, very critical.

And so that's the biggest nerve racking, is that after I got done a little while ago with singing for my first time everybody said it was awesome.

My child was were recording it.

She said it was awesome, but I think that's probably the scariest thing.

No, no baby.

Having my mom here at camp, it's been, a very wholesome experience.

She's my biggest fan.

She comes to all of my shows.

It's one of her favorite things to do.

So seeing her get up on stag and do the same things that I do and understand what that feels like, and then look at me and say, I understand how hard it is, and I'm sorry for being so hard on you.

Felt really good because she understands and we have like this extra connection now.

We all have to write our own song as an exercise for that.

So this is all original songs and for me, they do kind of say that the vocalis is the one that kind of really, you know, writes the song.

No, I didn't want to just ru with whatever I feel, you know?

So that's what we were doing.

We're all coming together with what the ideas for the actual song be fantastic ladies Rock is curated specifically to be a very short amount of time in which these women have thi big challenge in front of them, and ultimatel it is to avoid them from second guessing themselves or creating doubt.

I know no one gives you like, the space or really the freedom to mes up, to make mistakes, to learn.

And that's all this is.

It is literally designed for these women.

Well, not just these women.

For everyone in this, in this to fail so that we can do it together.

We can laugh and dust ourselve off, and we can do better next every day.

Well, think the camp changed the sense there about mysel that I feel like I am a singer and I've never felt like that before.

I am so excited to announce made in my third crowd here in upstate New.

I can't wait to, here we go again.

Shall I be good?

You come out here.

I, shall not be moved, but I feel like an absolute rock star.

Absolutely.

It's nice to have everybody to get such great feedback and you know that it moves to be.

It's a weekend straight of craziness.

But the reality is it was life changing.

I've had so many ladies that have told me their experience was life changing, and it's no different for me either.

This was you know, very it was amazing.

I. right.

Now we're going to Virginia.

Artist Sterling Elliot began playing cello at age three in his family string quartet.

Now he's an adult and he's reaching new musical heights.

Let's take a look.

Hey, my name is Sterling Elliott.

I'm.

In.

The West art.

The cello is actually pretty interesting.

Basically, it was handed to me but it was also destined to me from birth.

So when I say that, I mean, my mom always wanted a family string quartet.

She really wanted that string quartet.

And I'm the youngest of the siblings, so all the other positions of the string quartet were already filled.

My mom played violin and viola.

My two older siblings played violin, and there was only one more spot to be filled in.

The string quartet, which was the cellist.

So, she said when I was at her room, she actually had a cello waiting.

Somebody had to play the cello.

I wanted m kids to have the love of music and have a gift that they would always have for the rest of their life, something that nobod could ever take away from them.

And that just kind of blossomed into more of having a family grou and bonding together as a family by playing music.

So we were always playing together.

We always practiced together at the same time.

Our musical lives were always pretty much connected.

If if one person went to a competition, we all went either to compete or support.

We're missing the other part.

Our first quartet performance was at the mall because I thought it was the best place to play to get exposure.

The mall.

Everybody's at the mall and then our biggest break, if you will, was we played for the Boys and Girls Club.

They had a competition and our quartet performed and we won.

And as a result of that, they wanted us to play for their National Centennial Conference and Centennial anniversary.

And it was our biggest audience for a thousand people.

And there was Denzel Washington there.

There were all kinds of celebrities.

It was crazy.

And after we performed.

People were coming up.

Hey, we want you to play in San Francisco.

Hey, we want you to play in Boston.

Hey, we want you to play in Atlanta.

And the next two years, we played all over the place.

This performing music thing was never supposed to be like my primary career thing.

I always wanted to be an engineer, actually, since I was very young.

I converted our entire backyard shed thing into like a garage workshop for my tools.

I've loved all math and sciences.

I've loved tinkering with my car and other things.

I've loved just the mechanics of everything.

And it wasn't until actually when I was like 14, I was doing the National Sphinx competition that I realized, you know, this could be something, you know, much more than I ever intended.

And that was actually sort of when I really started taking it seriously.

One year.

In what year at Juilliard?

I'm a third year undergrad.

This semester I' only taking three classes, but I still find myself playing easily eight hours a day.

I have multiple chamber groups, and we have rehearsals and sometimes coaching and then sometimes school orchestra rehearsal.

Two years ago, I did a solo performanc with the New York Philharmonic, which was the biggest solo performance I had ever done, and David Geffen Hall in New York.

And that also led to me getting to play as a substitute cellist in Oh, I can't wait.

It's nice being home up, getting back used to it remembering what my life style used to be like at home.

It's nice and refreshing without the the hustle and bustle of New York City.

Tonight I'll be playin Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations.

It's a piece I've played with orchestra two times before I played this piece but then you get from harmonic, so I'm glad to be playing it again closer to home.

We.

May be three.

March 1st I'll be doin my first concerto performance.

Are we playing DeVos Concerto at Carnegie Hall?

Kind of the cello concerto, as some people say.

35, 40 minutes.

I think I'll be playing it with the New York Symphony.

I've been lucky enough to have a solo opportunity just by myself for a couple of minutes.

And the big hall in Carnegie, and that will be absolutely terrifying.

But also, an amazing opportunity.

I think a lot of people think I'm kind of a unique kind of person, but I alway just try to tell them, you know, I feel like I'm probably just like you.

You know, you can probably do exactly the same kind of thing I was doing.

As long as you just hav someone that's keeping you going by yourself or a parental figure or another role model, as long as you continue to have that drive, as long as you continue to put in the work, you know anything can happen.

We're almost out of time.

But before we go, we're going back to compositio camp to hear some of the music the kids wrote.

As always, you can see past episodes by going to our website OETA.tv/GalleryAmerica And don't forget to follow us on Instagram @OETAGallery.

We'll see you next time.

Till then, stay arty Oklahoma!