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| Home :: Of Note Of Note :: 200th Steinway Honors Jane and Fenner Douglass 200th Steinway Honors Jane and Fenner Douglass
A generous gift of $150,000 from Alan and Marilyn Korest of Naples, Florida, has made it possible for the Conservatory to purchase its 200th Steinway piano—a significant addition to Oberlin’s collection of more than 15,000 modern and historical instruments and a milestone of sorts in its nearly 130-year relationship with Steinway & Sons. Oberlin is Steinway’s oldest continuous client and is the first “All-Steinway School” in the country. The Korests’ gift honors the distinguished organist and pedagogue Fenner Douglass ’42 BA, ’49 BMus, MM, and his late wife, Jane ’53. The couples met when the Korests were planning Bower Chapel, named for Marilyn Korest’s father, at Moorings Park, a con-tinuing care retirement community in Naples. The Korests were looking for an organ builder who would craft a marvelous instrument worthy of the space. “We found that we had the ‘mother lode’ of organ history right here in Naples,” says Alan Korest, referring to Douglass, who was Professor of Organ at Oberlin from 1949 to 1974 and is a noted organ scholar.
Douglass served as consultant on the Bower chapel organ project, and in 2006, five years after it was dedicated, the organ was officially renamed the Fenner Douglass Organ at Bower Chapel. Now another keyboard instrument carries the Douglass name. The new Steinway—the second Hamburg in Oberlin’s collection—was chosen unanimously by Professor of Piano Peter Takács, who chairs the piano program; Professor of Piano Monique Duphil; and Associate Pro-fessor of Historical Performance David Breitman, who directs Oberlin’s His-torical Performance Program. They traveled in February to Steinway’s factory in Hamburg, Germany, to make the selection, accompanied by Associate Dean of the Conservatory Michael Lynn, who curates Oberlin’s instrument collection, and Director of Piano Tech-nology John Cavanaugh. The Jane and Fenner Douglass Hamburg Steinway was introduced to the world at a dedication concert on April 29 in Finney Chapel that featured performances by Takács, Duphil, and fellow piano faculty members Haewon Song, Robert Shannon ’72, Angela Cheng, and Alvin Chow. The 2007 winner of Oberlin’s Arthur Dann Piano Competition, Yu-Chien Shih ’08 of Tainan, Taiwan, a student of Pro-fessor of Piano Robert Shannon, joined them on the program of works by Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky. Ray Rotuna, Senior District Mana-ger for Steinway & Sons, presented the Korests with gold pins crafted from Chairman Henry Z. Steinway’s unique mold depicting the famed Steinway lyre. “It is a great honor for Oberlin to accept this gift from Alan and Marilyn Korest in the name of Jane and Fenner Douglass,” says David H. Stull, Dean of the Conservatory. “The Korests are great friends of both Oberlin and Fenner, and this instrument will serve generations of artists for decades to come.” This year, the Conservatory has taken a fearless step into the realm of classical and serious music recordings—an indus-try rocked by downturns like the closing of Tower Records and the collapse of a number of classical record labels. Oberlin is inaugurating Oberlin Music, a new commercial label featuring select recordings made by Oberlin students and faculty that will be available on traditional CD as well as on digital music channels worldwide. The first two Oberlin Music releases are now available for purchase: The Oberlin Orchestra in China, recorded live in Beijing on December 30, 2005, and Beauty Surrounds Us, works written and performed by members of the jazz studies faculty. For those who prefer to enhance their digital rather than their traditional recording libraries, the Conservatory has signed an important agreement with IODA (Independent Online Dis-tribution Alliance) to distribute Oberlin materials digitally throughout the world. This new association makes Oberlin Music recordings available through many digital music distribution sources, in-cluding Apple’s iTunes. For further information about these and upcoming releases, please see the inside back cover of this issue or visit www.oberlin.edu/con/oberlinmusic. A New Home for Community Music School
