11/11/2025
Exciting experience for our EWU Composers!
EWU Composers Forum received funding from the Youngs Endowment for National Parks Studies to explore Pastoralism. The trip, and the compositions the students will compose, are a part of the "Pastoral Project," which takes experiential learning to a whole new level. Eight student composers went to Grand Teton National Park with their teacher and a volunteer for a 5 day trip in mid September. Dr. Middleton writes: "Pastoralism can go to the heart of finding a sense of self in the absence of being in society with its social expectations and pressures. My hope with the Pastoral Project was to bring EWU students into the wilderness in a relatively safe environment and allow them the freedom to explore, converse, and think freely with minimal guidance from me (their professor) and our day-to-day urban dwellings. The process of simply "exploring," i.e., discovering new things, and getting outside our comfort zones, has huge benefits for oneself; and this has parallels with an important objective for all artists: to express what matters most in our lives; and this makes the topic of pastoralism so relevant to artistic growth."
This year students are focused on composing orchestral works based on their trip to be performed by the Spokane Symphony in a "Side by Side" concert on March 12, 2026 at Showalter Auditorium at EWU's Cheney campus.
