1970s

Adrianne Greenbaum '70, flutist for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra New England, the Wall Street Chamber Players, and formerly for the New York City Ballet Orchestra, earned a Master of Music degree at Yale University before teaching at Smith College, Wesleyan University, and Yale. She is currently Associate Professor of Flute at Mount Holyoke College, where she also conducts the student klezmer band. Widely recognized for her performances in both classical music and klezmer, Adrianne has been on the faculties of KlezKamp, directs the Klezkids in Fairfield, Conn., and has performed with the Shnei Shoshanim ensemble at the International Jewish Festival in Amsterdam and at the Jewish Museum in New York City. On a short list of professionally performing and teaching klezmer flutists, she also founded and is director of the Klezical Tradition, the ensemble that recorded the award-winning CD Family Portrait. For more information, visit www.klezband.com.

Calvin Taylor '70, who has worked in music ministry full time for two decades, completed his Doctor of Musical Arts in composition at the University of Kentucky in 2000. His dissertation project, the five-movement Sunrise Symphony, has received considerable attention;
the Detroit, Nashville, Shreveport, University of Kentucky, and UCLA Symphony orchestras have all performed excerpts.

In October 2001, the New York City Housing Authority Symphony Orchestra at City College, under the baton of Dr. Kay George Roberts, performed the symphony's second movement, "Inner-City Sunrise," at a memorial concert for the victims and heroes of September 11. Calvin recently completed a tour to Ukraine to participate in an evangelistic campaign and has performed in Europe, the Far East, and South America. His ninth recording, Music for the Journey, was released in October 2001.

Sylvia Kahan '73 is a performing pianist and a music scholar whose book, Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac: Intrepid Patron of Modern Music, is forthcoming in fall 2002 from Eastman Studies in Music/University of Rochester Press. Sylvia's labor of love is a biography of the Yonkers-born sewing machine heiress who married into the French aristocracy to become Princesse de Polignac. The Princesse hosted the premier avant-garde musical salon in Paris between 1888 and 1939 and commissioned more than a score of important works from composers such as Poulenc, Satie, Stravinsky, and Weill. Ravel dedicated "Pavane" to the Princesse, and she helped launch the careers of Nadia Boulanger, Faure, and Clara Haskil. Sylvia is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Music Program at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She also serves on the piano faculty of Hunter College, CUNY, and the music history faculty at the Mannes School of Music. She spent last summer in New York and France, performing chamber music and four-hand piano recitals.

The Massachusetts Music Educators Association (MMEA) presented Richard Kesner '73 with a 2001 MMEA Advocate Award last March, honoring him for his enthusiasm in giving freely of his time and philanthropy in support of music education in the Needham (Mass.) Public Schools. As Director of Enterprise Operations at Northeastern University, he and his family live in Needham. Richard remains active as an amateur musician, performing with the New Philharmonia Orchestra (NPO) on the bass trombone and, with various wind ensembles, on the trombone and euphonium. In fall 2001 he performed Alan Hovhaness' Concerto no. 3, "Diran" with the All Newton Chamber Orchestra and will perform it again with the Northeastern University Orchestra in early 2002. Robert serves on the board of NPO and has received numerous other professional awards, fellowships, and grants for his service to the arts.

A graduate in history and trombone performance, Richard holds master and doctoral degrees in history and information science earned at Stanford University. His friends and family honored him at his 50th birthday last year with more than $2000 raised on his behalf for a new conductor's podium, chamber music, clinicians, and master classes for the Needham High School's music department.

Elaine Funaro '74
, a leading performer of new music for the harpsichord, has released her third CD, Overture to Orpheus, on the Centaur label. Works by composers such as Bohuslav Martinu?, Edwin McLean, and Daniel Pinkham are homages to female harpsichordists among them Wanda Landowska, Antoinette Vischer, and Elaine herself evidenced by the recording's subtitle: Music Written for Women Who Gave Wing to the Muse. Elaine notes that dual interpretations of the recording's theme are possible: either the composer or the harpsichord could be the muse.

Elaine performed early Italian sonatas on a copy of the first Bartolomeo Cristofori fortepiano at the Smithsonian Institution at the Piano 300 exhibit in May 2001. Her CD, Giovanni Benedetto Platti, "il grande," features Italian Baroque and classical sonatas for harpsichord and a fortepiano, commissioned by The Schubert Club, that replicates a 1726 Cristofori instrument. Elaine's first CD, released in 1997, Into the Millennium, was highly recommended by John W. Lambert of The Spectator, "especially to those who think the harpsichord more or less died with Bach."

On March 1, 2002, she will be performing at the Library of Congress on a program showcasing international dance through the centuries.

1970s

Michael Roth '87, principal second violinist in the New York Pops, found not only his career in music but also his wife, cellist Sarah Hewitt Roth, through the orchestra. The two, profiled in spring 2001 in the New York Pops newsletter, spoke of the catalyst for their relationship: a cruise through Scandinavia with the Philharmonia Virtuosi, where a shipboard flirtation escalated to daily note-passing in the orchestra pit on their return to New York, and, finally, to marriage in fall 1999. Mike's mother, the Reverend Nancy Moore Roth '58, officiated at their Scarsdale wedding in the same church where she had first met Mike's father, Robert Roth, then the church organist. Nancy and Robert now live in Oberlin, where they are affiliate scholars at the College.

Cellist Amy Phelps-Amrani '89 lives in Marseille, France, with her husband, cellist Bernard Amrani, and their son, Paul Elliot, born March 7, 2001. With soloists from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille (two oboes, bassoon, continuo), she plays in the Bezzozi ensemble. She also performs with a string ensemble, VIA MUSICA. Amy teaches in a small regional conservatory and does French translating, thanks, in part, to her double degrees (in French and cello performance) from Oberlin. She has offered to assist Obies who want help translating websites, medical, or business texts, and can help, too, with advice about musical studies in France, especially concerning cello teachers. She can be reached via e-mail at Alpcello@aol.com.

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