SPRING 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2

S P R I N G 2 0 1 0 V O L . 4 N O . 2

The University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dancewww.music.umich.edu

School of Music, Theatre & Dance Administrative Officers Christopher Kendall, Dean; Kevin T. Geralds, Chief Administrative Officer; Laura Hoffman, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Enrollment Management; Maureen Schafer, Director of Development & External Relations; Mary Simoni, Associate Dean for Research and Community Engagement; Daniel Washington, Associate Dean for Faculty and Multi-Cultural Affairs; Steven M. Whiting, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies; Betty Anne Younker, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

The Regents of the University of Michigan Julia Donovan Darlow, Ann Arbor; Laurence B. Deitch, Bingham Farms; Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms; Olivia P. Maynard, Goodrich; Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor; Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park; S. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe Farms; Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor; Mary Sue Coleman, ex-officio

Nondiscrimination Policy StatementThe University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-647-1388. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.

Betsy Goolian, Writer & Editor734.763.1478 bgoolian@umich.edu

Design by Michigan Marketing & Design

Michigan Muse is published twice annually, Fall and Spring

12 COVER STORY

Wired for SoundFrom vacuum tubes to the computer chip: Performing Arts Technology and the ONCE Festival join in anniversary celebration

20 Reimagining the American OrchestraTwo-day summit draws orchestra reps from all over to rethink the symphony’s future

2 Message from the Dean

3 View from the Pond

6 Broadway & Babies

8 David Alan Grier Takes Five

10 (Re)Visionary Dances

25 Faculty Notes

26 Retirements

33 Students

36 Alumni Society

38 Alumni Notes

43 In Memoriam

46 Giving Update

Michigan Muse is now online: visit www.music.umich.edu

12

10

8

6

Opposite Page: SYNC 2008: Emily Berman, vocals, Will Stanton, bass, Chris Conover, electronics, Jack Stratton, drums

Back Cover: Virgil Moorefield’s Five Ideas about the Relation of Sight and Sound

Photos by Peter Smith Photography unless otherwise indicated.

2 Michigan Muse

Five years ago, as new Dean of the School of Music, I wrote my first Message for what was then Music @ Michigan. Now, five years later, as I look ahead to a second term, I am honored to write you as Dean of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance for this spring issue of Michigan Muse.

As if to make those name changes manifest, the opening of the Walgreen Drama Center and Arthur Miller Theatre in the spring of 2007 brought theatre & drama and musical theatre within close working proximity to the School, opening up possibilities for the kind of collaboration that can only happen face to face. Our dream of bringing dance to North Campus will make the picture complete.

As I look back on the past five years, I think of Arts on Earth, a project launched by the North Campus deans, as the collabora-tive embodiment of what the arts can become at a major research university. This vehicle for arts action and ideas was conceived to foster cross-disciplinary creativity and raise the profile of the arts at the University of Michigan.

Since its inception, Arts on Earth has created forums to explore arts and war, arts and the environment, arts and the mind. Student grassroots groups have sprung up around it, among them Arts Enterprise, which brings together students from the Ross School of Business with our own to explore fresh ways of thinking about careers that conjoin creativity with the entrepreneurial spirit.

It was Arts Enterprise that sparked the recent American Orchestras Summit (see article, p 20) where representatives from

||messagefromtheDean|

“Christopher Kendall is a tireless advocate for the arts … enunciating a vision of the arts as integral to the life of the University. He has fostered a climate of openness that allows the School’s community to think creatively and passionately about aspirations and goals to achieve them.” —PROVOST TERESA SULLIVAN ON ANNOUNCING KENDALL’S REAPPOINTMENT

TO A SECOND FIVE-YEAR TERM.

symphony orchestras around the country came to Ann Arbor for two days to rethink the future of this revered institution. And this fall, Living Arts, set to launch at Bursley Hall, will bring together some 80 students from all disciplines to share both living space and a mutual journey of creative exploration.

More and more these days, the arts engender the kind of creative thinking that increasingly drives our new global economy. This sort of confluence could happen only at a place like the University of Michigan, which is powerfully enriched by its abundance of artistic offerings.

In this spring issue, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Performing Arts Technology. Mary Simoni, recently appointed associate dean for research and community engagement, was a major force in the development of PAT, turning it into the great success it is today. As we move into the next five years, we look forward to an ongoing exploration of the complex relationship between arts and technology, both distinguishing and essential aspects of the human species since its origins.

Yours,

Dean Christopher Kendall School of Music, Theatre & Dance

Spring 2010 3

On March 20 and 21, members of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, in a residency sponsored by the University Musical Society, were at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance for some fourteen master classes with student instrumentalists in horn, trombone, tuba, bassoon, oboe, double bass, viola, harp, percussion, piccolo, and violin. “The oboe studio’s master class with principal oboist Bill Bennett was a great opportunity to work with a wonderful teacher and dedicated performer,” says senior oboe student Patrick Carter. “He had terrific ideas and suggestions that brought out the best in each of the students who played that afternoon!”

The next afternoon, Michael Tilson Thomas, the Symphony’s music director, was at Revelli Hall for a conducting residency with students from Kenneth Kiesler’s conducting studio. “Maestro Thomas’s command of the music was impressive,” said conducting student Yaniv Segal. “Even without time to prepare to coach Strauss’s enormous tone poem, Ein Heldenleben, he knew the music from memory. Hailing from a family of actors, his presence and command of language is very effective; instead of using a hands-on approach with the conductors, he would explain something verbally and let the conductors try to achieve that. His ability to describe the music inspired the musicians to play better, more musically.”

||viewfromthepond|

San Francisco Symphony Residency

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS

SCOTT PADDEN, MASTER’S STUDENT IN DOUBLE BASS

SOPHOMORE PICCOLO STUDENT KAT STANDEFER WITH SFSO PLAYER CATHY PAYNE

SA

NF

RA

NC

ISC

OS

YMP

HO

NY

RES

IDEN

CY

PH

OTO

S:P

ETER

SM

ITH

PH

OTO

GR

AP

HY

4 Michigan Muse

||view from the pond|

Symposium Looks at the Cultural Impact of MotownMotown may be fifty years old this year, but its impact still resonates today. Michigan Celebrates Motown: The Symposium, came to U-M’s Palmer Commons in February, bringing together academics, students, critics, and fans who were there when Motown had its heyday. “We were just a bunch of kids making music, not history,” said panelist Alan Abrams, who served as Motown’s first publicist when he was in his late teens.

Faculty from the School of Music, Theatre & Dance were on hand for panel discussions during the two-day conference. “There’s a division between school music and other forms of music, and with Motown, we discover a music informed by public schools, churches, and communities,” said Betty Anne Younker, music education faculty and associate dean for academic affairs.

Mark Clague, musicology professor who teaches a class on Motown, said, “Some people think of music as mere entertainment or a distraction, but we see music as a force that speaks to us in deep ways and helps make us who we are. There’s a concern,” he added, “about the arts and arts education in America, and as a university, we can play a major role in being a catalyst for an open discussion by bringing together a variety of people.”

ROBERT BATES AND AL ABRAMS

Music of the United States (MUSA) Announces New DirectorDorothea Gail, a musicologist with degrees from the Institute of Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt and Goethe-University Frankfurt, will be the new Executive Editor for MUSA, a 40-volume series of critical editions of music by American composers and others, sponsored by the NEH and housed at the School’s American Music Institute in Burton Tower. Most recently, Gail has been a research associate at the University of Oklahoma working on a database of critical texts on musical aesthetics from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Metropolitan Opera Guild Award Recognizes Shirley VerrettShirley Verrett, James Earl Jones Distinguished University Professor of Voice, was honored with an 2009 Opera News Award, created on the 70th anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. “Shirley Verrett is one of opera’s true legends,” said Opera News’s editor-in-chief F. Paul Driscoll, “an artist whose beauty, elegance, and charisma made her a favorite with audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe and a woman whose courage, tenacity, and integrity have made her a role model for all artists.”

Instruments from West Africa and India Added to the Stearns CollectionThe Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments just received a donation from Leo Sarkisian, an internationally known musician and musicologist, of over 40 rare and original musical instruments from West Africa and India. This important and diverse addition to what is already one of the most well-rounded and pedigreed collections in the world will be available first to research-ers and musicologists. With the eventual availability of new and appropriately climate-controlled display environment, the collection will be presented to the general public. Mr. Sarkisian, who broadcast for Voice of America for some forty years, also donated nearly fifty years of field recordings of rare indigenous African music, just digitized by U-M’s African Studies Center at the International Institute. M

OTO

WN

PH

OTO

:MA

RK

CLA

GU

EEM

ILY

WEI

NG

AR

TEN

PH

OTO

:C

OD

YR

EX

Gamelan Ensemble Premieres New WorkIn its annual concert in Hill Auditorium in March, the U-M gamelan performed both traditional pieces and a new composition by visiting composer, New Zealand’s Gareth Farr. Starting in the fall and working with the ensemble’s director Susan Walton and visiting Javanese musicians Sumarsam and Widiyanto, students made transcriptions of record-ings for two-stringed bowed lute, a metalophone that plays polyphonic melodies, a xylophone, and a bamboo flute. By the spring, they were able to perform them.

The ensemble performed the world premiere of Farr’s Pukul Wainui. The title means “big water percussion” in honor of the U-M’s gamelan and the Pacific island cultures it draws from. The new work joins Indonesian gamelan styles with Western orchestral percussion and the composer’s own traditional Cook Island drums. During a three-week residency, Farr rehearsed with both the gamelan ensemble and the U-M percussion ensemble, under the direction of Joseph Gramley, and gave a lecture on Pacific Island music and a workshop on the music of the Cook Island drums.

Students Enjoy One-on-One with World-Class DrummerSometimes persistence pays off. That’s what Billy Harrington, jazz and improvisa-tion student, found out when he wanted to meet Grammy Award-winning drummer Steve Jordan. “I told Billy, if you like his drumming so much, then try everything you can to get in touch with him,” says Michael Gould, Harrington’s professor. “We worked together to formulate a plan and then he made a passionate plea—several, actually—until Steve Jordan finally contacted me.”

As it turned out, Jordan was scheduled to appear with John Mayer at the Palace of

Auburn Hills in February. “He took about three hours out of his day to spend with us,” says music student Brett Chalfin, “answering every single one of our questions. He let us sit in on the band’s sound check and gave us a full tour of his custom-built drum set up. We got to hear stories about him jamming with Stevie Wonder as a high schooler and what it takes to stay on top of a world tour with Eric Clapton.”

Jordan has played with just about everyone in the pop world: the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Bruce Springsteen, Sonny Rollins, the list goes on.

Prism Quartet Champions Classical Music for SaxophoneA recent Sunday New York Times article, “Helping the Sax Find a Classical Home,” featured members of the Prism Saxophone Quartet, Matt Levy, BM ’87, MM ’88 and Timothy McAllister, BM ’95, MM ’97, DMA ’02, founding and longtime member respectively. PRISM is gaining fame for its work in the classical realm, now having commissioned some 120 works. “We don’t want a work that could be a string quartet but written for saxophone,” Levy told the Times. “The instrument may be one of the most flexible in range of color. It has potential to be brutal and grotesque and sublimely beautiful. McAllister added “As with other marginalized instruments, like percussion, low brass, or classical guitar, there is always a bit of missionary work going on. At some level you are trying to convince people of the validity of the instrument and repertory. We would like to say that when it’s all said and done, no composer of any notoriety will leave this earth without having written for saxo-phone.” Don Sinta would be proud.

Contributors

PATRICK CARTER is a graduating senior oboe performance major who studied with Nancy Ambrose King. He will be a development intern at the Aspen Music Festival this summer.

MARK CLAGUE, associate professor of musi-cology and American Orchestras Summit con-ference co-organizer, is interested in all forms of music making in America with a focus on the interrelationship of music and society.

MICHAEL MAUSKAPF, American Orchestras Summit conference co-organizer, is a Ph.D candidate in musicology whose research explores the nexus between organizational structure and music making in the orchestra.

MIRA STANLEY is a member of the class of 2012, pursuing a bachelor of theatre arts. Her unofficial concentrations are in directing and theatre & social change.

EMILY WEINGARTEN (BM ‘08 bassoon and musicology) is a community musician and aspiring entrepreneur residing in Ann Arbor. To learn more about Emily, visit her website, http://emilyweingarten.gmail.com, or follow her blog, http://a2create.blogspot.com.

Spring 2010 5

6 Michigan Muse

||spotlight|

Are parenthood and a performing arts career mutually exclusive?

BY BETSY GOOLIAN

Erin Dilly, BFA ’94 (musical theatre), has seen the world from the bright lights of a Broadway stage. She’s been in the audience at a Tony Awards ceremony, in a designer gown, shoulder to shoulder with some of the biggest names in the industry, nominated for a best actress award. She’s appeared on the silver screen, in regional theater, as a guest on highly rated TV series, on national tours with big-name musicals.