A historic landmark that was once home to an Oberlin College president will soon be filled with the sounds of children making music. The Burrell-King House, a National Register of Historic Places landmark that was the residence of Oberlin College President Henry Churchill King, will become the new home of the Oberlin Community Music School (OCMS), the Conservatory’s pre-collegiate music instruction program. Since its inception in 2003, the OCMS has operated in rented or borrowed space. An agreement last fall between the Oberlin Heritage Center (OHC) and the Conservatory resulted in the donation to Oberlin College. A $100,000 grant to the Conservatory from the Nord Family Foundation, which acquir-ed the Burrell-King property in 1974 and gave it to the OHC in 1989, is being used to renovate the building. “We are extremely grateful to the Nord Foundation and the Oberlin Heri-tage Center for their support,” says David H. Stull, Dean of the Conservatory. “This gift will significantly enhance the Community Music School and allow its mission to be fully engaged. The rich history and reputation of the Burrell-King House, as well as its location, will affirm the Community Music School as a vital part of the community.” John Mullaney, Executive Director of the Nord Family Foundation, says, “The Nord Family Foundation is proud to support Oberlin Heritage Center’s generous gift of the Burrell-King House to the Conservatory. When they developed the adjacent Oberlin Early Child-hood Center, the Nord family, especially Evan and Cindy Nord, envisioned a place where the lives of children would be enriched. ... Evan Nord would have been delighted with this news.” The OCMS offers private lessons in strings, piano, winds, percussion, voice, theory, and composition, as well as the dynamic group programs Piano Lab, MusicPlay (for children ages 3 to 5), and the String Preparatory Program. Creativity and Leadership Grant Awarded A $1,126,382 grant to Oberlin from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation of Hudson, Ohio, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Missouri, is rewarding creativity and leadership, with the goal of helping students throughout Oberlin College work toward their entrepreneurial goals. The Creativity and Leadership Project (CLP) is a new campus initiative made possible by the joint grant and overseen by an interdisciplinary committee of faculty, administrators, alumni, and Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs. Building on two successful models, the Oberlin Business Scholars program and the Conservatory’s winter-term perfor-mance projects, the CLP will award concept-development grants on a competitive basis to individual students or teams of students from all majors. The CLP will also offer semester and half-semester courses, mentored experiential opportunities, workshops, and lectures by alumni and Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs to prepare students for the challenges of implementing their own projects. Entrepreneurial alumni of the Conservatory of Music and the College of Arts and Sciences will mentor students in their experiential projects. For more information on the CLP, contact Associate Dean of the Conserva-tory Andrea Kalyn, director of the pro-ject, at 440-775-8293 or andrea.kalyn @oberlin.edu.
Two premier oboists and one rising-star cellist joined the Conservatory faculty this past year. Alex Klein ’87, AD ’89, is Professor of Oboe. He studied with the late Pro-fessor of Oboe James Caldwell and was principal oboe of the Chicago Sym-phony Orchestra from 1995 to 2004. In addition to solo performances with that orchestra, he has been featured with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. He won a 2002 Grammy Award with the Chicago Symphony for his Teldec recording of Strauss’ Oboe Concerto. Klein has also recorded for Boston Records, Newport Classics, the Musical Heritage Society, and Cedille Records. He has been awarded numerous international prizes, including first prize in the inaugural Lucarelli International Competition for Solo Oboe Players held at Carnegie Hall, and first prize in the 1988 International Competi-tion for Musical Performers in Geneva, Switzerland, in which he was the only oboist to win first prize since Heinz Holliger three decades earlier. Besides teaching, Klein conducts, performs solo concertos, is artistic director of the Santa Catarina Music Festival (FEMUSC) in Brazil, and participates in other sociocultural music festivals around the world. Robert Walters is Associate Profes-sor of Oboe and