Adam Schoenberg, ASCAP Foundation Award Winner, Heads to New York for Ceremony By Marci Janas ('91)
			Adam Schoenberg standing atop the Duomo, with the expanse of Florence behind him. Photo courtesy of Adam Schoenberg Thanks to Adam Schoenberg '02, his parents, Steven and Jane Schoenberg, enjoyed a second honeymoon last summer in Italy. Just goes to show you what you can do for your folks when you win an ASCAP award. Schoenberg, a 20-year-old composition major and piano performance minor from New Salem, Massachusetts, learned in May that he and a student from France would share in an ASCAP Foundation 2000 Award--the NYU Film Fellowship in Florence. Administered by New York University, the award included three weeks of study in NYU's film program in Florence, Italy. "My parents said if I won the award they would go on their second honeymoon," says Schoenberg. The three left for Italy June 20, which gave them extra time for sightseeing before Adam's classes began July 3. "We studied the film scores of Italian composers," says Schoenberg. Among the composers whose works he studied were Nino Rota, who wrote the score for The Godfather, Gabriel Yared (The Talented Mr. Ripley), and Ennio Morricone (The Mission and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). "We also learned the technical processes of fitting music to film--cueing, spotting, hit points, and something called SMPTE:Time Code," says Schoenberg. (SMPTE stands for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.) "SMPTE helps guide the composer and director in their communication of how long the music should be to fit a specific scene; it identifies the hour, the minute, the second and the frame of a film." This week, Schoenberg will travel to New York for the awards ceremony, which takes place Thursday, December 7, at Lincoln Center. Schoenberg studies with Randolph Coleman, professor of composition and music theory, and Anna Rubin, assistant professor of composition. "He has a very visceral connection to music," says Rubin, noting that Schoenberg is a very motivated student. "He really tries hard to address the tasks that are given him, but always with his own twist." Schoenberg learned about the ASCAP Award from a friend, who saw a notice about it outside the Conservatory's Career Advising office. His motivation went into overdrive; he submitted his application just one week before the deadline. Schoenberg chose three recorded scores for the competition: "Darklight," a work for solo cello performed by Kivie Cahn-Lipman '00; "Life," a digital piece; and the first movement of "Woman in Red," a string quartet performed by the Enesco Quartet. His motivation also extends to knowing exactly what he wants to do when he graduates from Oberlin: "I want to score films," he says. "I want to go to the University of Southern California for graduate school."
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