1960s

Conrad

Winner of the 1999 Cleveland Arts Prize for Composition, Margaret Brouwer '62 has won numerous honors, including grants from the NEA and Ford Foundation. The Cleveland Museum of Art in June 2001 pre- sented a chamber music concert of her work that in-cluded two world premieres: "Under the summer tree ..." for solo piano, performed by Leon Bates, and "Light" for Pierrot ensemble and percussion, performed by soprano Sandra Simon and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell '90, among others.

Margaret spent July and August of 2001 in residence at the MacDowell Colony (Peterborough, N.H.) preparing for two premieres and works for quartet chamber and orchestra upcoming in 2002 on the West Coast. Her work has been hailed by The New York Times as "bewitching, with no obvious concessions toward styles of the day." She heads the composition department at the Cleveland Institute of Music, is published by Carl Fischer, and has recorded on the Centaur, CRI, Crystal, and Opus One labels.

In August 2001 James Copeland Scott '64 began his new role as Dean of the College of Music at the University of North Texas, which he describes as "one of the largest and most influential music schools in the country, as well as an important element of the cultural landscape of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex." Jim was formerly Director of the School of Music at the University of Illinois, having begun there in 1997.

Kathryn Hodgman Beam '65 was nominated in June 2001 as a member of the Interlochen Alumni Board of Directors for a four-year term. A graduate of the College, where she majored in English, and the Conservatory, where she majored in French horn performance, she was a campus Gilbert & Sullivan enthusiast and club member. In 1976 Kathryn earned a Master of Arts in English from Case Western Reserve University, and in 1983, a Master of Library Science from the University of Michigan. She currently works as Curator of Humanities Collections in the Special Collections Library at UM. Kathryn is married to Joel Ferris Beam '65, a minister at the UM Medical Center; their daughter, Myrl Beam, is an Oberlin student ('04). The Beam's address: 1807 Abbot Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48103. E-mail: kjmb@umich.edu.

Conrad Jack Bell '66, who retired after 32 years as principal percussionist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, was honored April 2001 with a Festival of African and Caribbean Music at Georgia State University (GSU). Sponsored by the school's Percussion Ensemble, the event served as the grand finale to Jack's 34 years as Coordinator of Percussion Studies at GSU. Dance Diaspora, Oberlin's 20-member dance and percussion troupe acclaimed for its expressionist African and Caribbean dances, was among the featured performers. Friends, family, and students were invited to bring along their instruments, dress in Caribbean clothing, and participate in the festival. "It was really fantastic to stand up, watch, and enjoy my 'funeral moment in life,''' says Jack. "I got to hear the compliments!" Jack is now developing the business end of multiple web sites for a company in the safety industry.

Conrad J. Michael Barone '68, host and producer of Minnesota Public Radio's (MPR) nationally distributed Pipe-dreams program www.pipedreams.org was to fly to Oberlin September 11 to tape interviews for a Fisk Opus 116 intermission feature, scheduled for a September 28 broadcast on WCLV-FM, Cleveland's classical music station. (See "A French Masterpiece in Finney Chapel.") Since the events of September kept him grounded in Minneapolis, he created an intermission program titled "Oberlin's Other Pipe Organs" as an alternative, from his MPR studio.

Michael was elected in June 2001 to the presidency of the Organ Historical Society (www.organsociety.org), a 4,000-member organization devoted to preserving and promoting historic American pipe organs and related documentation. He had previously served two terms on the Society's national council. Michael was a featured speaker in 2001 at the New England and Mid-Atlantic regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists (AGO). He was awarded a commendation by the AGO Southeast regional convention in Jackson, Miss., for being "a tireless and eloquent advocate of the pipe organ in all its many forms." Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Pipedreams' first national broadcast in January 2002, Michael was recipient of the 2001 Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP (the American Society of Composers and Publishers), for "excellence and two decades of ongoing broadcasts and promotion of music of American composers."

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