Jazz studies senior Olin Clark has been playing and writing music since he first received a guitar for his 13th birthday. Though he admittedly, had no idea what he was doing at the time, Clark has since gone from writing beginner’s music for guitar to writing full nonet jazz pieces.
Sunday night he performed his senior recital in Hart Recital Hall to an audience of about 70 people, comprised mainly of teachers, family and classmates. Applause thundered through the crowd after each song and even after each particularly pleasing instance of sound, which was also occasionally accompanied by cheers.
Some of the music, Clark said, he had been writing for years. And for each piece of the nonet, he had a specific person in mind.
“I knew the sound I wanted,” he said. “Like, I wanted to hear my friend Derrick (Newbold) on sax, so I wrote the music to fit that.”
The recital was filled with typical and not-so-typical jazz pieces — the first half contained covers of songs written by different composers, while the latter half was all Clark’s work.
“The songs are about experiences and things I’ve learned,” he said, including a song about spirit possession and one about his late grandfather.
As for the future, Clark’s plans are still unclear. While, ideally, he would like to live in New York City and play music, he thinks he’ll be spending some more time in the Lansing area before moving away. Though music education might be in his future, Clark said right now he just wants to “get out there and play.”
His mother and grandmother, who provided home-cooked Lebanese and Syrian food for the post-recital reception, have been incredibly supportive of Clark throughout his music career and watched his recital from the front row.
At the conclusion of the recital, his family was among the first to be thanked, but Clark said he felt particularly grateful for all of the hard work his friends did to learn his difficult music and emphasized how thankful he was for them and being able to play with such talented musicians.
“It’s really cool to do something like this with friends,” he said. “And all I had to do was pay them with a pizza.”
