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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