Faculty Notes
Conservatory Faculty
As part of a year-long sabbatical, Brian Alegant, associate professor of music theory, spent March at the Archivio Contemporaneo "A. Bonsanti" in Florence, Italy, which houses an extensive collection of manuscripts and sketches by the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola. In April he delivered a paper on Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Concerto at the International Performance 2000 Conference in Great Britain. The conference, held at the University of Southampton April 26-29, brought together performers, theorists and musicologists from Europe, North America, and Australia. In May he was invited to present a pedagogy paper, "Making the Grade: Contract Grading in the Music Theory Curriculum," at the annual Music Theory Midwest Conference at Lawrence University. In November Alegant delivered a paper at the Society for Music Theory Conference in Toronto. He again offered three lectures for the 2000 Oberlin College Piano Festival; this year's subjects--"The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of," "Splitting Flaxen Hair(s)" and "Fixing Flats." Alegant has published an article in the Journal of Music Theory titled "When Even Becomes Odd: A Partitional Approach to Inversion," and has other articles forthcoming in Computers for Music Research and Music Theory Spectrum.
In February Stephen Aron, teacher of classical guitar, performed selections from his comprehensive arrangement of Frédéric Chopin's entire 51 mazurkas in Kulas Recital Hall. "The most difficult challenge as a guitarist in the performance of Chopin's mazurkas is learning how to ‘hear' it," Aron says. "Chopin's harmonic language is complex. His sense of melodic invention is a wonder. And while the formal structure of the pieces--at first glance--seems straightforward, even in this area, the mazurkas offer surprises. There's no preparation for music of this type in the guitar repertoire. It's been a fascinating journey." Aron's arrangements of Chopin's mazurka repertoire will be released by Mel Bay Publications this year.
Teacher of Classical Saxophone Paul Cohen performed Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliette in Charleston, South Carolina, under the direction of Kenneth Kline. He appeared in numerous performances with the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet, including the premiere of Concerto Sinfonica for saxophone quartet and orchestra by Nicholas Flagello in its wind version. This is a work that Cohen resurrected and, through score recovery, manuscript reconciliation and publishing (with the computer engraving assistance of Peter Lutkoski '99) has helped to enter the musical mainstream. Cohen also appeared with the conductor-less chamber orchestra Orpheus, with the Greenwich Symphony, the Charleston Symphony, and the CW Post Wind Ensemble. Cohen conducted a performance with the MSM Festival Winds at the Manhattan School of Music. He was a guest lecturer at Fredonia State University, where he performed a recital (soprano and alto) and conducted the saxophone ensemble in his arrangements of music by Copland. His article "Rebirth of the Soprano Saxophone" was published in the Saxophone Journal.
In August Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory Arnie Cox presented a paper titled "The Mimetic Hypothesis and Embodied Musical Meaning" at the Sixth Biennial International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition in Keele, England. In November he presented a paper titled "Where Musical Places Come From: The Conceptual Metaphor STATES ARE LOCATIONS" at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory in Toronto.
Kay Edwards, assistant professor of music education, has been elected to the board of directors for Ohio University School of Music's Society of Alumni and Friends. She was also one of only seven Finneytown High School (Cincinnati) alumni in the school's history to be inducted into its inaugural Hall of Fame. Edwards continues to serve as contributing author for Silver Burdett Ginn's K-6 basal music textbook series. She recently provided a teacher in-service workshop for the Oberlin Early Childhood Center and coordinated an early childhood music workshop at Oberlin Conservatory led by music education students Amanda Kerr, Greg Ristow and Laura Shepherd.
Jonathon Field, director of Oberlin's Opera Theater program, has been named artistic director of Lyric Opera Cleveland, Cleveland's summer opera festival. "My dream for many years has been to run a chamber opera company in a small theater," says Field. "That kind of space allows close attention to detail and intimacy among the characters and the audience. I want to build up a sophisticated audience of people who enjoy interesting works done in experimental ways."
