Minnesota Varsity: Where are They Now? - Austin Kraft

Where Are They Now? spotlights Minnesota Varsity Featured and Showcase Artists from 2011 to 2014.

Composer Austin Kraft of Savage was a Minnesota Varsity 2013 Showcase Composer and 2014 Featured Composer. He recently contacted Classical MPR's Christine Sweet to share his experiences of the past year.

Austin Kraft, 2013 Showcase Composer, 2014 Featured Composer
Age: 17
Hometown: Savage, Minn.
Attends: Prior Lake High School, Prior Lake, Minn.

Since Minnesota Varsity 2014, I've continued to develop not only as a composer, but also as a musician overall. I've delved deeper into my performance studies on horn, and I've made a conscious effort to be more of an active listener when it comes to the music of others. In the past year, it's really hit me that collaboration and communication are essential to composing. Composing on its own falls flat. Interaction with the performers and the audience gives a composer the necessary feedback that is needed to improve and enhance with the music on a deeper level. I've come to understand music as an infinitely fluid medium — one that's always open to experimentation and interpretation. Most of my recent works have been for small ensembles, and I've branched out with my instrumentation choices, using less common instruments (alto flute, for example) to keep pushing my creative boundaries. The cogs have already started spinning for Varsity 2015. As a horn player, I'm particularly ecstatic to see that the compositions will be for combinations of piano, clarinet, and horn.

This past summer, I had the incredible opportunity to do a summer internship with the American Composers Forum, helping to develop and share NextNotes — the Forum's new nationwide program for high school composers, songwriters, and makers of electronic music. Along with incorporating my creativity into promo videos and articles, I also had the chance to help amass logistical information and peek into the administrative engine that drives a program like NextNotes. This summer was a dual brain workout, flexing my right-brain creativity alongside my left-brain organization and logic.

At the composer mentorship workshop day last winter for Minnesota Varsity 2014, I was baffled by how freely we composers, we high school composers, could discuss one another's works in a shared quest for betterment. With Minnesota Varsity, collaboration overshadows competition. As I start taking college tours and seeing the opportunities there to involve myself in musical communities, I can't see myself without composing, without music — it has become an intrinsic part of me.

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