And now she’s the mother of two little girls, a four-year-old and one-year-old. How is this possible? Wouldn’t the career come to a screeching halt? Isn’t a fleet of nannies required?

Dilly’s career took off in a big way the minute she hit New York, and it never let up: Nellie on the national tour of South Pacific, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Bertrande in Martin Guerre, the latter garnering her a Helen Hayes Award nomination. The list goes on: Babes in Arms, Follies, The Boys from Syracuse, Into the Woods, Finian’s Rainbow.

In 2005, she was nominated for a Tony Award for her turn as Truly Scrumptious in Broadway’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In fact, she was six months pregnant with her oldest, Anna, when she finished her run. “I felt like I was at the top of my game,” she says. “I’m not sure I even intended for things to work out that way, but once it happened for me

An aside: “When Stephen got the part, he asked me if I knew anything about Night Music,” she laughs. “It was my freshman show! The show I had to work crew on. I told him, ‘It’s more like what I don’t know.’”

But the two have made it work. Stephen is a dedicated father, and, as it turned out, Erin was ready to transition to film and television. “I love musical theatre,” she says, “but my real passion is for acting. The minute I had Anna, I knew I couldn’t be gone every night when I’m supposed to be putting her in the tub and tucking her in to sleep. The lifestyle of episodic TV and film work is far more livable.”

So while Bentrock is engaged nights and weekends on Broadway, Dilly is shooting commercials or appearing in TV episodes during the day. She’s had guest spots on Fox’s Canterbury’s Law and The Return of Jezebel James. She’s appeared in Nurse Jackie with Edie Falco and in episodes of Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

“Criminal Intent is filmed in the Chelsea Piers,” she says. “SVU is shot in Jersey, right across the Hudson, a 20-minute drive from my house. When you commit to an episode of a television series, they give you a lovely fee and say we’re going to buy you out for these 8 days and you have to be available.” Some shoots take the full eight days, others fewer.

professionally, I thought, okay, I want to take a moment now.” Three years later, second daughter Catie was born.

“A family was always something I dreamed of having,” she says. “I was surprised my alarm didn’t go off sooner, but I was so career driven. I was very ambitious. I wanted to serve that master for a while. I didn’t really heed the call of motherhood until it was crying so hard, I couldn’t ignore it.”

Juggling a career and two children is made easier—or further complicated, depending on how you look at it—by the fact that her husband, Stephen Buntrock, is also in “the business,” some ten Broadway shows to his credit. He’s currently in A Little Night Music, eight performances a week.

BroadwayBabies

Spring 2010 7

In a recent episode of Law & Order: SVU, Dilly played the role of a woman who lives in the projects and has degenerative MS. “It was like nothing I would have had the opportunity to do on stage right now,” she says. “When I got the role I was like, MOTHER. It was a challenge. I had to commit to this woman’s circumstances and her condition, but I did. I got inside. And I think it was the kind of commitment they were looking for.”

Some offers may not fit into the perfect plan but are too good to pass up, like a role in the 2009 movie Julie and Julia, with Meryl Streep as Julia Child. Dilly played the role of her editor Judith Jones, vital in launching Child’s career, publishing her Mastering the Art of French Cooking at a time when no other book house would touch. But film roles require more creative childcare planning.

A recent weekday found Dilly and her two girls in downtown Manhattan, near the Flat Iron Building, filming a Starbucks commercial that called for a Mom with an infant in a stroller and a toddler. Perfect fit, right? But that shoot happened to be the same week her husband, understudy for the lead in Night Music, was called into duty, center stage, playing opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones.”

“When I got the good news about the Starbucks’ ad, I was like, are you kidding me? This week? The week we’re going to

give to Daddy, make sure Daddy gets eight hours of sleep?”

On what would have been Stephen’s richly deserved day of rest, “My heroic, remarkable husband said, ‘no no no, I wouldn’t be anywhere else’ and came along. I don’t think I could have done it without him,” she says. “By being there, the girls were in balance, just hanging out with the two of us in New York. It helped enormously.”

“So far, we’re been pretty happy that we’ve been able to raise our children ourselves,” she says, “just pass them back and forth. It’s been a phenomenally joint effort; Stephen is such a hands-on parent, it’s in his skin, it’s cellular for him. I think I’m doing a good job, and then I watch him and think, oh. That’s how you do it.”

When does she get time to practice her craft? “Raising children is about the most creative endeavor I’ve ever been involved in,” she admits, “demanding constant improvisation. And I’m not saying I’m studying to be an actor by raising my kids, but who these little people become in the world is my priority. So I think, okay, I’m going to serve you and that’s going to have to serve my work, because this is what I want to be doing.”

And now Dilly’s teaching and coaching the next generation of musical theatre kids, in a program called Making it on

Broadway. “Teaching helps me remember why it is I love to do what I do,” she says. “As you’re explaining to somebody how to do something, you’re actually mentally honing how you do it.”

Thanks to long-time friend and fellow MT graduate Danny Gurwin (BFA ’94), she still gets to flex the golden pipes, in Gurwin’s own “Miracle of Miracles: A Concert in Celebration of Jewish Musical Theatre.” Just last September, they did the show in Bloomfield, MI; she just joined Danny in La Jolla for a reprise.

“Danny was my first boyfriend, my first love, my best friend. We met in 8th grade, went to Interlochen together, hung out in New York when we first got there. He really is like family,” she says, “I’d read the phone book with him. And he makes me sing again, which I appreciate.”

Erin has known Brent Wagner, head of the musical theatre department, almost as long as she’s known Gurwin. “He’s been a mentor and a friend and is about the dearest heart,” she says. “Whenever I’ve been working hard and am stressed out, I think of him. When I think about Michigan, I think about what Brent has built and what the program has become. Now, if anything I’m even fancier for having gone there than when I graduated. It’s just got such prestige and is so highly respected by professionals in the business in New York.”

In the end, “you give up sleep, any sense of a regular rested quality in your life, because you’re giving away so much of your energy to little people and your career. And I can’t say I’m always the temple of bliss”—she couldn’t live without yoga—“because it’s incredibly hard; it’s the hardest work I’ve ever done. But you get back so much, quiet moments that no one’s ever going to see.”

“Steve and I took the girls to the zoo today and they fell asleep in the car on the way home,” she says. “And they just looked like angels. But we were so relieved they were asleep. We ended up driving around for a while before heading home.”

And tomorrow’s another big day.

STEPHEN, ANNA, AND BABY CATIE ERIN AND ANNA

||spotlight|

8 Michigan Muse

BY MIRA ELISE STANLEY

A Detroit native, David Alan Grier came to the University of Michigan in 1974 with no clear idea of what he wanted to pursue. His revelatory moment came during a University production of Othello. Grier was playing the character he calls “the other black guy.” While delivering his single line—“a message from the galleys”—he thought, “Ah! This is what I want to do!”

“I found something I think I could spend my life doing,” he says, “and grow old doing it.”

After his mother “forbade” him from getting a degree in theatre, he decided on a bachelor’s in radio, film, and television. After finishing his degree at Michigan, Grier went on to earn a master’s at the Yale School of Drama.

Grier’s career has been remarkable both for its sheer variety and for its individual accomplishments. In 1981, he earned a Tony Award nomination and Theatre World Award for his portrayal of Jackie Robinson in The First. He won a Golden Lion Award for Best Actor at the Venice

David Alan Grier Takes Five

DAVID ALAN GRIER, LSA ’78 (SPEECH), VISITED ANN ARBOR LAST FALL, ON A PROMOTIONAL TOUR FOR HIS NEW BOOK. WHILE IN TOWN, HE FOUND THE TIME TO VISIT THE DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE & DRAMA.

Actor and Comedian Tells Students to Follow Their Hearts

Spring 2010 9

Film Festival for his work in Robert Altman’s 1983 film Streamers. Among his many Broadway performance credits are Dreamgirls, A Soldier’s Play, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He has also acted in the films The Woodsman, Boomerang, Bewitched, and Jumanji.

He is perhaps most famous for his work on the television show In Living Color, popular in the early 1990s. In 2008, he returned to television as host, writer, and executive producer of Comedy Central’s The Chocolate News.

At the time Grier visited Ann Arbor, he was touring with his first book Barack Like Me: The Chocolate Covered Truth, an exploration of race, culture, and politics that includes both elements of autobiogra-phy and fiction. He was also about to begin rehearsals for David Mamet’s new play Race, currently playing on Broadway.

During a Q&A session at the Arthur Miller Theatre, Grier spoke to students about his career and his time at the University of Michigan. When asked to give advice to aspiring actors, Grier said: “This is where you should just throw yourself against the wall and do everything … if they are not doing it, do it for yourself.”

“I did everything while I was here,” Grier said. “The variety of opportunities, the variety of exposure to different art forms in Ann Arbor and in that school environment was awesome. All of that helped form and expand my idea of what an artist does.”

His message to students is one of empow-erment, “Define yourself. Be proactive. Why would you leave yourself at the mercy of others?”

Grier’s approach is echoed in the types of artists he is most drawn to: those who carve their own path and challenge the status quo. Sometimes such a strategy is

“Every time something amazing has happened … it’s always been—all right I’m going to do this because it’ll be fun and it’ll be interesting,” he says. “It’s probably not going to make it, but I’m going to do it anyway. And when I’ve tried to go the other way and make a pragmatic or monetary judgment, it’s always blown up in my face.”

Among Grier’s many successes, his greatest might simply be the fact that he has arrived at a point in his career where doing what he loves is possible and sustainable. The rapt attention of the theatre students during Grier’s talk, as well as their enthusiasm to meet and chat with him after the session, made it clear that they saw him as an inspirational figure. For them (and for me, too) he is one of those all-too-rare examples of someone who loves his work fully.

When asked what is most important to him about his work, Grier says “That it means something to me. I’m the one who has to live with it.”

David Alan Grier Nominated for a Tony!

Since visiting Ann Arbor, Grier has appeared in David Mamet’s new play Race. He was just nominated for a Tony Award for that performance, in the category Best Performance by a Lead Actor in a Play. “[Grier’s] skills as a comedian are held at bay to show off his impressive dramatic chops.”—The Los Angeles Times.

DAVID ALAN GRIER AND DANIEL WASHINGTON

not only desirable but necessary. Grier referenced his own experiences as an African American pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, facing its margin-alizing treatment of the black character (e.g. as the maid, the butler, the neighbor).

He also talked about how he has seen that role evolve over the course of his career into something more prominent and less rigidly defined. “What I love and what I’d like is to have the world in which I live represented on television”—something he believes is now being achieved with more frequency.

PH

OTO

S:P

ETER

SM

ITH

PH

OTO

GR

AP

HY

||spotlight|

10 Michigan Muse

The February 2010 Power Center concert, (Re)Visionary Dances, was a celebration of new visions for the stage and a re-envisioning of a landmark moment from an extraordinarily rich legacy.

Faculty members Amy Chavasse, Sandra Torijano, and Jessica Fogel generated the new visions. Chavasse’s Hunger for the Longing for the Craving for the Aching used four very different versions of Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land to construct a Busby Berkeley-esque pastiche. Sandra Torijano’s La Luna Nueva saw the overcoming of adversity embodied in a radiantly choreographed and costumed

epiphany. Out of Thin Air—Lightness by Jessica Fogel was inspired by recent

discoveries about the deep quantum world of particle physics and was set to a layered digital sound collage of text and music. The set designs, lighting, costumes, and music created a resplendent world of

light, color, and sound.

Paul Taylor’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal), which depicts a typical dance rehearsal interwoven with a Damon Runyonesque detective story, was restaged by Ruth Andrien, former Paul Taylor Dance Company member featured in the 1980 original. Andrien came to campus to set the work on our students drawing primarily from her own muscle memory. The costumes, in a palette of black, white, and grey with occasional startling jots of bright red, were recreated by our brilliant costume shop from photographs of the pieces laid out on a table next to a tape measure. This 30th-anniversary restaging of Taylor’s irreverent and brilliant work kicked off a year-long celebration of the 80th birthday of one of America’s foremost modern choreographers. —

The Old and the New Come Together for a Stunning Visual and Aural Display

(Re)Visionary Dances

SADIE YARRINGTON IN ‘LE SACRE’

Spring 2010 11

TOP LEFT: JESSICA FOGEL’S ‘OUT OF THIN AIR’TOP RIGHT: SANDRA TORIJANO’S ‘LA LUNA’

BOTTOM LEFT: AMY CHAVASSE’S ‘HUNGER FOR THE LONGING . . . ‘ BOTTOM RIGHT: FROM PAUL TAYLOR’S ‘LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS’

PH

OTO

S:P

ETER

SM

ITH

PH

OTO

GR

AP

HY

PERFORMING ARTS TECHNOLOGY MARKS 25 YEARS:CELEBRATION OF PAT AND THE ONCE FESTIVALS OF THE 1960S SCHEDULED FOR NOVEMBER 2010 (SEE BOX, P. 14)

12 Michigan Muse

BY BETSY GOOLIAN

Spring 2010 13

Here in the 21st century, technology is a given. It’s a part of our daily lives and it’s here to stay. It’s the perpetual innovation machine, evolving and changing, morphing into new forms at a sometimes alarming rate. If you own the equipment, the saying

goes, it’s already obsolete.

