Music by Syracuse University graduate student Rolando Gómez is part of the Society for New Music (SNM)’s annual Prizewinners Concert on Sunday, April 13, at 4 p.m. at CNY Jazz Central (441 East Washington St., Syracuse).
A master’s student in composition in the Setnor School of Music, he was the 2024 honorable mention for SNM’s Brian Israel/Sam Pellman Award.
Rolando Gomez
Gómez’s woodwind quintet, Sit and Play, will share the program with two string quartets: Orientalism, by Sami Seif, the 2024 winner of the Israel/Pellman Award, and Bodensee, by Maxim Dybal-Denysenko, the 2024 recipient of SNM’s New York State Federation of Music Clubs/Brian Israel Prize. All three composers will be on hand to introduce their pieces.
Both SNM awards recognize promising New York state composers studying for or embarking on professional music careers.
Tickets are $20 (general admission) and $15 (students and seniors). Students who are 18 years old and younger are free with valid college ID. For tickets and more information, visit SNM’s website.
SNM Managing Director Carole Brzozowski ’81 says the concert has grown into a local springtime tradition. “It’s a celebration of emerging talent,” continues the former dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA), in which the Setnor School is housed. “The Society for New Music is proud to take a leadership role in identifying and nurturing young, innovative composers.”
The Juicy Kandy quintet premiered Sit and Play at the 2023 Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival at The Juilliard School. The performance marked Gómez’s New York City compositional debut.
Collaborating with world-class musicians exposed the Miami, Florida, native to innovative writing techniques. It also inspired him to capture the performers’ personalities in his music.
“Sit and Play is a virtuosic work that reflects my love for jazz, especially bebop,” says Gómez, who graduated from Oberlin Conservatory weeks before the premiere.
Conceived as a theme and variations, Sit and Play evolved into a suite of four contrasting character pieces. The music abounds in shared motives, syncopated grooves and polyphonic textures.
Gómez says the name of the piece is “playful and self-referential,” a nod to the way that jazz and Latine composers use titles to acknowledge the act of music making. “Sit and Play reflects the spirit of the music … and invites musicians to engage with the piece in a direct, intuitive way.”
The 10-minute work has four distinct movements: Jab and Stab, a syncopated exchange between oboe and the rest of the ensemble; Breathe and Sing, a melancholic bassoon solo dedicated to Gómez’s first music teacher—his father; Cut and Paste, a technical tour de force for French horn; and Riff and Run, a vibrant scherzo for flute recalling some of the piece’s earlier themes.
“Working with the Society for New Music is incredibly meaningful,” says Gómez, who recently presented the suite on his master’s recital. “SNM strengthens connections between the University and the professional word, allowing students like me to engage with performers and other composers at the highest level.”
Sit and Play is performed by Kate O’ Leary ’26, flute; Sydney Kincaid ’27, oboe; John Giordano ’26, clarinet; Lily Carpinone ’26, bassoon; and Ryan Hill ’27, French horn.
Gómez was in high school when he began scoring music for video games. A self-taught composer, he enrolled at Oberlin, majoring in composition and minoring in technology in music and related arts.
Working at Syracuse with Natalie Draper—another SNM favorite who is an assistant professor of theory and composition in the Setnor School—has enabled Gómez to expand his musical vocabulary.
“It’s a fusion of traditional and modern styles,” says Brzozowski, noting Gómez’s modernist approach to American and Cuban forms.
Genre-blending is apparent in the program’s other works. Seif’s Orientalism is a meditation on identity and the passage of time, inspired by Edward Said’s landmark book. In turn, Dybal-Denysenko’s Bodensee is named for the lake near his family home in Austria—the same body of water that inspired composer Robert Schumann some 170 years earlier.
Seif is a doctoral fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center; Dybal-Denysenko, a 2024 graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Juilliard student Yuxuan Lin also is a 2024 Israel/Pellman honorable mention. Her entry—Can’t let it go, when it returns for solo cello—is slated for a future SNM program.
Brian Israel taught in the Setnor School from 1975 until his death in 1986. He was a prolific composer, conductor and pianist who befriended SNM co-founder Neva Pilgrim.
Sam Pellman was a Hamilton College music professor who served on the SNM board and chaired SNM’s Israel prize competition until his death in 2017.
Pilgrim was a one-time VPA professor and longtime community partner who died last year. In 1971, she helped found SNM, which has performed and commissioned a formidable body of work by up-and-coming composers. It is the only year-round new music organization in the region and is the oldest nonprofit of its kind in the state, outside of New York City.
