Get to know John-PaulWhat are you doing in school?
"I’m a senior majoring in computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park. I’m also probably going to minor in linguistics but that hasn’t been fully worked out yet." How long have you been singing in choirs? "I didn’t take choir seriously until high school but I think technically I’ve been in a choir of some kind or another since like fourth grade." What is your favorite musical memory? "Oh man, this is a hard question. I have so many. I think it’s a tie between 2015 Maryland All-State and doing the Brahms Requiem with BSO last spring. They were both totally crazy and unlike anything I’d ever done before and also extremely rewarding." Do you have any special talents or interests outside of music? "Obviously, given my schooling answer above, I've always been really interested in computers and the more logic/philosophy side of math and language. I'm also something of a politics and law nerd. I try to read a lot too but it's hard to keep up during the school year.” What’s your favorite book? “Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. (Yeah, I’m that guy.)" Who is your favorite composer? "James MacMillan. His music is ridiculously demanding but he’s also very good at capturing the spirit of a text in a way that feels right to me, and I have to say I’ve grown to really like the Scottish flavor of it all with the crazy ornaments everywhere and everything. I also really like the way he melds traditional texts and forms with a far more modern set of musical tricks." Who's your favorite non-classical musical artist? "I can never decide but right now I’m gonna go with Vampire Weekend." What song have you not been able to stop listening to? "The National Anthem by Radiohead. Radiohead is the band I’ve been a fan for the longest, and lately this song, which is from 2000, has been just chomping away at my brain. The live arrangement, which is faster and more aggressive than the album version, is my favorite, but the free jazz bit on the album version is very cool to me." Would you rather spend the day with Ellen or Jennifer Lawrence? "Most challenging question yet. Ellen is kind of crazy—in a good way—but Jennifer Lawrence seems more down to earth and I expect we would get along better so I’m gonna go with her, I guess?" What were you doing in the summer when you were in middle school? "To tell you the truth I have no idea. You know that scene in Inside Out where the people are walking around destroying memories that don’t need to be saved? I think that’s what happened to most of middle school." What's your favorite sports team? "The Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes, because I did a search for ridiculous sports team names and this came up." What's your favorite thing about singing in Lux? "Because it’s a hand-selected and volunteer group, everybody’s friends and the atmosphere is really relaxed but everyone’s committed to it and takes it seriously." What's your favorite song you've sung with Lux? "Pärt’s Nunc Dimittis, because I love the text and think it’s an excellent setting of it, and because I think it’s one of the more successful uses of Pärt’s trademark style" Who’s cooler: John Lennon or Mick Jagger? "Mick Jagger, because John Lennon wrote “Imagine” and Mick Jagger did not." What's the most interesting fact about you? "Most interesting fact about me is a huge number of people read something I wrote in 8th grade about iPads because it got linked on a popular Apple-centric website (actually my favorite one still)." |
John-Paul Teti (J-P to those who know him) has been with Lux since the beginning, ten seasons. Despite hanging around the performing arts building often enough that people think he’s a music major, he’s actually a senior Computer Science major and a Linguistics minor at the University of Maryland in College Park, and spent summer 2018 as a research assistant on a computational linguistics study on child language acquisition. He’s a member of the UMD University Chorale and the more select UMD Chamber Singers, and has performed with them alongside the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. When not doing computery, linguisticsy, or musicy things, he can be found being mad online on Twitter. (Probably.)
News & UpdatesThe Town Lay Hushed
January 5, 2020 | 3PM Calvary United Methodist Church | Frederick, MD The Town Lay Hushed January 10, 2020 | 7PM St. Jerome's Catholic Church | Hyattsville, MD |