Double bass faculty Scott Haigh and Tom Sperl traveled to Vienna and Cologne with the Cleveland Orchestra to present four concerts on its nine-day European tour, May 29-June 6. Haigh also traveled to Chicago in March to serve as an adjudicator for the Feinberg Chicago Symphony Orchestra Youth auditions. Designed for young musicians aged 12 to 14, the competition selects one person each year to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as soloist for its youth concert series.
In February and March, Brenda Hutchinson, visiting assistant professor of composition last year, presented her installation of "Giant Music Box" in a return show called "Play It by Ear" at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, California. In April she was a guest artist at the San Francisco Art Institute. Hutchinson was commissioned by Lincoln Center and the Pauline Oliveros Foundation to create a piece for the Deep Listening Band and Long Tube. The piece, called "Walk through Walls and Stuff Like That" was slated for performance as part of Oliveros' "Lunar Opera" on August 17 at the Lincoln Center out of Doors. Hutchinson hopes to resume work at San Quentin Prison, where she has set up a music/recording room and begun training individuals there on the use of analogue and digital equipment and software. She has planned a series of recording and producing workshops with the inmates. In September, as a McKnight Visiting Composer in Minnesota, Hutchinson collaborated with various people in many small towns to produce the premiere performances of the Vagabond Vaudeville. The production was described by Hutchinson as "a kind of a roving talent show which will include any kind of behavior that people are willing to do in public for a maximum of five minutes per act." In November Hutchinson was artist-in-residence at Darmouth, afterwards she and her husband Norman will travel to Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Assistant professor of music education Jody Kerchner received the distinguished alumnae award from the West Chester University School of Music. An H.H. Powers travel grant supported her sabbatical research project investigating metaphor as a tool in the choral rehearsal (she observed cathedral choirs, music service choirs, community choirs, and private school choirs), and she was named visiting research fellow at the University of Surrey Roehampton, London, England, this spring. While in London Kerchner taught several classes in choral conducting and the development of the child's singing voice, and gave presentations to the university's Centre for Advanced Studies in Music Education. She also presented "Modeling a Comprehensive Choral Curriculum" at the International Symposium on Choral Conducting at the University of Surrey Roehampton. Included among Kerchner's other presentations are: "Music Listening as Creative Activity: Uniting the Harmony of Music with the Human Soul" (co-presenter), at the XXIV International Society of Music Education Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in July; "Portfolio Assessment in Music Education Methods Courses: Experiencing, Modeling, Teaching, Assessing" at the XXIV International Society of Music Education Teacher Education Seminar, held at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln; "Forging Collegiate and Public School Partnerships" at the Music Educators National Conference, Washington, D.C.; and "Keeping the Artistry: Modeling the Professional Life" at the Ohio Music Educators Association in Cleveland. She was guest conductor at the Pennsylvania Music Education Association District X, District Honors Choral Festival in West Lawn.
John Knight, professor of music education and director of the conducting ensembles division, continues as consulting editor of The Instrumentalist magazine, where he published 13 articles over the past year, including an interview with Pierre Boulez at Chicago's Orchestra Hall. In January Knight conducted the Oregon All-State Band at the Oregon MENC conference in Eugene, where he also offered a presentation, "Preparing Bands for a Musical Performance." In April he guest conducted the Connecticut All-State Band and gave a presentation, "The Art of Conducting," at the Connecticut MENC convention. Knight is currently writing two conducting textbooks for teachers of bands and orchestras. The band textbook is devoted to the conducting pedagogy needed for interpreting the major concert band repertoire; the orchestra textbook, Legacy of the Maestros, will compare and contrast interpretation practices of the great conductors. Additionally, Knight and his music education colleagues--Kay Edwards, Joanne Erwin and Jody Kerchner--are writing a textbook, Introduction to Music Education, to be published by Prentice Hall.
