When Grace Hale ’20 was commissioned to write a piece for the 2026 Summer Music Festival at Colorado College, she rose to the challenge—becoming the first alum to premiere a composition written for the event.
Hale’s approach to music composition embodies what CC’s strong liberal arts education is all about—the adaptability to flow through complex problems creatively, guided confidently by both curiosity and theoretical foundations.
Every summer, the Summer Music Festival brings people together to celebrate music, innovation, and opportunity at CC. This year, 52 intrepid music fellows from around the world came to learn from professional musicians and further develop their skills through lessons, rehearsals, and public performances.
“To have my music performed and shaped by such world-class musicians is an honor, a huge privilege, and an extraordinary learning opportunity,” Hale says of the experience. Like many alumni, Hale’s CC experience was shaped by impactful opportunities to work with other musicians and venture outside of her comfort zone with support from her professors.
“The encouragement to try new things and embrace discomfort goes beyond the Block Plan itself,” Hale says. “It is embedded in the mindset of the professors.”
She felt that firsthand, from the very beginning.
During Hale’s first year, Professor Ofer Ben-Amots, with whom she studied composition, challenged her to roll through uncertainty in order to compose a new piece for an international music composition competition.
That same year, Susan Grace, senior lecturer, artist-in-residence and Grammy-nominated pianist and Steinway Artist, guided Hale’s piano study. She pushed Hale to overcome stage fright and perform for live audiences despite Hale’s protests that she was only a composer.
Hale’s CC experiences are an integral part of her blossoming career as a skilled composer and musician. With each composition and performance, she carries what she learned at CC forward into new venues.
“In music, we often talk about how our pedagogical lineage is made up of the teachers and mentors that shape who we become as artists,” Hale explains. “For me, that lineage begins at Colorado College, so it is especially meaningful to return as an alum and share my work with a community that played such an important role in my development.”
The creativity and ingenuity that shine in her compositions are grounded in the liberal arts tradition. “When I start a piece, I rarely begin with a theoretical or technical framework,” Hale says. “More often, I begin with a vague feeling, subject, or story.”
She sits at her piano playing with musical concepts, collecting fragments as she imagines the journey she wants to take her audience on. The fragments form a “storyboard” for her, extending notes and melodies into dynamic narratives. Once she has a strong idea of the overall piece, Hale applies a theoretical framework. Each piece presents a unique challenge: how to bring it to life in a way that will resonate with audiences and the musicians performing it.
“The immersive, interdisciplinary education I received at CC taught me that creativity and curiosity come first,” says Hale, “and that technique is most powerful when it serves a larger artistic vision.”
Her composition for the Summer Music Festival is titled Colored Glass, written for flute, clarinet, two percussion, two pianos, and a string quintet. It came together following a difficult time when a medical scare in her family brought the realities of grief and loss into focus. The juxtaposition of light and grief in her family’s eyes shaped the composition around forces of loss and mortality. And with the insight built by her experience and coursework, Hale combined these themes with inspiration drawn from the world around her.
“My liberal arts education at Colorado College helped me cultivate this creative process,” Hale says of her writing style. Classes encouraged her to draw inspiration from everything from literature and history to art and the physical world. For Colored Glass, a musical motif borrowed from a nearby church’s bells found its way into the notes, and rainbow fragments of light scattering across her living room floor from pieces of glass became the title.
Every alum leaves CC with the creative and technical skills to do incredible things—and Hale’s composition premiere at the music festival gave the campus community a firsthand look at what that means.
“Returning to CC always feels like coming home,” Hale says.
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