English Horn. He is currently a member of the oboe section of the Cleveland Orchestra and the ensemble’s solo English horn player, a distinction he has held since 2004. He has held the same position with the Metropolitan Opera and Cincinnati Symphony orchestras and has perform-ed and recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Recently he was guest soloist with the Chicago Symphony and Orpheus Chamber orchestras, and last season he made his solo debut with the Cleveland Orchestra. Walters has participated in the National Repertory Orchestra; the Bard, Blossom, Spoleto, and Marlboro music festivals; and toured as a member of Musicians from Marlboro. He is currently on the artist faculty of the Aspen and Colorado College music festivals. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Columbia University Graduate Writing Division, Walters has studied with Richard Woodhams, principal oboe of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the late John Mack, former principal oboe of the Cleveland Orchestra. Amir Eldan is Assistant Professor of Cello. He won the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra’s associate principal cello position when he was just 22 years old, and he was later invited by James Levine to perform with the MET Chamber Ensemble in Carnegie Hall. Eldan has won concerto competitions at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he earned a bachelor’s degree cum laude, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Juilliard School. An avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with, among others, members of the Guarneri string quartet, Richard Goode, Kim Kashkashian, and Midori. He has performed at Alice Tully Hall with the Juilliard Orchestra; in the La Jolla, Marlboro, and Ravinia festivals; the International Chamber Music Festival in France; and Open Chamber Music in England. He has taught at the Heifetz International Music Institute and ENCORE School for Strings. Eldan is a doctoral degree candidate at Juilliard, where he earned an MM degree and served on the faculty as assistant to Joel Krosnick, with whom he studied. He has also studied with Peter Wiley and Richard Aaron.
Tenor Juan Diego Flórez found time on his meteoric rise to superstardom to appear at Oberlin for one of his only two American recitals last season. With pianist Vincenzo Scalera, he presented a program in October of songs by Rossini, Fauré, Massenet, Bizet, and Peruvian composer Rosa Mercedes Ayarza de Morales to a sold-out Finney audience, which Plain Dealer music critic Donald Rosenberg acknowledged, “couldn’t get enough of [him].” Rosenberg added: “... hail Oberlin College’s Artist Recital Series for nabbing the brilliant Peruvian tenor. ...” Charles Michener of the New York Observer was also in attendance, and wrote about the recital in his column, calling Oberlin’s Finney Chapel “acoustically wonderful” and prognosticating about Flórez’s eventual Carnegie Hall recital: “Judging from what I heard at Oberlin, it will be an electrifying event.” Other Artist Recital Series concerts this season featured pianist Wu Han and the Emerson String Quartet, the American Brass Quintet, the Cleveland Orchestra with pianist Angela Hewitt under the baton of Philippe Jordan, the New York Woodwind Quintet (including flutist Carol Wincenc ’71), pianist Jonathan Biss, and violinist Gil Shaham, who was joined by pianist Akira Eguchi, violinist Adele Anthony, violists Masao Kawasaki and Dov Scheindlin, and cellists Jian Wang and Alisa Weilerstein. Under the auspices of the Danenberg Residency and the Edgar Visiting Artists funds, legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne returned as Distinguished Professor of Voice, working with Oberlin students through a series of master classes. Other distinguished Conservatory guests this past year included the Renaissance violin band The King’s Noyse, Germany’s Vogler Quartet, organist Marie-Louise Langlais, violinists Pamela Frank and Elizabeth Wallfisch, baroque violinist John Holloway, and cellists Jaap ter Linden and Kenneth Slowick. Gayletha Nichols, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and Richard Bado, of Houston Grand Opera and Rice University, copresented a career master class for Conservatory voice majors. Soprano Erica Strauss, a Marilyn Horne Foundation artist, presented a performance and lecture. Sandrine François, principal flutist of the Orchestre National