Twenty-five years ago, though, the idea of a music program based on the creative possibilities of technology must have seemed like so much science fiction. But Paul Boylan, then dean of the School, saw into the future. That future is now.

“We’re in the age of the computer,” says Virgil Moorefield, on the Performing Arts Technology (PAT) faculty. “Just as the orchestra is an expression of the mechanical age, digital music is the expres-sion of the digital age.”

Back in 1985, electronic music in Ann Arbor was not without precedent. In 1961, a group of courageous composers lit a spark with their now famous ONCE Festival of New Music (see article. p. 18). Having no access to commercially available and affordable equipment, they built their own.

Now fast forward to the early 1980s. Paul Boylan is on a trip to Los Angeles, visiting the studio of alumnus Richard Perry (BM, ‘64), producer of artists like Rod Stewart, Diana Ross, and Barbra Streisand. He’s sitting in on a recording session.

That’s when it hit him. “A young synthesizer player was providing much of the back-up for the session,” Boylan recalls. “I found his musicianship absolutely amazing. During a break, I asked him what music school he attended and learned, to my horror, that he had wanted to come to Michigan.” Not only did his transcript not meet the School’s requirements, but the curriculum he needed did not yet exist.

Boylan came back to Ann Arbor determined to find a way for such musicians to develop their talent and artistry in a conserva-tory setting. He assigned faculty member David Crawford, conversant with computers in his work developing notations for

early music, to chair a committee on feasibility. By 1985, the Regents had given the green light to a Center for Performing Arts Technology.

Suddenly the School’s listening room was appropriated for a computer lab. “Bringing the keyboards in caused a lot of discom-fort,” Crawford remembers. “But it was a turning point for the School.”

“We’re trying to integrate technology, to extend and enhance musical ideas.” —JASON COREY, PAT CHAIR

“It was not an easy sell,” Stephen Rush affirms. On the PAT faculty since 1987, Rush was there from almost the beginning. “The program started with a classroom of low-end synthesizers, an e-Max, a couple of Casio CZ101s, and some Mac Pluses. The curriculum was pretty basic, with classes in music notation and programming.”

By the mid 1990s, though, when personal computers had entered the mainstream, Performing Arts Technology was starting to look like a better idea. With the advent of inexpensive digital chips, microcomputers were becoming both affordable and powerful enough to perform audio synthesis in real time. Gone were the computers of yore, room-filling mainframes that ran for hours or even days to generate a few minutes of music.

When first director David Gregory, a pioneer in the field, especially as applied to dance, moved on to the private sector, Mary Simoni was brought in to direct the program, a post she held from 1994 to 2009. Simoni, Rush, and Crawford set to work to carefully craft a curriculum with a definitive degree trajectory. Today there are four undergraduate degree tracks and a master’s in media arts.

“Paul Boylan clearly had the vision for arts and technology,” says Simoni, who directed the program during a period of enormous growth. “It was a vision he shared with James Duderstadt, then University President. It was just a really fertile time on campus for this kind of thing to germinate and take root.”

Now, some 80+ students call themselves PAT majors. They divide their time between the E.V. Moore Building, the main hub for many of SMTD’s music courses, and the Duderstadt Center, a full-service media commons started by Duderstadt and his wife Anne, just a short walk across North Campus.

At the Moore Building, students use the Music Technology Lab with twelve workstations with the latest Macintosh computers, now with greatly increased processing power, thanks to a gift from

an anonymous donor. There’s also a new Surround Sound Lab, again made possible by the same gift. It’s a facility where multi-channel audio and video work can be created and viewed in surround and is compatible with the systems in the Music Technology Lab, at the Duderstadt Center, and the Hill Auditorium Recording Studio.

“The quality of our teaching and research in PAT is inextricably linked to the caliber of our labs and studios,” Simoni says. “One of our top priorities is to have long-term funding in place for upgrades like these. With technology constantly changing and improving, the strength of the department depends on staying ahead of the curve with the newest equipment so students can be up to the minute when they emerge into the real job market.”

Students take courses in acoustics and psychoacoustics, learning the basics of sound, human hearing and perception. They study sound recording at the Audio Studio at the Duderstadt, fully equipped to replicate a professional situation. Courses in computer music, multimedia, and intermedia composition let them use their creativity, musical know-how, and technological savvy to come up with marvelously original pieces.

“One thing we’re really careful not to do is impart an aesthetic on them,” says Simoni. “They have to come up with their own ideas. They’re doing work all over the place. Their accomplishments are incredible and far reaching.”

“It’s the most versatile music degree you can get,” says Kevin DeKimpe, a senior in composition who was encouraged to write the score for a 90-minute film, Bilal’s Stand, later accepted for screening as a feature at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

“It’s about currency in the field,” says Rush. Two recent alumni are part of a team at Shure Systems that developed an inner-ear monitor used at this year’s Super Bowl half-time show. Another heads up the iPhone team at Apple.

“The strength in the PAT program for me,” says Nate Cartier, ’01, video editor and sound designer working in L.A., “was access to resources outside the PAT classes. The coursework gives you the theoretical foundation. Then you can collaborate with the theatre and film departments and apply that knowledge more broadly.”

Jason Corey, now department chair, agrees. “I think what really makes PAT unique is the fact that we’re at the University of Michigan, where we have not only a top school of music, theatre and dance, but a top college of engineering and a screen arts and cultures department.”

“We’re trying to integrate technology in various forms,” Corey says, “to extend and enhance musical ideas in ways that might not be possible with acoustic instruments. We’re providing options for creative expression, potentially new ways of thinking about music and music performance and maybe spurring new compositional or improvisation ideas.”

SAVE THE DATE!Events are planned for November 2-6, 2010 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of PAT and the 50th anniversary of the ONCE Festivals

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS: November 2: The Historic Concert: Rackham Auditorium, 8:00 P.M.

Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Donald Scavarda, and Roger Reynolds

November 3: Panel Discussion

With ONCE composers: Institute for the Humanities

University Symphony Band performs work by Mason Bates with electronics: Hill Auditorium, 8:00 p.m.

November 4: Recent Works, ONCE Composers: RACKHAM AUDITORIUM

November 5: Workshops and panel presentations by PAT faculty and students, Duderstadt Center; premiere of one-act musical drama by Michigan Mobile Phone Orchestra; Alumni Reception To Follow

November 6: PAT 25th Anniversary Concert: Rackham auditorium, 8:00 P.M.

Save the dates but check the SMTD Calendar of Events for times, venues, and final confirmation in the fall: www.music.umich.edu

14 Michigan Muse

PH

OTO

S:P

ETER

SM

ITH

PH

OTO

GR

AP

HY

Spring 2010 15

ince 1985, the Performing Arts Technology program has been adding strategically to its faculty. Along with five from the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, there

are shared appointments with engineering, art & design, and computer science.

GEORG ESSL, the newest hire, is a classically trained musician and electrical engineer who founded the Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble, teaching students to program their iPhones into amazingly versatile and highly portable musical instruments. GREGORY WAKEFIELD, from the College of Engineering whose research focuses on spatialized auditory environments and the analysis of the singing voice, has taught courses and mentored students. JENNIFER FURR, a lecturer in the program, is a composer who teaches computer music and digital sound synthesis.

ANDY KIRSHNER, also in the School of Art & Design, is a composer and trained singer and actor who creates multi-media works that might include images, action, and words and ideas, along with music. Described as a “do-it-all entertainment

Jason Corey, department chair, teaches sound recording, technical ear training, and musical acoustics. He just released Audio Production and Critical Listening: Technical Ear Training, with seven software modules to practice hearing audio effects and processing.

“In class, we talk about what we hear and try to come up with a vocabulary,” Corey says. “If someone says, ‘I like what you’ve done but I think the vocals are too bright,’ bright can mean many different things: that there’s a certain frequency that’s too prominent or another that’s not prominent enough; that there’s too much reverb or not enough. So at a certain point, we have to decide what ‘bright’ really means.”

Then comes the hard part: taking what they hear and breaking it down into technical components, identifying the frequency regions, hertz levels, “connecting these numbers with what we’re hearing in a meaningful way.”

wizard” by The Ann Arbor News, Kirshner’s latest work, Relive the Magic: An Evening with Tony Amore, was premiered and recorded by the Phoenix Ensemble, with Kirshner singing the title role.

No list would be complete without ROGER ARNETT, the School’s sound and recording engineer for live music and theatrical productions. “Roger has served the department tirelessly,” says current PAT chair Jason Corey, “as a live sound engineer, recording engineer, recording studio technician, and video and lighting technician. He has a solid understanding of the significant technical needs of live performances using computers and other electronics and is able to skillfully mix electronically generated sounds with those generated acoustically.”

ANDY KIRSHNER’S TONY AMORE

16 Michigan Muse

Virgil Moorefield is a composer, producer, and sound artist. Computer savvy since the early 1980s, he’s no stranger to more traditional methods. “I have a split personality,” he smiles, “and sometimes try to integrate the two. I have been known to spend entire summers composing with pencil and paper simply because it’s a very connected way to engage with music.”

Intermedia works are Moorefield’s current focus. His Five Ideas about the Relation of Sight and Sound creates a sonic world immersing the audience in music and visual displays generated by

the way the instruments are played. Moorefield teaches The Producer as Composer, drawing from his book of the same name, taking students up through producers like Phil Spector, with his “wall of sound,” Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Brian Eno, one of the principal innovators of ambient music.

The class explores the shift away from the convention of recording as a strictly technical attempt to capture a live performance to the notion of the studio as a musical instrument, with the roles of producer and composer merging into one.

Mary Simoni is largely responsible for molding PAT into what it is today. Associate dean for research and community engagement since 2009, her research explores the creative possibilities of signal visualization, a way to graphically represent music in a field that has no standard-ized system of notation. Her latest book, Algorithmic Composition: A Guide to Publishing Music, with Roger B. Dannenberg, is forthcoming.

Simoni also directs Internet publishing for the University and heads up Block M Records, the University’s own label. All repertory is per-formed, recorded, and produced by U-M faculty, staff, and students. The label gives PAT students invaluable experience in music production as they learn about audio compression, metadata tagging, and database design and management.

Stephen Rush, a classically trained composer and pianist, directs the Digital Music Ensemble, best known for the annual Gypsy Pond Music, staged at the end of the fall semester. A “sonic, site-specific installation involving sculpture and algorithmic computer music,” it uses the pond behind the School as a blank canvas. Students float wooden labyrinths or Japanese lanterns out onto the water. Touch and movement sensors activate sound and light. Each year is different.

Rush’s campus office looks like some storage unit for the artistically possessed: PVC pipe with piano wire; a “noise sculpture” bedecked with Christmas bulbs and pop cans; parts of disassembled computers strewn about, like the laboratory of some mad genius. Along with his work in PAT, Rush teaches composition, theory, and jazz.

Erik Santos is a composer, multi-instrumental-ist, and singer active in musical genres from rock to classical to electronic to music for theater and dance. On both the composition and PAT faculty, he teaches computer music composition.

“All this technology has helped those of us who started out using four tape decks and a razor blade,” Santos says. “Now when I’m composing, I feel the line sometimes blurs between having written something I really like versus having successfully mastered the technology. While the digital age has allowed us to do our work more quickly and efficiently, it also allows us to get in the computer and control every single parameter. And that’s great, but it somehow requires a less total level of commitment; some element of surprise or danger is missing.”

“I’m not saying the human creative spirit is not able to work with this new technology. But it’s a period of transition. These are just tools. It’s a matter of not letting it become too depersonalized.”

Spring 2010 17

PH

OTO

S:P

ETER

SM

ITH

PH

OTO

GR

AP

HY

ERIK

SA

NTO

SB

YTO

KO

SH

IIKI

NCE is a perplexing name for a multitude of events that happened in many forms throughout Ann

Arbor in the 1960s. What started as the ONCE Festival of Musical Premieres in February and March of 1961 turned into the six-year running ONCE Festival, spinning off creativity in Ann Arbor—the ONCE theatrical ensemble and the A2 Film Festival—and inspiring like-minded festivals across North America.

The ONCE Festival organizers were five students of U-M composition professor the late Ross Lee Finney: Robert Ashley, George Cacioppo, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds, and Donald Scavarda. From their composition studies with

Finney, they had developed important roots in new compositional styles—twelve-tone, serialism, expressionism—and had become familiar with the music of prominent avant-garde composers from the first half of the twentieth century, like Schoenberg, Webern, Varèse, Berio.

