Samantha Strowd – Five Cats, Something Like That

Creating should be fun. Competitions should inspire us to imaginative heights, give us an incentive to finish a work that might otherwise sit gathering dust. This competition was a highlight in Samantha’s studies and gave her a confidence and composing path she’d never found before.

As a teacher, I was thrilled by the way she grew as a musician throughout the compositional process. I knew she had entered a competition that was a bit over her head. After all, it was an international competition sponsored by a well-known European performance group. Professional composers from all over the world would be entering. We weren’t expecting her piece to win or even to place in such an illustrious competition. We were quite satisfied that the piece was interesting, well-written, imaginative … and full of fives! We thought we had heard the end of it on the day she completed and submitted her entry.

Imagine her surprise and delight when she got a personal email from the director of the entire competition! No, she hadn’t won. But he loved her piece!

“Your piece was under those 3 pieces we chose from but didn’t win a prize, sorry for it, as my personal vote went to you,” wrote Gintaras Janusevicius in a private email to Samantha. He went on to say “There is some very nice and good sounding, lovable and very interesting material in this piece. My favorites are the cats no. 2 and of course Tom & Jerry. Actually, in this one, the jurors could not help having fun and smiled very much.”

Even the great honor of being on the list of five (!) semi-finalists paled in comparison to making the jurors “smile very much”.

Samantha subsequently entered this piece into several other competitions and won first place in one of them. The piece has since been performed many times by professional pianists, and is always a hit with audiences and performers.

“Five Cats, Something Like That” was a real feather in Samantha’s composing cap, and brought her a lot of recognition and admiration. I still think, however, that the best thing about this piece was the new energy that she brought to composing as a result of this piece and this competition. I am very grateful to the Plathner Eleven, the idea of “five” that inspired this piece, and the way the creativity of the competition presenters sparked Sam’s own creativity, opening new doors to her musical expression.

Perhaps the last movement of “Five Cats” best expresses our experience with the competition and with the composing process it spawned. Five years later, we’re still smiling.