Professor of ethnomusicology Roderic Knight was awarded a McGregor-Oresman research assistant for summer 2000. Knight and his project assistant, music education major and violist Stephen Clink, worked on a number of projects stemming from Knight's field research in Africa and India. Working from handwritten field logs, Clink transcribed drum ensemble parts from the Mandinka people of The Gambia, in West Africa. For eventual use in an instruction manual for the kora, a 21-string harp of the Mandinka that is the subject of Knight's dissertation, Clink converted Knight's handwritten ink notations into camera-ready copy using the computer program Finale. Also using Finale, Clink converted Knight's original pencil transcriptions of music for the bana, a 3-string fiddle played by the Pardhan people of Madhya Pradesh in Central India, for publication in the journal Asian Music.
Their final joint project was to complete the preparation of a list of the Conservatory library holdings of world music on LP discs, some 2,000 in number, for publication on Knight's website, www.oberlin.edu/~rknight. This entailed conversion of Word files to HTML, and the procurement of nearly 100 regional and country maps from numerous sources for inclusion in the lists.
Knight has also consulted with the Oberlin Early Childhood Center about their musical instrument collection and about the creation of an outdoor music pavilion, which will feature log and steel drums, xylophones, gongs, and a large zither, all modeled after instruments from various parts of the world.
Yolanda Kondonassis, head of the Oberlin harp department, released two new Telarc recordings to critical acclaim during the 1999-2000 season. Vivaldi: The Four Seasons with The Orchestra of Flanders features her own transcription of the violin part with the orchestra. Music of Hovhaness includes Hovhaness' Harp Concerto and the world-premiere recording of his Spirit of Trees for harp and guitar. A portion of the proceeds from the Hovhaness project benefits the worldwide effort to conserve the earth's rainforests. Kondonassis was invited to be a judge at the Israel International Harp Contest in November.
The Tower City Chorus is the West Cleveland Suburban chapter of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA). Under the direction of Gerald Krumbholz, visiting assistant professor of music theory, the ensemble presented its annual show in May at the Lakewood Civic Auditorium before a sold-out audience of 1,800. The Tower City Chorus also performed at the Masonic Lodge in Parma, Ohio, at Lakewood Park, at Clague Road United Church of Christ, at Lakewood Methodist Church and at St. Mary's Party Center.
HyeKyung Lee, visiting teacher of composition last year, received the 2000 ASCAP Standard Award and the 1999-2000 Composers Guild Composition Contest Award. Over the past year, she has been an artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Foundation, California; at the Millay Colony, New York; and at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was guest lecturer at Bowling Green State University, Ohio; and composer-in-residence at the University of Missouri Conservatory of Music in Kansas City, Missouri. Her piece conFUusion/comBUustion-2 for four hands (2000) was performed by Amy Briggs Dissanayake and Isabel Dttanauer (and sponsored by the Musicians' Club of Women) at the Chicago Cultural Center in April. Water Shadow for Soprano Saxophone and Piano (1999) was premiered by Todd Yukumoto and Lee at the Voices of a New Century--21st Century Festival of New Music in Honolulu and Maui, Hawaii, in March. conFUusion/comBUustion for Piano and Tape (1999) was performed by Thomas Rosenkranz '99 at the Festival of the Millennium in Eugene, Oregon, in November, 1999. Lee performed at the Kansas City Festival of Electronic Music in April; the 21st Century Festival of New Music, in Honolulu in March and at the Cleveland Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music last February. In music composed for her, Lee performed Church Keys for Piano and Tape by Paul Rudy and 3D for Alto Saxophone and Piano by Donald A. Womack.
In November, Assistant Professor of Music Rebecca Leydon read a paper at Toronto's "mega-conference"--a combined meeting of some 15 different music societies, including the American Musicological Society, the Society for Music Theory, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and the Ethnomusicology Society, among many others. Leydon describes her paper, presented on the AMS program and titled "Towards a Typology of Minimalist Tropes," as "a discussion of obstinate motivic repetition and its signifying potential in a variety of musical contexts, including minimalism, liturgical musics and electronica."