Philhar-monique de Strasbourg, and pianist Mitsuko Morikawa presented a guest recital and master class. Michael Chikuzen Gould, Kuniyasu Iwazaki, and Chieko Iwazaki presented traditional and contemporary music from Japan; Alhaji Papa Susso and Adjaratou Tapa Damba presented traditional music of Mali and Gambia, accompanied by the Oberlin College Mandinka Ensemble. Percussionist Steven Schick led a master class and performed with the Contemporary Music and Wind Ensemble. Jazz bassist Buster Williams brought his quartet, Something More (featuring Stefon Harris on vibes, Danny Grissett on piano, and EJ Strickland on drums), for a late-night April concert in Finney Chapel. Oberlin alumni who returned to perform and to inspire included violinists David Bowlin ’00, Jennifer Koh ’97 (who, with pianist Reiko Uschida, premiered Jennifer Higdon’s String Poetic for Violin and Piano), Hristo Popov ’00, and violist Wendy Richman ’01. Joel Speerstra ’89 presented a master class, lecture, and performance on the pedal clavichord; harpsichordist John Austin Clark ’05 presented a guest recital; and organist Daniel Sullivan ’02 presented an alumni outreach concert to benefit the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Lorain County. The baroque ensemble Les DÈlices, featuring oboist Debra Nagy ’00, violinist Scott Metcalfe, cellist Emily Walhout ’83, and Emeritus Professor of Harpsichord Lisa Goode Crawford, presented a recital in February. The following month brought a recital by baroque performers Jillon Stoppels Dupree ’79 (harpsichord) and Janet See ’73 (baroque flute). Pianists Jason Cutmore ’01, Jason Hardink ’97, and Yury Shadrin ’05 visited campus, as did Spencer Myer ’00, who presented a recital with soprano Martha Guth ’98. Other singers taking the stage in separate recitals were baritone Alexander Hurd ’98 and soprano Tony Arnold ’89, accompanied by Jacob Greenberg ’98.
Conservatory students and faculty took music from Oberlin to both coasts, and to audiences closer to home, during the 2006-07 academic year. In September, the Oberlin Jazz Septet (OJS) performed at the Ford Detroit International Jazz Festival aboard the riverboat Detroit Princess as it cruised the Detroit River between the U.S. and Canada. In October, the OJS appeared on Applause, an arts and culture program on WVIZ-Ideastream, Greater Cleveland’s public television station. The show also featured a conversation with Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull and Visiting Professor of Jazz Trumpet Marcus Belgrave. During winter term, the OJS, which is directed by Professor of Jazz Studies and Double Bass Peter Dominguez, embarked on a tour of the West Coast, performing and conducting master classes in San Francisco, Berkeley, Lafayette, and Novato, California. On the way back to Oberlin, the septet made stops in Detroit and Ann Arbor. The group capped its touring season in April by performing in the Tri-C Jazzfest’s Downbeat Invitational concert, held on the downtown Cleveland campus of Cuyahoga Community College. In December, the Women’s Voices of the Oberlin College Choir, which is directed by Associate Professor of Choral Conducting and Director of Choral Studies Hugh Floyd, made five appearances in Cleveland’s Severance Hall performing Gustav Holst’s The Planets with the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of guest conductor Michael Stern. Other Greater Cleveland area performances included organist Jeffrey Wood ’08, a master’s degree candidate in historical performance, performing works by Dietrich Buxtehude in Trinity Cathedral’s Music and Per-forming Arts series. Wood studies with Professor of Organ James David Christie ’75. Oberlin students also performed in and around our nation’s capitol. Three groups of students traveled to Virginia to take part in the sixth annual Music from Oberlin at Oakton Series: in October, violinist Gulrukh Abdikadirova ’07 and pianist Edit-Maria Fazakas ’08 performed works by Mozart, Bach, Massenet, and Liszt; in January, percussionist Jonathan Hepfer ’08, pianists Sungha Lee AD ’07 and Tian Lu ’07, violinist Yan Tong ’10, and soprano Stephanie Washington ’07 presented a varied program that included works by Chopin, Debussy, Erich Korngold, and Philippe Manoury; and in March, the Isis Quartet (violinists Natalia Jenkins ’08 and Chloe Helene Robinson ’08, violist Anne Ristorcelli ’07, and cellist Eleanor Bors ’08), with clarinetist Jack Marquardt ’07, performed works by Schubert, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. For the Record: Of Grammys and Rave Reviews Professor of Conducting Robert Spano ’83, music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO), received with the ensemble his fourth and fifth Grammy Awards—Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Contem-porary Composition—for their Deutsche Grammophon recording of Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar (“Fountain of Tears”). The album stars soprano Dawn Upshaw and features the women of the ASO Chorus. The ASO’s Telarc recording Del Tredici: Paul Revere’s Ride/Theofanidis: The Here and Now/Bernstein: Lamentation from Jeremiah, featuring works commissioned by Spano and the orchestra, won the Producer of the Year Award. The 49th annual Grammy Awards, presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, was held in February at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Other recent releases by members of the faculty include the Bridge recording of Stephen Jaffe’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, which features Pro-fessor of Violin Gregory Fulkerson ’ 71 and the Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Donald Palma. The CD was honored with the 2005 Koussevitzky International Recording Award and re-ceived a “10/10” rating from Classics Today.com, for which David Hurwitz wrote: “If you heard violinist Gregory Fulkerson’s Bach Sonatas and Partitas on Bridge ... then you know that he’s a fantastic player, and he sounds completely at ease in this technically demanding work.” The recording also received rave reviews on Splendidezine.com and TowerRecords.com. Assistant Professor of Cello Darrett Adkins ’91, along with violinist Ronald Copes ’71 and his ensemble, the Juilliard String Quartet, received an enthusiastic review for their recording of Quintet for Strings by 15-year-old American composer Jay Greenberg in the August 27, 2006, issue of the New York Times, which called the music’s interpreters “compelling.” The album was recorded for the Sony Classical label. Adkins also contributed to Naxos’ release of the complete Sequenzas of Luciano Berio; he performs Sequenza XIV for solo cello, which was published after Berio’s death in 2003. Reviewer D. Moore, writing for American Record Guide, compares the Naxos release of XIV to one by Black Box: “... the sound effects are ... more impressive on the Naxos recording.” Also appearing on the Naxos CD, performing Sequenza III, is soprano Tony Arnold ’89. “3 is an amusing tour de force for a woman’s voice doing all of the things it should never do,” writes Moore in his review. “Arnold does them with great abandon and flair.” Jazz pianist and composer Kevin McHugh ’06, winner of a Watson Fellowship last year, is featured on the October 2006 edition of Jazziz on Disc, a limited edition collector’s CD included inside subscriber copies of Jazziz magazine. “If a composer’s work is the soundtrack to his life,” the editors write in the magazine, “then there’s a reason that pianist Kevin McHugh sounds so worldly on his featured composition, Monkophile. While living in Ohio, New York City, Boston, Seattle, Berlin, and Shanghai, he’s performed with former Miles Davis sidemen Gary Bartz (saxophone) and Billy Hart (drums) and studied with ... Dan Wall.” Bartz, Hart, and Wall are all members of Oberlin’s jazz faculty. McHugh is joined on the recording by saxophonists Johnny Butler ’06 and Noah Bernstein-Hanley ’06, bassist Curtis Ostle ’06, and drummer Alex Ritz ’08. Jazz trumpet player Theo Croker ’07 has released his debut recording, The Fundamentals, on Left Sided Music. A student of Visiting Professor of Jazz Trumpet Marcus Belgrave, Croker has been lauded by fans and music critics, including legendary trumpeter Donald Byrd, who calls Croker a “phenomenal instrumentalist” who “is in a class of musicians who will redirect the flow, change and alter the current of today’s New Jazz. ... Theo is one of today’s titans.” The album of 10 original songs by Croker is available on iTunes and CDBaby.com and features his band, the Theo Croker Sextet, which includes pianist Sullivan Fortner ’08 and bassist Chris Mees ’09. The second edition of Analysis of Tonal Music: A Schenkerian Approach by Profes-sor of Music Theory Allen Cadwallader and David GagnÈ of Queens College, CUNY, was published by Oxford University Press in December 2006. With an approach