In 1960, when Finney went on sab-batical leave, Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard, came in as his replacement. The timing was right. Just two years before, the ONCE composers had heard a lecture at Michigan by revolutionary composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who encouraged them to find a way to present their music, even if they had to do it on their own. And while Finney was thinking progressively,

First, let’s set the stage. It’s Ann Arbor, circa 1960. World War II is over but the Cold War has arrived to fill the void. School children are subjected to classroom movies about the omni-present menace of Communism; regular air raid drills jangle their little nerves. A beetle is still an insect, neither car nor rock band. The countercul-tural revolution, the feminist movement, Vietnam war protests, all lie in wait, ready to explode by the end of the decade. But not just yet.

Into this world of crew cuts and transistor radios came the ONCE composers. Like the Impressionist painters before them, they wanted to find their own distinctive voice. Breaking new ground meant breaking with tradition. And like the Impressionists, they had to find their own way. The ONCE Festival was their “salon des refusés.” Emily Weingarten, BM ‘08, tells their story. —BG

18 Michigan Muse

BY EMILY WEINGARTEN

GATHERING OF STUDENTS OF ROBERTO GERHARD, ANN ARBOR, 1960. (BOTTOM L TO R): LESLIE BASSETT, RALPH BASSETT (SON); (SECOND ROW, SITTING): ROGER REYNOLDS, ROBERTO GERHARD; (THIRD ROW): ROBERT ASHLEY, SHERMAN VAN SOLKEMA, DAVID BATES, LEOPOL-DINA GERHARD, ANITA DENNISTON BASSETT; (STANDING AT BACK): GEORGE CACIOPPO, ED COLEMAN, TOM SCHUDEL

Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds, and Donald Scavarda will return to Ann Arbor this

November to perform music

from the ONCE Festivals

(see page 14)

Spring 2010 19

Gerhard, by their account, was even more open to innovation and innovative thinking.

The idea for a ONCE festival came up in the car, coming back to Ann Arbor from the 1960 International Conference on Composers in Stratford, Ontario. Frustrated by the lack of access to the contemporary composers and composi-tions at the Stratford conference, the ONCE composers resolved to “present new music which would not ordinarily receive a hearing in the community.” To bring artistic significance to Ann Arbor they would host prominent American and European composers and present premieres of their own works.

After securing funding from a local arts organization, posters went up announcing the first festival, two weekends in February and March of 1961. It would be held at Ann Arbor’s First Unitarian Church. All of the performances sold out, encouraging further financial support. In his article, “The ONCE Festival and How It Happened,” Gordon Mumma commented on the ability of ONCE composers to develop and grow as composers in the midst of an “active and artistically challenging cultural community.”

There would be six ONCE festivals in all. As their success grew, they were able to shift programming to exhibit more of their own works, which were becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, theatrical, and innovative—and drawing interna-tional press.

Much of that music was numerical and mathematical. Some of the composers had backgrounds in math and science. Reynolds was a physicist and engineer. Ashley constructed many of his works around numerical formulas, using record-ing techniques that would be impossible without scientific discoveries and innova-tions in electroacoustics. Mumma’s “dis-covery” of cybersonics arose out of his work in a seismographic laboratory. Scavarda used a matrix form in his revolutionary piece Matrix for Clarinetist.

The ONCE composers were also inter-ested in manipulating the passage of time.

By juxtaposing music that moved at different speeds or using indeterminate meters—measuring time by how long a note can sustain—they could distort the listener’s perception of how time passed. They developed new sounds and effects for instruments. Don Scavarda is credited with discovering the clarinet multiphonics for Matrix. He experimented with new formats for musical scores, such as created abstract films. Electronic music, of course, remained a foundational format for ONCE presentations.

The creative momentum, increased from festival to festival. The works that George Cacioppo composed over the course of the six festivals took greater risks than their

predecessors, yet each was incontrovertibly more successful. The faithful performers of the ONCE festival, having shared in Cacioppo’s progressive ideas right from the start, eagerly awaited each new composi-tion. The festival, though plagued with insufficient rehearsal time, was witness to many exemplary performances.

The essence of ONCE is difficult to capture in a single statement. ONCE meant many things, sometimes simultane-ously and sometimes changing and evolving as the festivals unfolded. The group was clearly dedicated to presenting new and innovative compositions and making them accessible. They also advanced ideas about community performances and artistic entrepreneurship.

Their dedication to the cause and their commitment to experimentation and taking risks had an intense and personal impact on its composers, its performers, and its audiences. Perhaps Don Scavarda captures the ONCE festival most accu-rately: “The main goal was to get our music heard. If a piece isn’t heard, you can’t really grow. … Once that was established, we could conjure up whatever ideas we had.” And they did.

ROBERT ASHLEY AND GORDON MUMMA AT ASHLEY’S ANN ARBOR STUDIO, 1961.

DONALD SCAVARDA AND CLARINETIST JOHN MORGAN WITH SCORE FOR ‘MATRIX FOR CLARINET’R

OB

ERT

AS

HLE

YA

ND

GO

RD

ON

MU

MM

AP

HO

TO:M

AR

YA

SH

LEY

M

ATR

IXA

ND

GR

OU

PP

HO

TOB

YD

ON

ALD

SC

AVA

RD

A:A

LLR

IGH

TSR

ESER

VED

20 Michigan Muse

Over three days in late January, representatives from orchestras around the country came to the University of

Michigan for the American Orchestra Summit, an open-ended discussion on how to address what many

orchestra leaders are calling dire financial challenges that call into question their very survival and require a

rethinking of their fundamental mission.

BY MARK CLAGUE AND MICHAEL MAUSKAPF

Spring 2010 21

The impetus for the Summit sprouted from a serendipi-tous conversation with Joseph Horowitz, author and thinker at the forefront of classical music in America, who was the Summit’s keynote speaker. The idea—jumpstarting a dialogue between orchestra scholars

and administrators—picked up steam, and by the end of the year, more than thirty speakers had volunteered to take part: adminis-trators, scholars, student musicians, union leaders, conductors, composers, grant officers, and board members.

So why now? And why UM? As scholars with deep personal and professional connections to the orchestra industry, we found it strange that partnerships between orchestras and universities were so rare. Hosting a dialogue at Michigan seemed imperative, considering the University trains future orchestral musicians. The University also offers a fresh environment which we hoped might serve as the foundation for lasting partnerships between orchestras and the academy.

And with a first-rate arts presenter on campus in the University Musical Society, we were able to schedule the Summit to coincide with a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in celebration of the 85th birthday of Pierre Boulez, who spoke at the Summit’s final event.

Over the course of three days, six panels, four breakout sessions, and two concerts, some 200 people filled a small amphitheatre for an open conversation about the state of their orchestras, creating a collective snapshot of the industry and offering up possible solutions to the difficulties so many face.

Conversations were organized around two themes: how organiza-tional structures and strategies have aided or hindered the orchestra’s success and the symbiotic and multifaceted relation-ship between an orchestra and its community.

Several themes and innovative ideas emerged. One of the most cited—the income gap between ticket revenue and expenses—received renewed scrutiny from a number of angles. Scholars and

arts leaders explored the historical underpinnings of that income gap, citing the 19th-century organizational choices that led to the corporate orchestral model while distancing the industry from its audience.

Much of the conversation, though, looked forward instead of back. A panel, “Reconceptualizing the Symphony” asked: What might the symphony orchestra look like in 25 years? Who is its audience? What is its structure? What is its relationship to its community?

For many, the answer lies in deepening community connections. Robert Birman, executive director of the Louisville Orchestra, argued that one key to success is a comprehensive business model that creates new “entry points” to engage community members of every age, not only in performances but by teaching, advocacy, and collaboration.

If orchestras are to survive and thrive in their communities, they will have to matter to people who never go to subscription concerts. Ryan Fleur, CEO of the Memphis Symphony, pointed out that, while some of the innovations he has implemented in Memphis are community-specific, others are broadly applicable: “We play the great works, but also mentor in inner cities. We’ve developed a leadership training program with Fortune 500 companies in Memphis and we’re working with a children’s hospital on music therapy programs.”

The orchestra’s capacity to educate community members of all ages was a recurring theme. Drawing on his experience as a music director, U-M’s director of orchestras Kenneth Kiesler voiced an impassioned call for an integrated emphasis on education, providing every student and adult the opportunity to experience live orchestral music.

Paul Austin, VP for the Regional Orchestra Players Association and member of the Grand Rapids Symphony, suggested that new board members receive training about the particular needs of orchestras as distinct from entertainment businesses. Teaching P

HO

TOS

:PET

ERS

MIT

HP

HO

TOG

RA

PH

Y

22 Michigan Muse

and advocacy must permeate the work of musicians, managers, and board members alike. Universities are one potential collabo-rator, but there are others, including senior centers, secondary schools, and community centers.

Ayden Adler, director of education at the Philadelphia Orchestra, described her vision of the orchestra as a community educator with a “horizontal spectrum” to address any number of educa-tional needs through music. Rather than putting the orchestra at the top of a cultural hierarchy, classical music must be integrated across the community.

CEO Tim Young and music director Laura Jackson (DMA ’05) of the Reno Philharmonic described their success in building community ties. Their orchestra, which remains in the black and continues to expand despite Nevada’s dire economy, has increased community investment by an active online dialogue with its audience. Reno just founded a third youth symphony and included over 400 community musicians in its recent “Spirit of the Season” holiday concert.

Central to both community engagement and education is partnership, which served as a unifying theme for the Summit’s final panel. According to Russell Willis Taylor, president of National Arts Strategies in Washington, D.C., partnerships must be undertaken strategically and in a spirit of true collaboration. Each partner organization must align its goals, focusing on both the “give” and the “get” in order to implement a successful and sustainable collaboration.

As a musician and administrator who has instigated a number of successful partnerships over the last decade, Aaron Dworkin (MM ’98), founder and president of the Sphinx Organization, warned that organizations must “trust but verify” when exploring potential partners. Many on the panel suggested that being selective in identifying partners and integrating these relationships deeply into an organization’s activities is more effective than creating a number of superficial associations.

One concept that gathered particular momentum is service exchange. Introduced by Ryan Fleur, service exchange refers to the hiring of musicians for services outside of rehearsals and concerts—teaching, mentoring, even running a local radio show. This model can help an orchestra balance its budget and increase

its connections to the community, while providing musicians additional paid work in a challenging economic environment.

Joseph Horowitz felt service exchange addressed “an oversupply of orchestra concerts nationally,” and many suggested that if orchestras could behave more like educational institutions and less narrowly as purveyors of concerts, their presence in and value to their communities might increase significantly.

At the end of the Summit, Pierre Boulez, who was in Ann Arbor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, spoke with emeritus musicology professor Glenn Watkins before some 200 students, faculty, and community members who listened intently as they discussed everything from Boulez’s development as a composer to his programming preferences as former music director of the New York Philharmonic.

Throughout the conversation, Boulez drew laughs and applause with his disarming charm. Mr. Boulez was gracious enough to accept questions from the audience, offering them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pick the brain of one of classical music’s most distinguished luminaries.

The Summit has come and gone, and while the circle has been symbolically and literally enlarged, our goal was to instigate action. Arts consultant and industry blogger Drew McManus organized an official Summit Blog on InsidetheArts.com, allowing over 1,500 people to experience the Summit online, in real time. These have been archived and are linked to the Summit Web site.

Several notable projects have arisen from the Summit’s efforts, including AE Central Consulting, a community consulting service provided by MBA and other university students through Arts Enterprise, a national initiative linking the arts and business education; Sounds of Success invites orchestras running success-ful programs to share their ideas with the industry as a whole.

The Ann Arbor Symphony has been especially proactive, jumpstarting an Ann Arbor Listens project—a community-wide initiative inspired by the one-book, one-community reading programs started by the Seattle Public Library and popular in Ann Arbor since 2003.

PH

OTO

S:P

ETER

SM

ITH

PH

OTO

GR

AP

HY

One thing the Summit made clear was that fruitful conversations happen when they include all invested parties and are held at a time and place safely removed from a budget crisis or strike. What made the Summit most exciting, however, was the inclusion of the next generation of musicians and arts leaders: students. One issue addressed was the tight job market, and the need to prepare today’s students—tomorrow’s professional musicians—for a more diverse workday.

“More people graduate from music schools per year than we have positions in the top 51 orchestras,” said Brian Rood (BM ’86, trumpet), president of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians. “It’s important to have back-up plans, but it’s also an impetus to give it all you can because there are surprisingly few jobs out there.”

