Meet the Mentor | Grace Coberly
Graphic by Andy Zeng. Photo courtesy of Grace Coberly.
The COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective is an online, 8-week fellowship program that allows creative writers, visual artists, and musicians to explore, illuminate, and grow through collaborating on interdisciplinary projects. Learn more about the Arts Collective here. For the next weeks leading up to the application deadline, we will be featuring mini-interviews with 2020 mentors.
About the Mentor
Grace Coberly (they/them) is a composer, conductor, and aspiring music teacher from the suburbs of Chicago. A sophomore at Haverford College, they’re a music and linguistics double major with a passion for ensemble singing. They have sung in thirteen choirs, including the district and all-state levels of ILMEA and the Heritage Chorale of Oak Park, IL (as the 2015 recipient of the Marcie Hartman Mentoring Scholarship). They have also led two a cappella groups — including their current group, the Haverford College Mainliners — and founded two others. This past spring, they bought a pack of plastic kazoos and organized their friends into their school’s first kazoo chorus, just to ensure that no one was taking them too seriously.
CAC: Could you briefly introduce yourself and your discipline? Why did you choose this discipline?
GC: I didn’t choose music — it chose me! I’ve been singing for seventeen years, composing for ten, arranging for six, and teaching/leading ensembles for four. All of these things make me spectacularly happy, and in an ideal world I’d do nothing else for the rest of my life.
CAC: Why do you make art? When did you realize it was something you wanted to pursue?
GC: I grew up in choir, so I’ve always seen music-making as a community endeavor. For me, art is about connection, interaction, and shared experience. This is why I’ve centered most of my life so far around ensemble music: it relies on the investment of several individuals who all care deeply about creation.
CAC: Can you discuss the last project(s) that have meant the most to you?
GC: A few weeks ago, a friend of mine shared the Yeats poem “Lake Isle of Innisfree” on Facebook. I was familiar with the text already, but it held new weight for me in light of the stressful yet solitary nature of the COVID-19 catastrophe. I set the poem for unaccompanied SATB choir, keeping current events in mind. As I continue to solicit feedback from my own trusted mentors, the piece has allowed me to stay connected with the friends and musicians who mean the most to me.
CAC: What are you currently working on in your artistic life?
GC: These days I’ve been focusing more on classical voice training than composition. As much as I’ve sung in choral settings, my career as a soloist began more recently. I also hope that honing my own technique will put me more in touch with the human voice in general and improve my writing.
“Kazoodyssey: A Kazoo Odyssey” – written & directed by Grace Coberly – perf. 2019.
CAC: How do you manipulate medium, style, and/or voice?
GC: As a singer, I have quite a bit of experience manipulating voice… but classical singing is all about reproducing music that already exists. When I create my own original music, I have much more flexibility with how I use stylistic customs. I’ve always loved Romantic music and frequently use features from that era in my work, interspersed with more contemporary harmonies and chord progressions.
CAC: Why did you decide to mentor for the 2020 Arts Collective?
GC: I first got involved with COUNTERCLOCK as a writer and then found my way into the Arts Collective in its founding summer as a music mentor. I’m thrilled to be back!
CAC: Is there anything else you would like us to know?
GC: I get really excited about interdisciplinary projects. The more I can combine my musical interests, the better.
Sarah Feng is the editor-in-chief of COUNTERCLOCK Journal and the director of the Arts Collective. Her creative writing has been awarded by the Poetry Society of the United Kingdom, the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Adroit Prizes in Prose & Poetry, NCTE, the Critical Pass Review, American High School Poets, the Leyla Beban Young Author’s Foundation, Teen Vogue, and the New York Times. She plays piano and dabbles in charcoals, and she thinks rhythm and light and lyric pulse in every field of the creative arts – if you can call them distinct fields at all. In other words, she has faith in the power of the interdisciplinary arts and their persistence in our memories and minds. She studies at Yale University.