Wendell Logan, professor of African-American music and chair of the jazz studies program, received an ASCAP composer's award. Among his performances this past year are concerts at Rutgers University, Symphony Hall in Chicago, Cleveland's Tri-C Jazz Fest and at Oberlin. His piece Runagate, Runagate was recorded by the Lawrence University New Music Ensemble (CRI 823). Logan's work Tin Tin Deo was recorded by the Jazz Heritage Orchestra. He offered workshops at the Savannah School for the Arts (Georgia) and Sylvania High School (Ohio). Logan was a featured guest on WSSU radio (Savannah State University) on a program about the legacy of Duke Ellington. Logan was guest composer at Bowling Green State University in April.
As a member of Apollo's Fire, Michael Lynn, associate dean and associate professor of baroque flute and recorder, performed in 22 concerts in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico and Washington, D.C. As a member of Santa Fe Pro Musica, he performed in four concerts in Washington, D.C., Ohio, Virginia and New Mexico. He also offered performances as a member of Turn the Corner and the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble.
As a member of the Axelrod Quartet, Marilyn McDonald, professor of violin and teacher of baroque violin, performed at the group's regular series at the Smithsonian Institution and for the Supreme Court at its annual concert held in the United States Supreme Court building. (Cass Gilbert, architect of several Oberlin buildings, including Finney Chapel, designed the Supreme Court.) McDonald also appeared in solo Bach recitals at the Cleveland Art Museum and the National Gallery. This summer, in addition to Oberlin's classical workshop and the Baroque Performance Institute, she will appear at the Bowdoin Festival, the Ottawa Festival and the Peninsula Music Festival. Three of her baroque violin students swept the top prizes at the International Baroque Violin Competition this summer, a feat noted by Michele Dulak of The New York Times.
Catharina Meints, teacher of viola da gamba and baroque cello, served as judge of a competition offered by Early Music America. "The prize," she reports, "is the opportunity to make a commercial CD for Dorian Records, using their fabulous engineers and recording space in Troy, New York. Dorian Records will add the new recording to its roster, and distribute and promote it as their own. More than 45 groups submitted entries of music written between 1200 and 1820; I was extremely pleased with the overall quality and professionalism." Also of note for Meints: highlights of her technical ideas for playing the viola da gamba were written by a participant in a course she taught last summer in Schaerding, Austria. Brigit Stehrenberger's article appears in the German-language journal of the Viola da Gamba Society, which has members in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Always in demand, professor of singing Richard Miller taught a series of extended courses and master classes at universities in Tennessee, Indiana, California, Chicago, Ohio, Florida, and Illinois, and in Portugal. Last summer marked his 17th year teaching at the International Summer Academy, Mozarteum, in Salzburg, Austria. The Oxford University Press published his new book, Training Soprano Voices, in July.
Professor of music theory Gil Miranda spent academic year 1999-00 on combined sabbatical leave and research status, using the time to write a musical catalogue of the works of Portuguese composer Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos (1910-1974), whose biography Miranda had published in 1992. The Portuguese Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon will publish the catalogue in Portuguese and English.
A recital at the Carinthischer Sommer festival in Villach-Ossiah in Austria, featuring Maxim Mogilevsky, visiting assistant professor of piano, was broadcast throughout Western Europe. In Argentina, Mogilevsky was a soloist with Orquesta Sinfonica Uncuyo in Mendoza, and he appeared in recital for the Pro Arte Music Series in Cordoba's Teatro San Martin. He debuted with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under maestro Leslie Dunner, and was invited by Maestro Valery Gergiev to perform at the 2000 White Nights Festival in St.Petersburg, Russia. Mogilevsky performed with the New Jersey Symphony's Rachmaninoff Festival at Prudential Hall in Newark, and has been re-engaged for next year's Tchaikovsky Festival, which will be held there. He also gave a master class at Rutgers University. With cellist Enrico Dindo and violist Yuri Bashmet, he appeared at the Settimani Musicali di Stresa and Lago Maggiore annual festival in Stresa, Italy. He also performed a recital and taught master classes at the Luxeil-Les-Bains festival in France.
