Moses Lake piano student honored for original composition
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 3 years, 5 months AGO
Moses Lake music student Dariya Karnafel holds up an image of the handwritten manuscript for her composition “Sea of Memories,” which recently won second place in the Young Composers Project competition.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Dariya Karnafel sits at the piano and displays the award she won for her composition, "Sea of Memories." This year was Karnafel's second participating in the Washington State Music Teachers Association's Young Composers Project.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | May 5, 2023 1:30 AM
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake High School senior was honored recently for an original piano composition.
Dariya Karnafel, 17, took second place in the Washington State Music Teachers Association Young Composers Project with her original composition “Sea of Memories.”
“We do it every year and this is my second time doing it,” Karnafel said. “And I wasn’t really expecting that kind of place.”
The Young Composers Project is open to students at various grade levels, according to its website. Each competitor begins by writing out their composition by hand, as well as making an audio recording of it.
“We take a picture of our manuscript, and then we submit it as a PDF,” Karnafel said. “And then once they review it, they give notes to the teachers, and you can get advice from the professionals who review your music.”
“Sea of Memories” had multiple inspirations, Karnafels said. The sea part was inspired by a family trip to Florida, where she saw the ocean for the first time, she explained. She was also going through what she described as an interesting time in her life, which also came through in the finished piece.
“I get these little melodies in my head,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll record them just so I don't forget them. And then at church, sometimes you get people asking, ‘Hey, I'm gonna say this poem, can you play for me?’ So you’ll be thinking of things on the spot, and then some melodies stick to you.”
Charles Halka, assistant professor of Composition and Theory at Western Washington University, judged "Sea of Memories" for the competition and said, "What a lovely piece! Your chord voicing at the piano are very clear- nice job. Your harmonic progressions are very logical and inevitable sounding. I love duality between D minor and D Major. Your middle section that goes through the descending fifths sequence is very appropriate. Congratulations on writing this beautiful piece."
Karnafel also conducts her church choir, she said. While she’s passionate about her music, she isn’t planning to make a career of it, she added. She’s currently in Running Start at Big Bend and plans to enter the nursing program there.
Karnafel’s teacher, Marina Munter, said that she tries to teach her students to go beyond merely playing.
“Sometimes piano teachers just teach (students to) play piano, to read notes,” Munter said. “I taught in a music school in Estonia. In European music schools, we teach theory; we teach composition, choir and improvisation. So all that is just musical language. You have to not just read, but know more and experience more.”
“I think that a lot of compositions, good pieces, come from not just people who know how to compose music from a basic formula,” Karnafel said. “It has to be poured out with emotion. So maybe that's why I liked how this one turned out. I felt like a lot of emotion, now thinking back on it like, ‘Oh, I remember, that's how I was feeling.’”
Joel Martin can be reached via email at [email protected].
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”