Claire Thai is just 18 years old, but her résumé already includes composing with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Young Composers Project and performing in Hong Kong for the World Harp Congress.
Add to that a number of honors and awards including first place in the 2017 International Portuguese Harp Competition in Porto, Portugal, and first place in the TSO Concerto Competition.
Next up: The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in the fall.
Thai started music lessons when she was 4 years old, two years after she first expressed interest in playing the harp. She spent a year learning piano before turning to the harp at age 5.
A high school senior, Thai is the principal harpist for the Tucson Youth Philharmonia and has been working on original compositions with the TSO Young Composers Project for the last seven years.
Thai has been working since September on the piece the TSO will perform at the Young Composers Festival on May 17-20.
“It’s a feeling like nothing else,” Thai said of the experience of hearing her compositions performed by a full orchestra.
The composing program has helped her appreciate music from the angle of understanding the work that goes into writing the music and putting together the individual parts of a score, she said.
“It’s helped develop her as an entire musician,” said Ilona Vukovic-Gay, the TSO assistant principal violist and the instructor for the Young Composers Project.
Thai composed a piece called “Prism” that was featured in the 2015 TSO Celebrate the Future concert.
Her composition skills have gone beyond the Young Composers Project; she was commissioned to write the score for the Vail Preservation Society’s “Voices of Vail” documentary, an eight-minute film featuring the people of Vail on Tucson’s far east side.
“They wanted me to combine about three levels of orchestra for the score,” Thai said, describing how the project was unlike her previous compositions. “It was huge.”
Thai was selected through the Young Composers Project to work with the Vail Preservation Society, according to J.J. Lamb, the society’s executive director. The project included coordinating with the Preservation Society on the themes and sounds they were looking for in the score.
“We’re very lucky,” Lamb said. “She did a fantastic job.”
The documentary is to premier at the Fox Tucson Theatre downtown sometime this summer.