Associate Professor of Aural Skills Stephen Moore presented demonstrations in eurhythmics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in July, at the University of Washington in August, and at the National Orff-Schulwerk Convention in Rochester in November. Moore continues his research on a collaborative book titled Rhythm: One on One to be published in 2001-2002.
Steven Plank, professor of musicology and director of Collegium Musicum, presented a lecture titled "The St. Matthew Passion in Perspective: A Glimpse of Bach's World," as the concert preview for the Cleveland Orchestra's performances of the St. Matthew Passion. At the invitation of Keith Reas '74, music director of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., Plank led the Collegium Musicum on an April weekend tour to Washington, where the ensemble performed the sacred music of William Byrd. The performance was repeated in Fairchild Chapel on April 29.
In February, Associate Professor of Singing Marlene Ralis Rosen performed Libby Larson's Songs of Light and Love with the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, with the composer in attendance. Also in February, she performed Kurt Weill's Der Neue Orpheus with the Brooklyn Philharmonic at the Majestic Theater in Brooklyn, under the baton of Robert Spano '84.
Anna Rubin, assistant professor of composition, traveled to Beijing, China for the International Computer Music Conference, where her piece, "Family Stories…Sophie, Sally" was presented. "It was an exciting conference where participants included composers, researchers and performers from dozens of countries," she says. "A marvelous variety of music was performed, including pieces with Chinese instruments, dance video and interactive installations. There were workshops, poster sessions, lectures, and concerts. It was all capped off with an expedition to the Great Wall." One of the highlights for Rubin was meeting Patricia Spencer '65, co-founder and longtime member of the Da Capo Chamber Players (http://www.alice.pangea.ca/~dacapo/), one of the premier new music groups in the U.S. More news from Rubin: her article, "Women and Experimental Music," will appear in an upcoming edition of the Encyclopedia of Women in Music, published by Orxy Press. Another Rubin article, "As I Sit at the Computer," appears in Audible Gender, a new publication edited by Lydia Helmsley and Elaine Barkin and published by Carciofoli Verlagshaus (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mbaumgart). The Ohio Arts Council awarded Rubin a 2000 Individual Artist's Grant; the award will support the composition of new chamber works. In August Rubin delivered a paper titled "Forêt profonde, Representation of the Unconscious," at the International Computer Music Conference in Berlin. The abstract can be read on Rubin's website (www.oberlin.edu/~arubin/Written.html).
Notable performances by Associate Professor of Bassoon George Sakakeeny include solo recitals at the Mid-South Double Reed Conference in March and the International Double Reed Society conference in Buenos Aries, Argentina in August. He performed the Shickele Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra with the New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra in July. Sakakeeny offered master classes at the Mid-South Double Reed Conference, and served as the only American on the jury for the final round of the Gilette-Fox International Bassoon Competition, held in Buenos Aries, Argentina.
Professor of Viola Peter Slowik was featured in a February 4 radio interview on "Prime Time America," broadcast in 40 states on the Moody Radio Network. In addition to exploring the role of the arts in today's spiritual life, the interview highlighted Slowik's string chamber music program CREDO, which is designed to nurture--artistically and spiritually-- dedicated string students. In March, Slowik performed as soloist in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in Milwaukee with the original instrument group "Ensemble Musical Offering" as part of their American Bach Project. Also that month, he performed a solo recital on the College Church (Wheaton, Illinois) Concert Series, performing Beethoven's Notturno Op. 42, the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, and Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata. "As president of the American Viola Society," Slowik reports, "I welcomed several hundred participants to the Midwest Viola Day held in April at DePaul University and hosted by the Chicago Viola Society, and at the Ohio Viola Day, hosted by the Ohio Viola Society, at Strongsville High School." Slowik gave a solo master class and participated in a panel discussion on the future of college studio teaching at the Chicago Viola Society's Midwest Viola Day, "The Real World Viola Seminar." He also presented a master class and led massed viola ensemble readings at the Ohio Viola Society's Viola Day.