A Student of Note : Symphony Premiere Near for Jeff Paul’s Rhapsody

Conductor Carol Alexander had a big advantage over most orchestra leaders as the Conejo Youth Symphony rehearsed a new piece. She could ask questions of the classical work’s 10th-grade composer, playing oboe in the second row.

“Do you want big sound here?” she asked composer Jeff Paul, 15, recently as the symphony rehearsed his “Baroque Rhapsody” for the first time. “Should we move along on this more?”

An accomplished musician on four instruments, the Thousand Oaks High School student is already at work on his next composition. His rhapsody will be premiered by the youth orchestra on June 4.

“I hear music all the time,” Jeff said. “I was blessed with an ear.”

A fan of styles from Baroque to pop and hard rock, the soft-spoken teen-ager has also written numerous songs for piano, a sextet for six unusual instruments and even some jazz tunes for small groups, he said.

“I hope every time I write something, it will be better than the last,” Jeff said.

Jeff has studied music longer than he’s been in school, starting with piano at the age of 4 and branching into oboe in fourth grade, then the alto saxophone and English horn two years ago.

He initially considered the oboe after learning that his father played it, but he chose the instrument for his primary focus because of its unique, melancholy sound, Jeff said.

He learned the sax to join the marching band and jazz ensemble at school, he said, which left him little time for anything but music and maintaining his 3.8 grade-point average.

Even hanging out with friends often involves playing tunes.

“Sometimes my friends and I get together and do normal things, but a lot of times we jam,” he said.

It’s not surprising that Jeff plans to study music in college and dreams of playing oboe in a prestigious symphony orchestra someday.

Jeff started writing music to express his feelings. Sound works better than words at conveying a range of experiences all at once, he said.

“Music is just a burst of emotion,” he said. “There’s no word to describe it. It’s a feeling that just flows.”

He’d like his rhapsody to stir emotions in its first performance, but he’s mature about the possibility that it won’t.

“I’m hoping people who hear it will feel as much as I do, but that won’t always be the case,” Jeff said. “It doesn’t really matter, because I feel it.”

The first rehearsal of his work did not go off without a hitch, but that’s to be expected, conductor Alexander said. Some of the notes produced by Jeff’s computer ran together and had to be penciled in by the musicians.

And in one spot, the orchestra hit a sour chord that had to be rewritten.

“Don’t worry. It happens to the best of composers,” Alexander said as she called Jeff forward to sort out notes and test alterations with the orchestra.

Hearing his work played by a symphony orchestra will be a first. Until recently, Jeff had heard only a synthesizer version he taped for a statewide student arts contest in which he was awarded honorable mention.

“I wanted to hear it acoustically played by actual musicians rather than electronically produced sounds,” Jeff said. “It’s pretty thrilling.”

He heard the darkly dramatic melody in C minor in his head, Jeff said. Transcribing first and second parts for strings, brass and wood instruments took 25 pages and four months.

“I can hear it in my mind when I write it,” he said.

It was exciting to hear the notes come to life at the first rehearsal, Jeff said.

“I could hear every part,” he said. “I knew everything that was going on. It sounded better than I expected.”

Some of the musical ideas in Jeff’s work show sophistication beyond his years, Alexander said.

“A young composer sometimes can get some very unrealistic ideas of what works,” Alexander said. “With his background, if he keeps working at it, I have the highest hopes for him.”

Before rehearsing his work, Alexander told the student musicians that Jeff will continue to learn and grow. He still has more than two years of high school left.

“Just think, someday you may tell your grandchildren that you played the world premiere of a piece by Jeff Paul,” Alexander told the players, who are selected from among the best student musicians in the county.

The youth symphony will hold the second of two performances this school year on June 4 at First Christian Church in Thousand Oaks.