Free and open to the public!
Social Time: ~7:15PM PST / Presentation begins: 7:30PM PST
Presenter: Mark Vigil
Title : Two Recent Compositions for String Sextet
I intend to present to Cascadia community my two most recent compositions for string sextet. It is all that I have to show for myself for the year 2025. The instrumentation of my sextets are 2 violins, 2 violas and 2 cellos. And the only reason I wanted to write two string sextets was because Brahms wrote two string sextets. He wrote one at the beginning of his career and he wrote No. 2 towards the end of his life. His instrumentation was also 2 violins, 2 violas and 2 cellos. And if I was to intimate somehow that a presence of Brahms-like lyricism and Brahms-like thick textures was of no influence on me whatsoever then, well then, I would be lying. His music is tonality driven and mine isn’t. Look right now I’m totally a Brahms driven dude. And, with this being said I must assure you that the music of these two string sextets are all typically me and all respectfully introvert. I would also like to include a meager amount of history about the Fantasy as an art form as well.
Mark Vigil Bio
I was born in Spokane Washington in 1954. I became interested in music during my teenage years. My mother introduced me to the music of Chopin and I soon found out about Brahms. By the time I was sixteen I was enthralled by the music of Debussy, Mahler, Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov. For my undergraduate studies I attended the Cornish School of the Allied Arts located in Seattle Washington. I received my bachelors degree in piano performance and composition in 1982. There
I studied composition with Janice Giteck.
In 1991 I came to Eugene Oregon to attend the University of Oregon School of Music. I was enrolled in the graduate program in music composition. I graduated in 1996 with a master’s degree in composition. There I studied composition with Rob Kyr and Hal Owen.
In 2002 I began to study composition privately with Tomas Svoboda. I studied with him for ten years. Since then I’ve tried to keep myself busy always writing and to focus on furthering my own knowledge and understanding of orchestration.