The Graduate School at Georgia State University hosted an all-day event to feature the work of our graduate students. Opportunities to participate included oral presentations, poster presentations, film, artistic and creative presentations, musical performances, and artist talks. All students, faculty, and staff were invited to attend.
Sarah Griffin, 2023 MM in Saxophone Performance, “got an email calling for abstracts and was preparing the piece for other performances and decided to dive into the research aspect of including contemporary works by underrepresented composers in saxophone repertoire.” Since this was the first time this event had taken place, she wasn’t sure what to expect. After performing her piece and fulfilling the discussion and research component, Sarah had to rush to another rehearsal for an upcoming concert and missed the award ceremony. Later in the week, Sarah received an email and was informed that she had won the Creative Excellence Award for the Musical Performance category at the Inaugural Graduate Conference for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity.
Sarah performed Chia-Yu Hsu’s Chasing Shadows (2013) for Solo Alto Saxophone. Her presentation topic was about extended techniques as compositional tools and advocating for underrepresented composers within classical saxophone repertoire.
“I was pleasantly surprised to have won and be given a monetary award. I would highly recommend any future interested students to go for it!”