Senior James Ben Ellington placed third in the ILMEA Student Composition Contest.
Ellington recently made it to State for submitting an instrumental composition titled “Nature,” to the ILMEA Student Composition Contest. Nature took third place in the Large Ensemble Category. The piece that Ben wrote is titled “Nature.” It is 16 minutes and 44 seconds long. It totals 224 measures. He started composing music in middle school.
“I started composing music at the end of 7th grade. My first completed piece, “Freedom,” appeared in February of my 8th grade year,” Ellington said.
Ellinton gets his inspiration from Frank Tichel. He also gets his inspiration from film and video game soundtracks, popular and country music, classical crossover music, and opera. He has been into music from a very young age.
“How I started composing music involves the moment after I had seen my first score for ‘Shenandoah’ and had seen how all the different instruments were written. Around that same time, I listened to what would become one of my favorite songs, ‘Angels in the Architecture’. I had been disappointed that the song’s beginning choralesque theme had been replaced by a fast dark theme, so I on paper drafted some bass parts for a balladesque piece inspired by that chorale. The draft had also taken influence from soundtracks I had been concurrently listening to,” Ellington said.