In years past, many seniors looked forward to their final semester at SUNY Oswego as a way to showcase all that they had accomplished. Whether it is at Quest Day or through senior capstones, it comes to no surprise that things have looked a little different this year.

This past Saturday, one of the first performances students shared together on stage was the Oswego Opera, which not only allowed students to sing and perform on stage, but also engaged all of the integral parts necessary to run such a production, including stagehands and the orchestra pit.

SUNY Oswego senior Clara Tribunella was fortunate to be one of these students involved. This year, her composition capstone project, as well as the music department as a whole, has looked very different.

Tribunella, a music major with a concentration in audio recording and production, has always been involved in music. Playing the piano since she was seven and starting violin only a year later, it has given her a lot of time to hone in on her craft and eventually take a liking to composition. Having previously written a quartet piece in fall 2019, it wasn’t until the dismissal of in-person classes last spring that Tribunella got the idea to develop her work into a full orchestral piece.

“It started off as a quartet for cello, violin, oboe, and bassoon, and then I reached out to [Dr. Juan LaManna] and decided I wanted to do an orchestral piece for my capstone,” Tribunella said. “So, then … I had just basically taken what I had written for that quartet and expanded on that to make it a full orchestral piece but there is no bassoon in it. We don’t have a bassoon player, it’s bass clarinet now.”

After a year of COVID-19 not allowing in-person concerts and shows, Tribunella said she is excited to have the opportunity to see her capstone performed on stage.

“I just played in the opera as a violinist and I’m just glad that I could be a part of that,” Tribunella said. “I was ecstatic and it’s funny because before all this happened, I was taking all my violin performance for granted, I was like ‘Oh no, not another concert,’ and now I’m just like, ‘I get to play something somewhere!’”

Tribunella’s composition, titled “Vast,” is intended to combine her two loves of music and skiing. 

“I kind of wrote it about the Beartooth mountain range in Montana which sounds weird, but I’m a big skier and I visited friends for a month in January,” Tribunella said. 

In the mountains, Tribunella would compose and write scores until the early hours of the morning before she would then hit the slopes. Intended to capture the experience of this wonderful personal place to her, Tribunella has also said that some associate her piece with the likes of outer space as well.

It could not go unsaid that there was much to say about her mentor and professor, LaManna. Known and adored widely by many music students, his involvement in not only orchestra, opera and organizations like Mu Beta Psi, SUNY Oswego’s National Honorary Musical Fraternity, but also his works in composition have made him a more than reliable and trusted figure on campus.

“Juan was like a great help in guiding me,” Tribunella said. “We would have these pretty short meetings but you know, working with somebody who had studied composition and composers for so long, it’s like, he knew what I was thinking while writing it which was very helpful and he would just be able to … guide me in the right direction… without his support, I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it.”

Tribunella’s senior performance and capstone are scheduled for Saturday, May 1, and will be available through Zoom.

Image from Clara Tribunella via Instagram