Her composition premiered during a Lyra Trio concert at Concordia.

Natalie Fideler ’19, Savage, Minn.
Major/Minor: Music CompositionWomen’s and Gender Studies

The trio includes three women in music faculty positions. Jane Linde Capistran on violin and Amy Mercer on piano, both from Concordia, as well as Elise Buffat Nelson on piano from North Dakota State University.

“It’s incredibly inspiring to see my professors doing this kind of work and the fact that they would want to merge my art with theirs deeply motivated me to compose for them,” she said.

Fideler said she was already a fan of the work that Lyra Trio does, especially because the trio is heavily dedicated to women in music.

“I was ecstatic to hear that they were not only putting on a recital of exclusively music written by women but also incorporating new music into the program,” she said.

Her composition, “Within the Celebration of the Erotic,” stems from feeling content and happy with life and what it has to offer, as well as drawing from Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic.”

“When I read the essay for the first time, I felt that the emotional backdrop for my piece had finally been put into words,” she said. “My process is so deeply rooted in composing things for a reason and, while those reasons may not always be earth-shatteringly important or revolutionary, I strive to give my audiences music that acts as food for thought.”

In January, Lyra Trio performed Fideler’s piece for an audience. Because she usually composes while sitting at a piano and visualizing her ideas, hearing others perform her work is a much different experience.

“Hearing any piece played for the first time is truly awe-inspiring,” she said. “From the music itself to the notation, the performers, their interpretation and the outlying circumstances of life, all things must fall into place in order for the music to be exactly as the composer intended.”

Fideler said she was very happy with how the trio put the piece together and shared it with the audience.

“I love the way my education in the liberal arts can intersect so many ways to influence my art,” Fideler said.

Published March 2018