Guest composer Johnterryl Plumeri (above) directs YSU clarinet professor Alice Wang and the Festival Chamber Orchestra in his Romance for Clarinet, Strings and Harp at the recent 25th New Music Festival in Bliss Recital Hall.

Plumeri also conducted his shifting, swirling Sand Without Water — with Dana instructors Kathryn Thomas Umble on flute and Tedrow Perkins on English horn, fronting the orchestra — as part of the several-day event honoring staff, student and guest composers of classical music, with recitals, the concert and a convocation.

The April 22 concert — Composers’ Ensemble — was sponsored by the College of Fine & Perfoming Arts at YSU and the Youngstown New Music Society and New Music Guild, Inc., under the direction of Dana’s Robert Rollin.

Rollin also offered two of his original compositions for performance. His Caprice for Trumpet/Flugelhorn and Strings was arranged as a gift for guest artist Eric Brewer, a nationally renowned performer and teacher from Ashtabula, Ohio, who played each horn alternately throughout the piece. Brewer was also featured — with oboist Cynthia Watson — on Rollin’s Nine Seascapes, which was inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s French symbolist poem, The Drunken Boat, and commissioned by former Youngstown Symphony principal oboe, Tedrow Perkins, and former Dana trumpet professor, Susan Sexton.

Professor Rollin, an internationally acclaimed composer and pianist with a list of degrees, honors and awards as long as the arm he uses to conduct the professional Festival Chamber Orchestra he formed, created the New Music Festival.

A world premier by local composer and music enthusiast, Richard Zacharias,  titled Sonata for Viola and Piano, opened the concert, with Wendy Portis on viola and Tim Webb on piano. This was the tenth of Zacharias’ works — described as “quirkily polytonal and polyphonic… modern while staying accessible” — premiered by the New Music Guild.

Pianist Brandon Loewit played an Etude written by “the only non-living composer on the show,” Alexander Scriabin, and the Festival Orchestra premiered Dana student, Ryan Coffey’s On the Rooftop to round out the event.

Musical composition is a key component of the academic program at the YSU Dana School of Music and the annual New Music Festival celebrates that endeavor with one of the school year’s final concerts.