“The orchestra is not dead. … We must be much more imaginative and effective … We can’t just say audiences are aging, nobody is interested in contemporary music. We must react. We must do something.” — PIERRE BOULEZ

Nathan Platte—a recent musicology Ph.D. from UM—remained hopeful, writing in a blog post: “More and more students want to invest their lives in music. If these students are taught to approach music-making as a means to an end [e.g., as a community service] and encouraged to develop skills in organizing and sustaining new musical initiatives, the future of American orchestras may be bright indeed.”

If you are interested in taking part in one of the projects men-tioned above, please email orchestrasummit@umich.edu. For more on the Summit, including a full schedule, list of partici-pants, and a video archive of the panels, please visit: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/orchestrasummit.

Spring 2010 23

24 Michigan Muse

It is no secret that American orchestras and arts organizations in general are facing unprecedented financial and structural struggles. Everything from the Cleveland Orchestra’s brief but revealing strike in January to the high-profile layoffs in mid-February at the Kimmel Center, home of the

Philadelphia Orchestra, paints a bleak picture of the current state and near future of an institution so central to American culture.

These increasingly public troubles were the catalyst for the University of Michigan’s revolutionary American Orchestras Summit held at Rackham Auditorium over two days in January. After hearing a myriad of viewpoints, I could have left feeling discouraged, wondering whether it’s worth it to explore a career of my own with an American orchestra. Another part of me consid-ered leaving in a resolute state of denial, choosing to ignore the troubles and preserve the idealistic view I have supported and admired since childhood.

Instead I chose to leave the Summit dressed in optimism. It is often just such times of crisis that require institutions to take a step back, reestablish their mission, and begin to work toward dynamic new opportunities. American orchestras are beginning to do just that, from the introduction of vibrant new music directors like Gustavo Dudamel in Los Angeles and Alan Gilbert in New York, to new approaches to programming like “Under the Big Top”, the Baltimore Symphony’s recent—and well received—run of circus-themed performances.

The common thread of the Summit is exactly the spirit upon which the event was based. The conference subtitle was “Englarging the Circle: Creating Partnerships in Research and Performance,” with partnerships the salient point of view. What made the Summit such a milestone was that orchestras from across the country came together, leaving behind any notions of status or competition, to rethink the future of the field.

It seems that orchestras need to adopt this collaborative attitude, both within their organizations and across the communities that support them, if there is hope for a productive future. Creating partnerships—with educational establishments and cultural organizations in its community—can only strengthen the orches-tra’s position. Breaking down barriers between an orchestra’s musicians and administration through a mutual understanding of each other’s concerns and priorities will create a harmonious (pun intended) cultural body whose mission is clear and more easily advanced.

It seems that collaboration is essential to every meaningful venture, be it artistic, economic, educational, or political. In January, I saw the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Puccini’s Turandot and was blown away not just by the elaborate set and costumes, lush orchestral sound, and energetic performers on stage, but by the sheer force of passion brought forth by all of these elements combined. The annual Collage Concert at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance embodies this collaborative spirit, as it joins the School’s diverse disciplines on the stage of Hill Auditorium for a one-night celebration of the performing arts. Even the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games were ultimately less about individual performances than about fostering international cooperation in uncertain diplomatic times.

Ultimately, the American Orchestras Summit was inspirational because it addressed the most important question: why do orchestras matter in the first place? The Summit was able to take place, and American orchestras can begin to look forward to a hopeful future, because of the understanding that the orchestra, and all of the individuals it involves, is merely an agent at the service of the unifying splendor of art.

BY PATRICK CARTER

PH

OTO

:PET

ERS

MIT

HP

HO

TOG

RA

PH

Y

STEVEN BALL (carillon and organ) released two new recordings, Fox Noel and 1001 Nights, celebrating the 80th anniversary of Atlanta’s Fox Theater. His recent scholarship on the life and music of Rene Louis Becker led to the gift of his complete works to the music library. Ball conducted a premiere of Becker’s Mass for Sts. Peter and Paul and will record his complete organ

works on the original instrument at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Detroit, where Ball succeeds him. Ball designed a class in bell founding, in collaboration with professors from engineering and art & design, the first of its kind to involve three schools.

JUDITH BECKER (ethnomusi-cology emeritus) published “Ethnomusicology and Empiricism in the Twenty-First

Century” in the fall 2009 Ethnomusicology (vol. 53, no. 3). At Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, in February she presented a public lecture for the Program in Culture, Brain, and Development, and, at a faculty seminar, “Action-in-the-World: Musical Emotion and Musical Motion.” At a U-M Interdisciplinary Music Forum in March she spoke on the topic “What does it mean to be ‘moved’ by music?” She will be the keynote speaker at Hofstra University, Long Island, NY, in May, for a conference on “The Hermeneutics of Sikh Music (rag) and Word (shabad).”

ANDREW BISHOP (jazz and contemporary improvisation) recently recorded as a multi-instrumentalist with Gerald Cleaver’s group Uncle June. He performed with another Cleaver group, Violet Hour, in Paris, Braga, Portugal, and New York City. His own trio Bishop/

Cleaver/Flood has performed widely; their new recording of Bishop’s De Profundis is scheduled for a fall release. Bishop was featured on Ellen Rowe’s Wishing Well, and, as composer and arranger, received three commissions from the new music group Opus 21, who he performed with in a concert of the music of Frank Zappa. That concert was profiled in Chamber Music Magazine (March/April 2010).

(L-R): MARILYN MASON, MICHELE JOHNS, JENNIFER STEERS (NUCLEAR ENGINEER-ING), SIPKJE PESNICHAK, CAROLINE K. POON (SMTD, ALL THREE STUDENTS INVOLVED IN THE PILOT BELL FOUNDRY CLASS), STEVEN BALL, JAMES KIBBIE, AND JENNY KING

ANDREW BISHOP

||facultynews|

Spring 2010 25

26 Michigan Muse

Retirements

26 Michigan Muse

BOB CULVER

Every morning at 7:30 a.m., Professor Bob Culver shows up to teach a class in string techniques, a class he’s taught for 33 years in a time slot he inherited from Elizabeth Green before him. Culver is in the business of string pedagogy, preparing music students to go out into the world and build their own music programs in schools in Michigan and beyond. This spring he retires.

Culver, who joined the faculty at Michigan in 1977, is a perform-ing violist and conductor as well. As a strings specialist, he has been key in the development of school orchestra programs throughout the country. One of the most sought-after consul-tants, clinicians, and conductors in the field of string music education, Culver has been invited to forty-seven states and twelve countries. Now also known as an expert in feasibility studies, he is routinely invited to evaluate programs and staff both here and abroad. Through the Michigan chapter of the American String Teachers Association (MASTA), he was actively engaged in outreach, developing MASTA elementary string camps and restructuring MASTA junior high string camps. Collaboration with James Froseth in major methods classes for instrument music teachers built the platform for the develop-ment of graduate-level work in string pedagogy. His video and manual, The Master Teacher Profile, are widely used in school districts and teacher-training institutes. As a conductor he has been active in thirty-six all-state orchestra festivals and in many more regional activities.

Culver is a former violist with the Rochester Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony and the Hughes Quartet of Ohio State University. He is past president of the American String Teachers Association, past artistic director of the Banff Festivals of Youth Orchestras and founder-director of the American String Workshop.

MICHAEL UDOW

Michael Udow retires this spring after twenty-five years of leading the percussion program at Michigan. Udow retired from his principal percussion position with the Santa Fe Opera at the end of the 2009 season after more than thirty years.

His post-retirement plans, though, will keep him busy and engaged as he continues to compose and teach internationally. Michael has enjoyed an expansive and diversified career in both symphonic and opera repertoires as well as contemporary solo and chamber music. He has been a member of groups as divergent as the New Orleans Philharmonic, Summit Brass, the Tone Road Ramblers, and the Galaxy Percussion Group, which included numerous collaborations and recordings with marimba legend Keiko Abe. Udow has also designed innovative percussion instruments and accessories that are used by percussionists throughout the world. As president of Equilibrum recording label, he has released a large output of recordings, many of them by U-M faculty colleagues and ensembles.

Most recently, Udow has been traveling to Asia, both performing and conducting master classes and clinics. His latest composi-tion, Moon Shadows for solo percussion and symphony band was dedicated to the University Symphony Band, under Michael Haithcock, with whom he performed the work in December 2009.

“Mike’s influence in percussion pedagogy, instrument design, and performance has been profound,” says former winds and percussion chair Fritz Kaenzig. “He has been one of the giants in University teaching, with former students performing and teaching worldwide. One of his former students, Joseph Gramley, now serves as percussion coordinator. Udow’s legacy will continue long after his retirement.”

Spring 2010 27Spring 2010 27

WILLIAM BOLCOM (composi-tion emeritus) and JOAN MORRIS (musical theatre emeritus) celebrated the launch of their new CD Someone Talked: Memories of World War II, at the U-M Graduate Library in November. Students from Joan’s cabaret class joined the duo in performances from that CD, along with tenor Robert White and narrator Hazen Schumacher. Bolcom & Morris continue to tour, with stops for CD signings along the way. In April, Morris narrated Walton’s Façade with theatre & drama faculty member Philip Kerr and the Michigan Chamber Players. May and June will find them at the American Spring Festival in Prague for performances of both Bolcom’s work and theirs as a duo. Bolcom’s Romanza was premiered by the New Century Chamber Orchestra with violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg in San Francisco and his Billy in the Darbies by baritone Stephen Salters and the Lark Quartet at Stanford, Bolcom’s alma mater.

EVAN CHAMBERS (composi-tion) will see the release of a new recording of his orchestral song cycle, The Old Burying Ground, in June. The disk features the U-M Symphony Orchestra under Kenneth Kiesler. Chambers’ Concerto for Saxophone and Band was premiered, toured, and recorded by the West Point Band; it was also highlighted at the University of Georgia during the North American Saxophone Alliance conference. Chambers was in residence for three days of performances of his music at Texas Tech University; he will be a guest at the Utah Arts Festival

and at the Lindesfarne Fellowship in Santa Fe New Mexico.

AMY CHAVASSE (dance) premiered Hunger for the Longing, (a biased history of seduction), inspired by Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, for (Re)Visionary Dances at the Power Center. She will create a new dance and teach for Ann Arbor Dance Works and return to Florence Summer Dance and Pro Danza Italia for a fourth summer. She will travel to Bari, Italy for a short residency with Res Extensa, a contempo-rary theater/dance company, between engagements in Florence and Castiglioncello. Chavasse Dance & Performance will present two works at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Beckett (MA), with U-M alums, current students, and past collaborators.

TIMOTHY CHEEK (voice and diction ) performed a recital with baritone Matthew Markham to kick off the American rounds of the 10th International Czech and Slovak Voice Competition in Green Bay. He served as the official pianist for the competition, and played for finalists in Montreal. The first-place winner was mezzo Melody Wilson (MM; specialist degree ’10), only the second American to win the competi-tion. Cheek’s book Prodaná nevésta/The Bartered Bride: Performance Guide with Translations and Pronunciation was published by Scarecrow Press in December. He was a guest coach at the University of North Texas for their Czech production of The Bartered Bride in January. In April, Cheek performed with his wife, dancer Bohuslava Jelínková, and soprano Laurie Lashbrook at the Czech and Slovak Music and Related Arts conference in Grand Valley.

COLLEEN CONWAY (music education) presented sessions during winter 2010 at the Michigan Music Conference, American Educational Research, and the Music Educators National Conference. Her “Instrumental Music Education Student Perceptions of Tensions Experienced During their Undergraduate Degree” appeared in the Journal of Research in Music Education this semester, and “The Role of Graduate and Undergraduate Interactions in the Development of Pre-Service Music Teachers and Music Teacher Educators: A Self-Study in Music Teacher Education” was published in the

Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education. She has been traveling to promote her new Handbook for the Music Mentor.

ANTHONY ELLIOTT (cello) guest conducted the San Antonio Symphony, featuring works by Joan Tower and Coleridge Taylor Perkinson. His performance of Perkinson’s Lamentations Suite is now touring in an exhibition by painter Mark Priest, featuring scenes from the life of Harriett Tubman. Recent U-M alumna Marcia Porter (DMA ’02, voice) was on the same program, performing Samuel Barber’s Knoxville, Summer of 1915. Other recent engagements include the Sphinx Symphony and the New York, Florida, Alaska, and Washington All-State Orchestras. He also appeared as cello soloist with the Ann Arbor Symphony, University Symphony Orchestra, and the Grosse Point Symphony.

WALTER EVERETT (chair, music theory) visited Princeton University in April to present his lecture, “Of Harry Pa(r)tch and Other Challenges to Tonal Centricity in Early 21st-Century Rock.” Albin Zak’s review of Everett’s book, The Foundations of Rock (2009), appears in the Journal of the Society for American Music.

