At 16, senior Jacob Shay was trying his hand at writing music. At 21, he’s poised to attend the world premiere of his commissioned piece “Spark!” by a symphony orchestra.
Shay started out writing covers of music he enjoyed, but once he came to Concordia he began to seriously develop his composition skills with the help of Dr. Daniel Breedon, professor emeritus, and Dr. Steven Makela, assistant professor of music theory and composition.
Shay has written for visual media such as advertisements for businesses and some other online projects, but the composition for the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra is his first premiere of a commissioned piece by a professional ensemble.
Shay takes classes from Dr. Kevin Sütterlin, director of orchestral activities and conductor of The Concordia Orchestra in which Shay is a violinist. Sütterlin just also happens to be the music director for the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra, one of Wisconsin’s finest professional orchestras.
“Last January, I sent Dr. Sütterlin some of my music to get some of his thoughts or recommendations,” Shay said.
Though he was hoping that Sütterlin might be interested in letting the orchestra play some of his music, maybe even perform it in a concert, what ended up happening was more than he could have imagined.
“Dr. Sütterlin really enjoyed what he heard and invited me to write an overture for the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra!” exclaimed Shay.
Since Sütterlin took over as music director for Fox Valley Symphony in 2019, he revamped programming to reflect the people within the communities. In addition to performing works by living composers, female composers, and historically underrepresented composers, the symphony commissions at least two completely new pieces every season.
“Jacob is quite talented and when he shared with me some of his compositions, I immediately loved his bright and colorful instrumentations, beautiful melodies, and overall imaginative ideas,” Sütterlin said. “I remember thinking ‘wow, this guy really has a gift.’”
“It was a big leap of faith to commission such a young person – Jacob was 20 or 21 at the time of the commission – but having seen some of his music, I had confidence that he would write something great,” Sütterlin added. “I gave him a few parameters for the composition which opens the concert – I asked him to write a short concert opener that is exciting, exhilarating, has lots of forward momentum, and will have the audience on the edge of their seats gasping for air in the first minutes of the concert. Musically, I asked Jacob to write in whatever style he loves most (knowing that he would go for an epic, sweeping, cinematic sound), presenting himself as a composer to the professional world and to a national audience.”
“This commission stumped me almost immediately,” Shay said. “Dr. Sütterlin had told me that he was looking for a piece of music that was both ‘bombastic and fast.’ Ultimately, the piece should be able to tire out both the performers on stage as well as the audience. It looked like it would be challenging for me since I typically don't write fast music. But I had to at least try so I sat myself down at a piano, jotted down a few ideas, and wrote three potential openings for the piece.”
It took Shay a couple of days to get the first two versions done, meanwhile the third only took a couple of hours. He then passed the three openings on to Sütterlin to see which version he liked most.
“Funny enough, Dr. Sütterlin favored the third version which took me the least amount of time to write,” Shay said. “Making that the foundation of the piece, I continued to work at a piano, put music on my computer, and continued sending recordings of new ideas or sections for feedback.”
He said “Spark!” incorporates cinematic moments followed by light-hearted, even goofy moments. He also said that while one minute doesn’t seem very long, it's easy to fill up a couple of minutes with a handful of long notes but filling in a minute with a lot of fast notes and keeping things interesting is where the challenge really starts.
“I considered how I wanted to approach ‘Spark!’ and wanted to make something that accurately reflected my composition style,” he added. “The title of the piece comes from the word ‘spark’ referring to the ‘spark’ of inspiration. In my early composing I was inspired by the music I heard in visual media such as movies and video games. So my hope for ‘Spark!’ was to pay homage to the composers whose music inspired me when I was younger ranging from John Williams (“Star Wars”) all the way to Koji Kondo (Super Mario Bros.).”
Shay’s main instrument is the violin and he taught himself the piano which he typically uses as a tool to compose. More 
often than not, after recording a section of himself playing an instrument, he uses his computer to test ideas and compose. He notes that other composers in the music department prefer to write music by pen and paper, and some like to outline the piece entirely on the piano before working on writing the sheet music on a computer.
“If I were to offer advice to anyone who wants to compose, it would be to just try whatever works for you,” he said. “In addition, make sure you can come back to something like a recording or writing on a piece of paper. You never know when you might want to come back to an idea – or ‘spark’ of inspiration.”
The Concordia Orchestra was going to start their fall tour in Appleton, Wis., and attend the concert, but unforeseen difficulties have cut the Wisconsin portion of the tour. Sütterlin was hoping Shay, who will be in attendance, could be celebrated by 85 of his friends and peers from the orchestra, but instead Sütterlin has tapped a few of Concordia’s orchestra’s players to sub with the symphony for this concert so that at least a few will be part of the experience.