Robin
Eubanks
Gets to it with New CD
Get
2 it, a CD released in 2001 by Assistant Professor of Trombone
Robin Eubanks and his band Mental Images, features nine
progressive jazz tracks composed and arranged by Eubanks, who
plays acoustic and electric trombone. "Reunion" was
composed and arranged by Robin, along with his brother Kevin (of
The Tonight Show) and Mino Cinelu. A tune by Wayne Shorter,
"House of Jade," completes the set.
Paul Cox '92 writes in the "Listening Room" on the Con-servatory
website, that as a composer and a performer, Eubanks who
also produced and mixed the album has an "intense and
arresting artistic vision."
JazzTimes critic Josef Woodard notes in the August 2001
issue that one of the tracks, "Cross Currents" (a tribute
to Eubanks' mentor, the late J.J. Johnson) illustrates why Eubanks
"is one of the finest jazz trombonists alive."
The CD is also dedicated to Johnson as well as to the Buddhist
movement kosen-rufu.
A member of the Oberlin faculty since 1998, Eubanks toured Europe
in fall 2001 with the Dave Holland Quintet, the "core"
ensemble of Holland's Big Band. (Holland is also a member of Mental
Images, as are Robin's brothers, trumpeter Duane and Kevin.) The
Dave Holland Quintet won the top Acoustic Jazz Group category
in recent Down Beat Readers and Critics polls.
In an October 2001 Down Beat feature on Holland, Eubanks
is credited, along with others of Holland's various musical allies,
for having "helped raise the bar for achievements in song,
mood, narrative, virtuosity, and polyphonic and polyrhythmic interplay."
Ciao,
Professores!
The Oberlin in Italy Program
In honor
of 15 years directing the Oberlin on Italy Program, Professor
of Singing Daune Mahy was presented in July 2001 with a plaque
from the city of Urbania, Italy, and Centro Studi Italiani,
the city's language school and Oberlin's program collaborator.
Fifty-five singers from schools across the US and Canada as
well as members of the National Opera Company participated last
summer. Mahy, along with Oberlin faculty members Associate Professor
of Singing Marlene Rosen and Professor of Singing Gerald
Crawford, comprised the vocal faculty. Other faculty included
conductors Benton Hess (Eastman School of Music) and Julian
Dawson (Northwestern University), stage director Will Graham
(A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute, N.C.), and coaches Linda Hirt
(DePaul University) and Ubaldo Fabbri, Paola Mariotti, and Lucia
Tosi (Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro).
The offering of Puccini's La Rondine at Teatro Bramante
in Urbania on July 3 marked the restored theatre's first public
performance in more than 16 years. Following the opera and the
mayor's presentation to Mahy, the singers performed "Brindisi"
from Verdi's La Traviata. (La Traviata is the
featured opera for the summer 2002 program. For more information
click here.
As midnight tolled July 4th, the capacity audience was asked
to join in to sing the US national anthem.
Back on campus in July, Mahy and Crawford co-directed Oberlin's
15th annual Vocal Academy for High School students. Forty-four
students from the US, Canada, and Greece participated.
In
June 2001, Assistant Professor of Recorder Alison
Melville, along with Professor of Recorder and Baroque Flute
and Associate Dean of Facilities Michael Lynn, played recorder,
traverso flute, and piccolo as members of the Boston Early Music
Festival Orchestra, directed by Steven Stubbs and Paul O'Dette.
They participated in performances of Lully's opera Thesee
at Boston's Copley Theatre and at Tanglewood, as well as in two
orchestral concerts featuring the music of Rameau and Clerambault,
and a late-night festival performance with Tragicomedia.
At the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, and
the Norsk Musikksammling at the University of Oslo, Norway, Melville
researched 18th-century Scottish and Norwegian repertoire for
flute and continuo. An H.H. Powers Travel Grant from Oberlin made
the research possible, and concerts and a recording of the rediscovered
repertoire are in the works.
Melville coached and performed at Amherst Early Music at the University
of Connecticut, Storrs, in August 2001. She also completed two weeks
of concerts and recording in Toronto with Tafelmusik, Canada's Baroque
Orchestra. CBC Records will release a recording featuring suites
from Rameau's Dardanus and Le Temple de la Gloire,
performed with the orchestra.
Professor of Singing
Richard Miller presented master classes and pedagogy courses
throughout the US and Europe during the summer of 2001. He taught
courses at the Conservatoire Superieure in Paris and the Belmont
School of Music in Nashville, Tenn., in May, and at Concordia, Indiana,
and Stetson Universities in June. Miller was director of the 13th
annual Institute of Voice Performance Pedagogy held at Oberlin in
July and, in August, he taught a course at the International Summer
Academy at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
Go to page { 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5
} of Faculty Notes