KATE FITZPATRICK (music education) presented a session at the 2010 Michigan Music Conference entitled “Less can be more: Fostering student musical independence from the podium.” In March, she was

WILLIAM BOLCOM AND JOAN MORRIS WITH STUDENTS ANTHONY ELLIOT JOSEPH GRAMLEY PERFORMED ON THE GRAMMY-WINNING CD SONGS OF JOY AND PEACE

AMY CHAVASSES’S HUNGER FOR THE LONGING, (A BIASED HISTORY OF SEDUCTION)

TIMOTHY CHEEK’S PRODANÁ NEVÉSTA/THE BARTERED BRIDE

28 Michigan Muse

invited to serve as the “Women in Music” speaker for the North Central Division convention of the band service organization Tau Beta Sigma, where she also conducted the conference reading band. This spring, she will present papers at the Establishing Identities Conference in Urbana-Champaign and the CSEME conference in Evanston, and in March was named chair-elect of the Society for Research in Music Education Social Sciences special research interest group.

JANE FULCHER (musicology) had her article, “Du Classicisme reactionnaire à celui de la resistance française,” published in L’Action Française. Culture, Societé, Politique, ed. by Michel Leymarie. She was featured in an interview at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris for the PBS program, Paris, the Luminous Years: the Birth of the Modern, scheduled to air this fall through WNET. In addition to chairing a session at the American Musicological Society conference in Philadelphia, Fulcher presented “Born Like a Phoenix from the Ashes? The ‘Renewal’ of French Music 1870-1918” as part of the U-M Museum of Art exhibition “Painters of the Normandy Coast.”

CHARLES HIROSHI GARRETT’s (musicology) book Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century, published by University of California Press in 2008, was awarded the Irving Lowens Memorial Book Award by the Society for American Music. The book also received an honorable mention for the Woody Guthrie Award, pre-sented by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, U.S. branch.

JOSEPH GRAMLEY (percus-sion) toured the top European festivals last fall with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, whose CD Songs of Joy and Peace, on which Gramley performs, won a Grammy. In recent months, Gramley has appeared as a guest artist with the Vanderbilt University Wind Ensemble, where he was in residence with composer Joseph Schwantner, performing his percussion concerto. Other concerto appearances included marimba concerti with the Bozeman and the Wyoming Symphonies and concerts as guest principal timpanist with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Gramley is off on another major Silk Road tour, this time of Asia, in April.

JESSICA HAHN (theatre & drama costume design) has had a very busy year while recover-ing from knee replacement surgery. In addition to designing Uncommon Women and Others in the fall, she was busy working on the costumes for the April Musical Theatre production of Ragtime. With a cast of 40 and over 180 costumes, Jessica has been spending much of her time in the costume shop. She also curated Women in White, an exhibit of Turn-of-the-Century women’s gowns that were on display in the Power Center Lobby in April.

CAROLINE HELTON (voice) and Kathryn Goodson (DMA ’05), collaborative pianist for voice, winds and percussion, are pleased to announce that their CD Voices of the Holocaust is now available on iTunes. A collection of art songs by Jewish composers whose lives were affected by the events surround-ing World War II, including pieces by Kurt Weill, Robert Kahn, Erich Korngold, Darius Milhaud, and Oskar Morawetz, it was recorded on the BlockM record label.

MICHELE JOHNS (organ) was honored as the founder and first dean of the American Guild of

Organists Ann Arbor chapter during its year-long 40th year celebration. She spearheaded an event to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Karl Wilhelm mechanical action pipe organ at Ann Arbor’s First Congregational Church, a project for which she was educator and consultant. The church also celebrated the 25th anniversary of its organist, Marilyn Mason. Dr. Johns continues as administrator of the Brown Bag Organ Series at the U-M School of Public Health, and bringing music to new audiences on U-M’s medical campus.

JAMES KIBBIE (organ) played two recitals in January for the Associazione organistica del Lazio in Rome. In March, BBC radio featured his recently completed cycle of Bach recordings (www.blockmrecords.org/bach) in a broadcast hosted by James Jolly, former editor of Gramophone. Kibbie and six of his current and former students recreated Mendelssohn’s all-Bach recital of 1840 in performances at Calvin College in Grand Rapids and St. Jude Catholic Church in Detroit.

Last fall, KENNETH KIESLER conducted the University Opera Theatre production of Marriage

||faculty news|

(L TO R) PERFORMERS ANDREW HERBRUCK, JOHN BERESFORD, DIANA SAUM, JOE BALISTRERI, RICHARD NEWMAN, AND JOHN WOOLSEY, TOGETHER WITH STUDENTS FROM CALVIN COLLEGE, PROFESSORS NORMA DE WAAL MALEFYT AND LARRY VISSER (CALVIN COLLEGE) AND JAMES KIBBIE

KENNETH KIESLER

Spring 2010 29

Richard Kruse (BM 64, MM ’65) was first clarinetist for

the University Symphony Band for four years. He was a

featured soloist with the Band on their now historic tour

to Russia in 1961, under the baton of William Revelli.

A Life in Music, a Gift to the Future

These experiences left a lasting impression. Richard went on to a career as band director and head of the music department for Romulus Schools. Now he wants to give back by includ-ing the School of Music, Theatre & Dance in his estate in order to establish the Richard Kruse and Barbara James Scholarship Fund.

“I had amazing experiences at the School,” Kruse says, “and want to make them available to others. Through this gift, I am able to honor my late fiancée, Barbara James, and relive my

Michigan experience by providing for future generations of clarinetists. I’m excited that this award will include performance experiences.”

To find out more about Planned Giving and how it can work for you, contact:

Maureen SchaferOffice of Development and External RelationsSchool of Music, Theatre & Danceschafema@umich.edu734-764-4453

30 Michigan Muse

of Figaro, led several concerts with the University Symphony Orchestra, and the Berlioz Requiem with the University Choir and Chamber Choirs. While on sabbatical this spring, he was a visiting artist at the Royal Academy of Music, in London, where he taught the studio of conductors. He also conducted Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York City, and led an international group of conduc-tors in a week of master classes in Germany with the Berlin Sinfonietta.

NANCY AMBROSE KING (oboe) presented a solo recital as part of the Pick-Staiger Concert Series at Northwestern University, appearing with Sylvia Wang, piano, and Gail Williams, horn. She presented master classes at Northwestern University, the University of Wisconsin, Oklahoma State University, the University of Illinois, and Florida Gulf Coast University. She performed David Mullikin’s Concerto for Oboe with the Dearborn Symphony and served as an adjudicator of the Chicago Symphony Young Artist Competition. As a graduate of U-M in 1980, King will be inducted into to the School of Music, Theatre and Dance’s Alumni Hall of Fame at this fall’s annual reunion.

ANDY KIRSHNER (Performing Arts Technology, Art and Design) has completed the screenplay for his feature-length

film, Liberty’s Secret, a “national security musical” that satirizes contemporary political propaganda. This summer, he will record some of the music he has composed for the movie with faculty members Ellen Rowe, Michael Gould, Andrew Bishop, and Katri Ervamaa (Residential College), along with recent grads Tim Flood (BFA ’98, jazz, MA ’06, media arts) and Brad Phillips (BFA ’07, jazz). The film is planned for release in the 2012 the election season, but you can hear musical samples and read script excerpts at http://www.libertysecretmovie.com

PAUL R. LEHMAN (music theory emeritus) has remained active since his retirement, authoring more than forty articles in professional publica-tions and delivering more than two-dozen addresses to professional organizations, including as keynote speaker at the 2007 Centennial Congress celebrating the 100th anniver-sary of MENC: The National Association for Music Education. He was inducted into the Music Educators Hall of Fame, sponsored by MENC, in 2000, and in 2002 was made an Honorary Life Member of the International Society for Music Education. He now lives in Georgetown, TX, with his wife Ruth; together they have traveled extensively.

STEPHEN LUSMANN (voice) sang Logan Skelton’s Anderson Songs and the world premiere of

his Clyburn Songs, with the composer at the piano, at Northwestern University, where he also presented a master class. A recording of these performances, along with Skelton’s Ohr Songs, will be released this fall. At the U-M Museum of Art, he sang Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, with Martin Katz conducting. Lusmann conducted alumni of the U-M Men’s Glee Club for their 150th anniversary concert and adjudicated the Dayton Opera Competition, was a member of the Road Scholars Tour, and returns for his tenth summer to the Seagle Music Colony.

JEFFREY LYMAN (bassoon) will perform this summer with the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego, and will immediately after join colleagues Nancy Ambrose King, Chad Burrow, and Amy Cheng in a recital at the 2010 Conference of the International Double Reed Society in Oklahoma. This past March, Lyman presented a selection of recently composed works, including two U.S. premieres, on his recital “Refrigerate After Opening: Fresh New Music for Bassoon.”

JOSHUA MAJOR (opera) recently directed a successful production of The Cunning Little Vixen for the Cape Town Opera and the University of Cape Town. He also completed a production of Lucia di Lamermoor at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, featuring recent

Michigan graduate, Michael Fabiano (BM ’05). He continues into his seventh season as artistic director of the Pine Mountain Music Festival based in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. This summer Major will direct La Traviata for the Festival and Les Mamelles de Tirésias for the Canadian Vocal Arts Institute in Montreal.

MARILYN MASON (organ) has been invited to lecture at the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Washington D.C. this July. She will lecture on new music, including works by Jerry Bilik (BM ‘55, MM ’61) and Albert Fadak, among others, which will appear in Volume Five of her collection of commissioned works. She was celebrated at the 25th anniversary of the Karl Wilhelm organ at the First Congregational Church, with the organ builder in attendance. The occasion also marked her 25th year as church organist. Her colleagues and students performed in her honor.

MARIE MCCARTHY (chair, music education) presented papers at the 2010 Biennial Music Educators National Conference in March and the Michigan Celebrates Motown: The Symposium held on campus in February. She serves as extern examiner at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, for this academic year. Her most recent publications appear as book chapters in Music Education for Changing Times: Guiding Visions for Practice, and Music in Compulsory Schooling: Comparative Historical Perspectives. She submitted several contributions for the Second Edition of The Grove Dictionary of American Music.

GUSTAV MEIER (conducting emeritus) has released a new book, The Score, the Orchestra, and the Conductor (Oxford U Press), which “demystifies the conductor’s craft,” explaining and showing what a conductor must know to be successful. From the conductor’s first rehearsal with an orchestra on

||faculty news|

JESSICA HAHN’S COSTUME DESIGNS FOR RAGTIME MARIE MCCARTHY AT MOTOWN SYMPOSIUM

Spring 2010 31

up, the book covers the full range, from rudimentary to sophisticated. The book includes, among other things, a glossary of orchestral instru-ments in four languages.

VIRGIL MOOREFIELD (per-forming arts technology) announces the publication in paperback of his The Producer As Composer (MIT Press). He also contributed a chapter about covers, remixes, and

mashups to the new Recorded Music: Performance, Culture and Technology (Cambridge U Press). His recent intermedia piece Five Ideas about the Relation of Sight and Sound (2008), composed by Moorefield with techno-artistic contributors Rob Alexander (BFA ’07, MA ’09) and graduate student Devin Kerr, enjoyed success at the Windsor Festival of Canadian Music. The piece consists of five tableaux, each

exploring a particular facet of the interplay between image and sound.

CHRISTIANNE MYERS (theatre & drama) designed costumes for University Productions’ Tartuffe, The Marriage of Figaro and Our Town. Professionally, designs included the world premiere of Gravity and Boeing, Boeing, both at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, and an original design of Rigoletto for the Florentine Opera.

LOUIS NAGEL (piano) per-formed Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the Dexter (MI) Symphony Orchestra in December. In January, he and his wife Julie Jaffee Nagel collaborated on a presentation on Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A Minor, K. 310, later repeated for the New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Institute. His interview with Alan Walker on Chopin appeared in the December/January American Music Teacher and a review of Walker’s biography of musicolo-gist Hans von Bülow is forth-coming in the same publication. Nagel visited the campus of Presbyterian College (SC) for a solo recital and master class. This summer, he will perform at Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor.

OYAMO (theatre & drama) lectured on central campus at an Adelia Cheever event in the Helen Newberry Residence Hall

and at the U-M Humanities Conference. He did a voice-over for the National Marrow Donor Program and his I Am a Man, based on the sanitation strike that culminated in MLK’s death, was read for the Working Theater’s 25th Anniversary in New York City. He published Hopwood Award-winner Seth Moore’s play Jonesin’, staged by University Productions last season. He was named faculty fellow at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and produced Playfest, staged readings of student plays.

AMY PORTER (flute) performed world premieres written specifically for her: The Shadow Of Sirius Concerto, by Joel Puckett (DMA ’04), commis-sioned by the U-M Symphony Band; David Sampson’s Undercurrents for solo flute; Christopher Caliendo’s The Ghost Sonata for flute and piano; and Michael Daugherty’s The Trail of Tears Concerto for flute and orchestra, which she performs with the Omaha, Delaware, Ann Arbor, and Tupelo symphonies, and the American Composers Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall. In May, she visits Slovenia for the 8th Slovenian Flute Festival, the Texas Flute Society, and performs a recital at the National Flute Association Convention in Anaheim, CA.

