by Jarrett Hoffman
Composer Natsumi Osborn remembers the first time she read October Danger, a poem by her friend Anabelle Clark.
“It’s very descriptive and kind of mystical,” Osborn said during a telephone conversation. “It evoked in my head the kinds of images and feelings that I always want to evoke in my music.”
Osborn went on to set that text to music with her choral work Autumn Reflections, for which she won the Cleveland Composers Guild’s 2019 Collegiate Composition Contest. She’s currently finishing up her second year at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she studies composition with Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Elizabeth Ogonek.
In two concerts this weekend, the Cleveland Chamber Choir, under the direction of Scott MacPherson, will perform works by members of the Cleveland Composers Guild, including Osborn’s Autumn Reflections, and pieces by American and British women composers — details below.