that parallels the influential work of analyst and theorist Heinrich Schenker, the authors explain structural principles in actual compositions rather than through models and formulas. A Music Theory Online review of the first edition called it an engaging, accessible, and instructive work that aimed “to teach readers how to approach a piece of music and how to think about and critically examine compositions in ways that will inform their understanding and performance of great compositions of Western art music.” A valuable feature of the second edition is an accompanying workbook. Cadwallader, who is among the most eminent music theorists working in Schenkerian analysis, has been a member of Oberlin’s faculty since 1988. Essays from the Third Interna-tional Schenker Symposium, which he edited, was published by Georg Olms Verlag in 2006. Opera Coaching: Professional Techniques and Considerations by Alan Montgomery, Assistant Music Director of Oberlin Opera Theater, was published in 2006 by Routledge. Debra Greschner, writing in the November/December 2006 issue of the National Association of Teachers of Singing’s Journal of Singing, says, “The guidance provided by this book is an excellent resource for singers and voice pedagogues. ... Moreover, the volume offers insight into many aspects of a professional singing career, as seen through the eyes of the omnipresent pianist. ... Montgomery offers valuable advice to pianists and singers who aspire to a professional career in opera.” In a December 2006 review of the book in Opera News, Judith Malafronte writes, “Because [Montgomery] has extensive private coaching experience, as well as familiarity with university and conservatory programs, he is able to address pianists who work with high-level soloists on Wagner and Verdi, as well as those who coach college students.” A member of Oberlin’s faculty since 1979, Montgomery is considered a leader in the coaching field. Obies who miss the familiar, stony gaze of Beethoven in the Conservatory library can take virtual comfort in Guido’s Hand. Named for Guido Arezzo, famed music theorist of the Middle Ages, Guido’s Hand is the Conservatory library’s new blog, which covers diverse subjects of interest to library users, including the arrival of new titles, easy steps for conducting research, graphic novels about music, and music available in the public domain. Public Services Librarian Kathy Abromeit, who writes many of the entries on Guido’s Hand, says the blog, which she started in February, makes library services more flexible. When library users ask questions, for instance, she can answer them in a blog entry available to all readers. Answering questions, however, is just one finger on Guido’s Hand. The writers also post amusing items that add a different perspective to the library’s material. “The blog is multi-faceted ... and it’s really fun,” says Abromeit, noting a link she posted in April to the “Bohemian Chorus” from Verdi’s La Traviata playing over a claymation video. Abromeit will speak about blogging’s potential in music libraries at the Music Library Association’s annual meeting in February 2008. Another new service provided by the library is around-the-clock access to several commercially available streamed audio services: Database of Recorded American Music (DRAM), Naxos Music Library, Naxos Jazz Library, Smithsonian Global Sound, Classical Music Library, and African American Song. “Each of these resources provides access to different kinds of music,” says Conservatory Librarian Deborah Campana. “For example, Smithsonian Global Sound offers recordings of poetry and famous speeches along with world music, whereas DRAM features everything from folk music to opera, jazz, classical, rock, musical theater, electronic, and beyond.” The sound-streaming services, available to those logging in to campus network computers, have scholarly applications, not to mention sheer entertainment value. They augment the library’s extensive collection of recordings (more than 70,000 at last count) and enable patrons to listen whenever they like. “These resources will not replace CDs,” says Campana, “but they do provide another way we can listen to music. Sometimes people just click in and listen from their desks, as if they were tuning in to a special radio station.” Visit the Conservatory library online at www.oberlin.edu/library/con.
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