PAUL RARDIN (choral conduct-ing) led the Men’s Glee Club

VOCALISTS IN RECENT GEORGE LONDON COMPETITION (GEORGE SHIRLEY, SECOND FROM LEFT)

PAUL RARDIN CONDUCTS

MA

RIL

YNM

AS

ON

PH

OTO

:R

YAN

MU

NS

ON

32 Michigan Muse

in an invited performance at the American Choral Directors Association Central Division Conference in Cincinnati in February. He served as guest conductor for the Michigan Music Conference TTBB Honors Choir in January and for the West Virginia All-State Mixed Choir in March. His composition Sound Off, recently published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing, was performed by the Colorado All-State Men’s Choir in February. Rardin also edited two forthcoming publications cel-ebrating the 150th anniversary of the Men’s Glee Club, the CD Michigan, Remember and the songbook Sing to the Colors.

ELLEN ROWE (chair, jazz and improvisation) celebrated the release of her quartet’s CD, Wishing Well, with special guest trumpeter Ingrid Jensen. In September, her arrangement of guitarist John Scofield’s Go Blow was premiered with John and the Westchester Jazz Orchestra in New York. She completed a three-week residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts’ Leighton Artist Colony. Other recent activities include con-ducting the California All-State Jazz Ensemble and guest artist appearances at the Lafayette (CA) and the University of Kentucky Jazz Festivals. Last fall, she won the women’s division of the inaugural Rockhead Trail Marathon, coming in fourth overall.

STEPHEN RUSH (performing arts technology and dance) has been the course coordinator for new class Creative Process, which explores creativity with and theories from Taoism and Meister Eckhardt. In August, Rush will take students from SMTD to India to study music, dance, and yoga. This fall, his Tango Symphony will be premiered by Leonard Slatkin and the DSO. He looks forward to the release of his new Yuganaut album Sharks, a recording with faculty members Joe Gramley and David Jackson of his chamber work Inner Rebellion, and the DVD Pauline Oliveros with the U-M Digital Music Ensemble.

YIZHAK SCHOTTEN (viola) taught last summer at the Chautauqua Music Festival in New York, the Domaine Forget Festival in Quebec, and at the Montecito Music Festival in Santa Barbara. This year he has given master classes at the Eastman School of Music, at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bowling Green University, and at Stanford and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He also was a master class clinician and gave a session on “Practicing and Sound Production” at the American String Teachers National Conference in Santa Clara, California. He performed recitals with KATHERINE COLLIER (piano) at Chautauqua, Eastman, Bowling Green, Stanford, and San Francisco, in addition to several faculty recitals at the SMTD.

GEORGE SHIRLEY (voice emeritus) played King Alonso in The Tempest and Duke Senior in As You Like It at the 2009 Michigan Shakespeare Festival. He visited the University of Cape Town for master classes and presented the opening master class at the National Opera Association National Convention. He was soloist in Lift Every Voice with the Amarillo Opera, in the premiere of a new anthem by Kelly Hale at the First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, and in a Black Pioneers Concert, at Claflin (SC) University. He adjudicated the George London and American Traditions Competitions in New York City and Savannah, respectively.

PETER SPARLING (dance) has been awarded a four-month residency this fall at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. He will make new screen dances, attend screen dance festivals, continue a compara-tive study for video of male dance improvisers, and write articles for Ballet Review. He recently performed in Pittsburgh with The Glue Factory Project’s A Seat at the Table, directed by U-M dance alumna Beth Corning (BFA ‘78) and featuring five professional dancers over the age of 40.

MICHAEL UDOW (percussion) toured Asia for seven weeks, performing concerts as soloist in Seoul and with Keiko Abe and Takako Nakama in Kagoshima, Japan. He presented master classes, clinics, and lessons at colleges and universities in Korea, Japan, and China, and a two-week intensive course at Taiwan National University and a composition class at Taipei University. He premiered his 25-minute multiple-percussion concerto, Moon Shadows, with colleague Michael Haithcock and the University Symphony Band. This summer, he will perform with Galaxy Percussion Group on a two-week tour in Korea, with Anthony DiSanza (MM ’92, DMA ’03), Roger Braun (BM ’90), and Christopher Froh (BM ’97, MM ’98).

STEPHEN WEST (voice) makes his debut this June with the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, singing Dr. Schön, the lead baritone role in Berg’s opera, Lulu, a co-production with the Opera de Lyon and the Wiener Festwoche in Vienna. July will find him as soloist in Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied with the Orquestra Sinfónica de Minería in Mexico City, then teaching voice for the School’s MPulse intensive. He will appear with the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam as Mephistophélès in Pascal Dusapin’s Faustus, the last night, a role he created for the American premiere of this work at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2007.

BETTY ANNE YOUNKER (music education) continues as president of the Michigan Music Educators Association and as board member for the International Society for Improvised Music, the International Society for Music Education, and the Society for Music Teacher Education. Publications include two book chapters, one of which is with Dr. Pamela Burnard (Cambridge, UK). In fall 2009, she presented papers at the College Music Society and National Association of Schools of Music, and as one of three invited panelists at the Society for Music Teacher Education.

||faculty news|

MICHAEL UDOW

||students|

Restaging Paul Taylor’s landmark 1980 Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal), under the direction of Taylor restager and former dancer Ruth Andrien, for the 2010 Power Center performance, was both a challenge and a thrill for our dance students. That profound experience was further reinforced in March, when fourteen lucky students went to New York City for three days with the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

Managing director John Tomlinson gave students a tour of City Center, where the company performs. While in New York, they had a chance to observe a dress rehearsal and attend four of the PTDC season performances. They were invited to take part in two master classes at Taylor’s new studio on Grand Street, one taught by Andrien, who will also, by the way, act as this summer’s artistic director for U-M Paul Taylor intensive, June 19-July 1.

Other thrills and chills included a chance to chat with dance critic Deborah Jowitt (Village Voice, New York Times) and attend a Taylor alumni reception, attended by several of the original Sacre cast members. This fall, October 7-9 and as part of an ongoing celebra-tion of Taylor’s 80th birthday, University Musical Society will present the Paul Taylor Dance Company in its 2010-2011 season. Plans are also in the works for the students to reprise their Sacre perfor-mance while the company is in town.

“I’ve spent almost a year now researching Paul Taylor and his company,” says undergraduate dance student Daniela Carmen Blechner, “but to actually see the company perform, meet the past and present dancers, and be part of Taylor’s 80th Birthday celebra-tion is incredible. The amount that I gained from this one experience surpasses anything I could have gotten from books or videos.”

Dance Students Invited to Visit Paul Taylor Dance Company

RUTH ANDRIEN (CENTER) WITH CAST OF ‘LE SACRE’

RU

TH

AN

DR

IEN

PH

OTO

:AN

GEL

AC

ESER

EP

HO

TOG

RA

PH

Y

Spring 2010 33

34 Michigan Muse

DANNY ABOSCH, undergradu-ate student in choral music education, was one of twelve participants selected to study musical theatre writing with Broadway composers Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights) and Craig Carnelia (Working, Sweet Smell of Success) as part of a week-long Johnny Mercer Songwriter’s Project at Northwestern University last June. Danny was also invited to present a master class, “Writing for Musical Theatre,” at the 2010 Illinois High School Theatre Festival at Illinois State University in January.

RON AMCHIN, freshman composition student working with Evan Chambers, won an honorable mention award from the New York Art Ensemble Young Composer Competition for his Three Pieces for Unaccompanied Clarinet.

Musicology doctoral student ABBY ANDERTON, who is writing her dissertation on the American postwar de-Nazifica-tion of classical music in Berlin, was offered two fellowships to spend next year in Germany, one from the German DAAD and a Fulbright. She has accepted the Fulbright.

Freshman cellist MATTHEW ARMBRUSTER recently won the concerto competition of the Tennessee Cello Workshop, and performed the Haydn D Major Cello Concerto with the University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra. He also won second prize at the recent cello festival at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

Last summer, JOHN BERESFORD, a senior in organ performance and church music, returned for the third time to Bamako, Mali where he spent two weeks teaching music to young Christian adults. Over the past four years, the project has been able to provide over 200 donated instruments to Hope School, providing the foundation for a music school and music in local churches. On his first two trips, Beresford taught a keyboard class; this past summer he was asked to direct the choir. He hopes to return in the summer of 2011 to continue support of this growing program.

LAURA GOBEN, a freshman in oboe performance, has been dedicating her time to the Ypsilanti Youth Orchestra, founded when the Ypsilanti Public School District cut funding for music in the schools. Goben and several other students, in both performance and education, became involved in the program as an Arts Enterprise class with musicol-ogy faculty member Mark Clague. “Being a part of this group has opened my eyes to the impact music has on young kids,” Goben says, “especially when it is not readily available in the schools.”

ART JOSLIN, DMA student in voice, was selected by the National Association of Teachers of Singing to receive an Independent Teacher Fellowship that will take him to the national conference in Salt Lake City in July for master classes and sessions on all aspects of

singing and the teaching of singing. Teaching fellows are required to develop a program based on what they learned at the conference.

Senior dance students SARAH KONNER and AUSTIN SELDEN, who performed a duet, Dirty up to the Knuckles, were recog-nized at the regional American College Dance Festival’s juried competition, held at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. The two will represent the central region at the national gala at Kennedy Center in late May.

AMY PETRONGELLI, a master’s student in voice, won the 2010 Friends of Opera Competition. MONICA SCIAKY, also a master’s candidate in voice, will be in the New Jersey Opera Young Artist Program this summer; master’s student JOSEPH ROBERTS will tour Europe as baritone soloist in Elijah with Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.

BEN SMOLEN, working on his specialist degree in flute, will be one of 42 flutists from 22 countries in the world under the age of 30 to compete in the 4th Carl Nielsen International Flute Competition in Odense, Denmark. He was chosen from 175 entries from 45 countries. His recent recording of the first movement

of the Mozart G major Concerto, the Nielsen Concerto, and an Andersen etude won him entry. This competition is held only every four years; Smolen will perform in Denmark May 30-June 9, 2010.

Composition students from the SMTD are participating in Positive Space, a new program from the U-M Museum of Art that fosters personal relation-ships among composers, performers, and audiences, culminating in performances and discussions throughout the museum’s newly renovated spaces. In March, Positive Space featured six new percussion concerti composed by SMTD students DAVID BIEDENBENDER, PAUL DOOLEY, RECEP GUL, ASAF PERES, WILLIAM STANTON, and ROGER ZARE. Percussionists were joined by a variety of chamber ensembles.

Three voice students of Stephen Lusmann won competitions at the district level of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in January. CLAIRE DIVIZIO, a senior, and KYLE KNAPP, a master’s candidate, won in Detroit. EDWARD HANLON, specialist, won in Salt Lake City. All three will advance to the regional auditions.

JOHN BERESFORD

LAURA GOBEN WITH STUDENTS FROM THE YPSILANTI YOUTH ORCHESTRA

BEN SMOLEN STIJN DE COCK

||students|

Spring 2010 35

CONCERTO COMPETITION WINNERS! This year’s winners, in the undergraduate division, were JONATHAN HULTING-COHEN, saxophone, who performed the Symphonic Rhapsody for alto saxophone and Orchestra by John Anthony Lennon, and SIYI FANG, piano, who played Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. In the graduate division, BRIAN HSU, piano, played the Bartok Concerto for Piano and Orchestra 2, and KYLE KNAPP, tenor, who sang Les Illuminations de Rimbaud, Op 18, by Benjamin Britten. Congratulations to all!

Trios Abound! TRIO LA VITA, comprised of MARIA BESSMELTSEVA, violin, CARRIE PIERCE, cello, and MISUZU TANAKA, piano, and

coached by violin faculty member Yehonatan Berick, took several awards at the Joan and Daniel Rutenberg Chamber Music Competition and Festival, held last fall at the University of South Florida in Tampa. The trio, working together only since August of 2009, took second prize overall, in addition to the John Ireland Prize for an Outstanding Performance of a John Ireland Piano Trio, the Jeremy Rutenberg Prize for an Outstanding Performance of a Classical Trio, and the Melpomone Prize for the Piano Trio with the Most Potential. The trio coached extensively with Christopher Harding, piano and chamber music, Anthony Elliott, cello, and Alicia Doudna, violin.

THE SWEETWATER TRIO—DAVID ORMAI, violin, ERIC MOORE, cello, and JULIA

SICILIANO, piano—traveled to the same competition and came away with honorable mention for an Outstanding Performance of a Beethoven Piano Trio and honorable mention for a Performance of a John Ireland Piano Trio. The Sweetwater Trio coached with Gabe Bolkosky, associated faculty in violin and member of the resident Phoenix Quartet, and Christopher Harding.

