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News > Young composer gets to hear her work at Reno performance
Young composer gets to hear her work at Reno performance January 20, 2006 Athena Adamopoulos said Juilliard was like her playground. Before beginning studies at Harvard in 2004, the 19-year-old Adamopoulos spent countless hours at Juilliard, graduating from the school's pre-college program with distinction and earning the school's Most Distinguished Student award in 2000. "I love Juilliard," she said. "It was the source of all my life and energy pretty much. I just had so many muses there and so many mentors who really helped me get along." Those mentors also helped distinguish her as a composer and pianist at an age when many youngsters are still deciding what to do with their lives. At age 8, Adamopoulos performed an original composition on the nationally broadcast "Sally Jessie Raphael Show." She has completed numerous commissions, including works for the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, the Plymouth Philharmonic and the Festival Chamber Music in New York. She was named a Davidson Fellow by the Reno-based Davidson Institute for Talent Development in 2004. And Sunday and Tuesday, the Reno Philharmonic will perform her composition "Theme and Dance of the Regiment." Adamopoulos will be in the audience. She said hearing an orchestra perform one of her pieces is "the most touching feeling in the world." Adamopoulos grew up in Manhattan, and she knew as a child that music would be an important part of her life. "I've pretty much been composing my whole life," she said. "I suppose it all started when I started taking piano lessons. I was four years old and when I actually had a technique on the piano I started improvising a lot." Although she enjoys piano, Adamopoulos said she considers herself primarily a composer. "The deciding point between piano and composition came somewhere probably a couple of years before Juilliard," she said. "It was a really natural thing for me to write music. And while I could always be an interpreter, there are many wonderful interpreters my age and older. I feel that my calling, or at least the thing that I feel is most natural for me to do, is to write music." Adamopoulos wrote "Theme and Dance of the Regiment" in early 2002, not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "It was written, really, in response," she said. "A roommate of mine, her father was in one of the towers when it collapsed. I knew her and her brother very well. They were friends of mine, went to Juilliard with me, and it's about seeing their courage to go on with life as usual, to remember but to move on." In 2004, Adamopoulos' accomplishments were recognized with a $25,000 fellowship from the Davidson Institute, which offers awards to help young people further their education in a variety of disciplines. The Philharmonic has a history of allowing music fellows to display their talents locally, and Colleen Harsin, director of services for the institute, said she's excited that Adamopoulos is coming to Reno to hear the orchestra perform her piece. "She's a remarkable young woman and has a great personality," Harsin said. "We're really, really excited to be a part of the process and (to be) giving her a chance to perform and share her gifts with another audience." |
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