THE SICILIAN TRIO, SAMANTHA BINIKER, piano, JEAN HEE LEE, violin, and ANDREW HAYHURST, cello, won the East Central Division Competition of the Music Teachers National Association Collegiate Chamber Music Competition in January, performing trios by Mendelssohn and faculty composer Paul Schoenfield. They represented Michigan at the national competition in Albuquerque in March. The trio was coached by Alicia Doudna, adjunct faculty and member of the Phoenix String Quartet, Christopher Harding, and Paul Schoenfield, composition.

From the flute studio of Amy Porter: DMA student SETH MORRIS is a finalist in the Myrna Brown Competition in Denton Texas in May. Junior KATIE LEUNG is the winner of the Austrian American Society of Delaware Scholarship to the Mozarteum Summer Academy in Austria for 2010. Master’s student MIRA MAGRILL and sophomore KELLY ZIMBA were two of five finalists in the Pittsburgh Flute Association Competition in April. Senior KENZIE SLOTTOW, junior RACHEL BLUMENTHAL, sophomore KAT STANDEFER, freshmen AMANDA GALICK and MICHAEL AVITABILE, who is also a Shipman Scholar, placed as one of five finalists in the Ervin Monroe Young Artists Competition for the Southeast Michigan Flute Association in April. Avitabile was also one of five finalists in the Byron Hester Flute Competition in Houston and a finalist in the Lansing

SHIN HWANG AND JANI PARSONS

Musicale’s Richardson Scholarship for Woodwinds.

The Ann Arbor Society of Musical Arts held its annual Young Artists Competition in Britton Recital Hall in February, this year for pianists. Alumnae of Mu Phi Epsilon and Sigma Alpha Iota sponsor the competition. This year, first prize: went to STIJN DE COCK, a student of Logan Skelton; second prize to SHIN HWANG, student of Arthur Greene; third prize to JANI PARSONS, student of Arthur Greene. JOHN BOGDAN, a student of Christopher Harding, won honorable mention.

CONCERTO COMPETITION WINNER SIYI FANG

SIY

IFA

NG

PH

OTO

:MA

RG

OT

I.S

CH

ULM

AN

||alumnisociety|

Nancy Ambrose King, BM ’84 (oboe), was recognized her senior year with the School’s highest accolade, the Stanley Medal. She received her DMA, master’s, and performer’s certificate from the Eastman School. King has appeared as soloist throughout the U.S. and abroad and has taught and performed at festivals around the country. She has recorded three CDs of her own and will be featured on a recording with the U-M Symphony Band perform-ing the Jennifer Higdon Oboe Concerto and the works of Dutilleux for winds. American Record Guide described her playing as, “Marvelously evocative, full of character, sultry and seductive, with a soft-spoken, utterly supple tone, and as musically descriptive as any I have heard.”

Hall of Fame 2010 Award Winners

Larry Rachleff, MM ’79 (band conducting) and MM ’79 (percussion), who is now celebrating his fourteenth season as music director of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, also serves as director of orchestras at Rice University’s Shepherd School. Known for rapport with orchestra musicians, he is in constant demand as a guest conductor and was chosen as one of four American conduc-tors to lead the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall under the mentorship of Pierre Boulez. An enthusiastic advocate of public school music education, Rachleff has conducted all-state orchestras and festivals in virtually every state as well as throughout Europe and Canada. Rachleff has collaborated with leading composers including Samuel Adler, Luciano Berio, George Crumb, Michael Daugherty, and John Harbison.

Many thanks to the Music, Theatre & Dance alumni who attended the 2009 reunion. The events were a huge success and we’re already looking forward to the 2010 reunion, homecoming weekend, October 14-17, 2010.

Several of this year’s Music, Theatre & Dance reunion activities will be held in the School’s newest building, the Walgreen Drama Center.

It will give us a chance to reminisce about our time at Michigan while experiencing the newest facilities used by current U-M students, faculty, and staff.

The 2010 celebration will start with a Back-stage tour of Hill Auditorium at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 14, followed that evening by the 1960 Alumni Gala Dinner at the Michigan League. I’m pleased to report that John Morgan (BM ’60, MM ’62 Music Education) and Alveris Van Fleet-Corson (BM ’60 Music Education) will represent the SMTD Class of 1960 on the 50th Reunion Committee.

The reunion continues on Friday, October 15 with the annual State of the School Address from Dean Christopher Kendall in Walgreen Drama Center’s Stamps Auditorium at 11:15 a.m. Later that day, the third annual Alumni Open Choral Sing will also be in Stamps from 3:00-4:30 p.m., this year led by Jerry Blackstone, chair of the conducting depart-ment, and open to all SMTD alumni and University gradu-ates 1960 and prior.

Following the Sing, please join SMTD alumni, Dean Kendall, faculty, staff, and students for the SMTD Reception and Alumni Awards Ceremony, 4:30-6:30 p.m. in the Towsley Musical Theatre Studio in the Walgreen Drama Center as we celebrate the 2010 Alumni Award recipients and members of the Class of 1960.

The celebration will continue with the U-M Homecoming Game on Saturday, October 16 and a student-led tour of SMTD facilities on North Campus on Sunday, October 17 from 10:00-11:30 a.m. Reunion information will be posted at www.music.umich.edu/reunion; invitations will be mailed later this summer.

I’m also happy to announce the results of the 2010 Board of Governors election. New members whose terms began January 2010, are: Toni Auletti, MFA ’95, theatre; Jane Brockman, BM ’71, theory, MM ’73, DMA ’77, composition; Lizzie Leopold, BFA ’95, dance; Robert Raddock, BM ’74, MM ’74, trombone. Board members reelected to a second term are David Eisler, Joe Gramley, and Matthew Rego.

Finally, a special thanks to everyone who participated in the Alumni as Mentors program during the past year. We are still receiving great feedback and look forward to continuing this tradition at Homecoming 2010. Go Blue!

Michael Mark (MM ’62, music education)Chair, Board of Governors

NANCY AMBROSE KING LARRY RACHLEFF

36 Michigan Muse

Spring 2010 37

Paul Boylan Award 2010 Emerging Artists 2010

Jeremy Kittel BFA ’04 (jazz & improvisation studies) won multiple U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Championships before taking up jazz as a student at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He has toured widely with his own band and as a soloist at venues as divergent as Carnegie Hall, the Milwaukee Irish Fest, the Detroit International Jazz Festival, and A Prairie Home Companion. Kittel has produced four CDs of his own, his most recent Chasing Sparks. Now a full-time member of the Turtle Island Quartet, he just finished recording their new CD Have You Ever Been?, an album in tribute to Jimi Hendrix. He recently performed at Disney Hall in Los Angeles with Bela Fleck, opening for Steve Martin.

Esther K. Chae, MA ’95 (theatre), is an award-winning actor and writer. Her credits as a performer include noted television shows like Law & Order: Criminal Intent and West

Wing. Her theatrical work has been seen on stages around the country, most recently a solo theatrical performance, So the Arrow Flies, about a North Korean spy and the Korean-American FBI agent who pursues her, lauded as “fascinat-ingly gripping.” The work, which has been featured at festivals and on theatrical stages here and in Korea, is being adapted into a feature film script. Chae, a certified stage combatant, trained in Korean drum and mask dance, was the subject of a Korean Broadcasting Station documentary on her life in Hollywood.

Michael Spencer Phillips, BFA ’99 (dance), was off to the Merce Cunningham School immediately after graduation, on scholarship, soon joining the company as a member. In 2002, he found his artistic home with RIOULT, a contemporary dance company under the artistic direction of Pascal Rioult. With

them, Phillips has toured the U.S., Mexico, Europe, and Africa. As a teaching artist, he restages Rioult’s ballets. He has taught master classes in Poland and Russia, as well as at universities, conservatories, and private studios. Other performance credits include Battleworks Dance Company, New York City Opera at Lincoln Center, DRA’s Fire Island Dance Festival, and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In 2009, Mr. Phillips co-founded the Rioult Circle, the company’s board of young patrons, for which he acts as co-chair.

SCOTT PIPER JEREMY KITTEL ESTHER K. CHAE MICHAEL SPENCER PHILLIPS

Scott Piper, MM ’95 (voice), is known for his rich, resonate tenor and charismatic stage presence, both of which have established him as a sought-after interpreter of opera’s romantic leading men: the Duke in Verdi’s Rigoletto, Don José in Bizet’s Carmen, Rodolfo in La bohème, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor. After Piper’s performance in L’elisir d’amore, “there was a stillness, as if the audience did not want to break the magical spell woven by the honey-toned tenor, so exqui-sitely nuanced in text and music. Then a frenzy of applause erupted” (Opera News). Piper had his Italian debut at the Teatro di Verdi in Busseto, Italy, and appears as Alfredo in the new DVD of Franco Zeffirelli’s production of La traviata, conducted by Placido Domingo.

38 Michigan Muse

2000sGlenn Seven Allen, BFA ’00 (musical theatre), is establishing himself in the world of opera. Engagements for 2010 included his first Duke in Rigoletto for New York Lyric Opera, Alfredo in La Traviata for Long Island Opera, and the role of Alexis in The Chocolate Soldier at Bard SummerScape. In 2009, he sang the role of Rodolpho in William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge with Vertical Player Repertory Opera. Other engage-ments included Girl Crazy at City Center Encores! and Romeo in Romeo et Juliette with New York Lyric Opera. Mr. Allen was a finalist in the 2009-2010 Merola Program Competition.

Nick Blaemire, BFA ’06 (musical theatre), had his work celebrated as part of the Songbook Series presented by Arts and Artists at St. Paul’s at

the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. Blaemire is currently working on a new musical called Finding Robert Hutchens, commissioned by Broadway Across America.

Cynthia Brundage, MM ’09 (voice), made the finals of the Grand Concours de Chant Competition, held each year at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas. She has been offered the role of Orphée this summer at the Franco-American Vocal Academy program in France. She will also sing the alto solo role in Elijah on the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp tour of Europe this summer.

Michael Djupstrom, BM ’02, MA ‘05 (composition), was awarded a 2010 Charles Ives Fellowship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michael’s The

Seahorse and the Crab, a newly commissioned work for narrator and chamber ensemble, was premiered at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music in March and the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr in April.

Michael Fabiano, BM ’05 (voice), made his debut with the English National Opera in September, playing the Duke of Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto, a role made famous by Luciano Pavarotti. His performance was hailed as “winning … full-voiced, thrilling, and, most importantly, always musical.” He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in Verdi’s Stiffelio, in the role origi-nally sung by Placido Domingo, who this time was in the pit as conductor. The New York Times said, “there was real Italianate ardor in his appealing voice.”

Emily Watkins Freudigman, MM ‘01 (viola), is featured on the

new chamber music CD Salon Buenos Aires: Music by Miguel del Aguila. Recorded by her chamber ensemble, Camerata San Antonio, which she founded in 2003 with her husband, cellist Kenneth Freudigman, the CD features del Aguila’s works for strings with piano and/or winds, including Salon Buenos Aires, Clocks, Life Is a Dream, Charango Capriccioso, and

||alumninotes|

GEORGE SHIRLEY WITH MICHAEL FABIANO

Spring 2010 39

Presto II. Emily is in her eighth season as assistant princi-pal viola of the San Antonio Symphony.

David Gordon, BM ’00 (voice), co-starred in the docu-musical Kalamazoo, River: US that premiered in Kalamazoo in October. Hailed as, “Entertaining, provocative, and slyly humorous,” the film explores one of the most heavily polluted rivers in America and the city that shares its name.

Lori Celeste Hicks, DMA ’07 (voice), was one of the winners at the MET auditions last November in South Carolina. She went on to compete at the next stage in Atlanta in January. She continues to teach.

Scott M Hyslop, DMA ’07 (performance), has been appointed to the board of directors for Lutheran Music Program (LSM), home of the Lutheran Summer Music Academy. Now in its 29th year, Minneapolis-based LSM brings together 150 talented young instrumentalists and singers, grades 8-12, from throughout the U.S. The program features an outstanding faculty of artists, teachers, and a chaplain who guide the gifted students through a month of intensive musical study and performance.

Carol Jantsch, BM ’06 (tuba), now principal tuba with the Philadelphia Orchestra, pro-moted her first solo release, Cascades, with a clever video, made with fellow alum and vid-eographer Steven Peterson (BM ’04, trombone). Jantsch wrote and starred in her own genre-spoofing self-promotional rap. Described as a “witty, energetic jam with a sick tuba baseline and an appearance by the Philadelphia Orchestra’s trom-bone section,” (examiner.com), the video can be viewed on The Peterson Project Web site.

Chelsea Krombach, BFA ’05 (musical theatre), is in the revival of Promises, Promises, with Sean Hays and Kristin Chenoweth.

James Lee III, BM ’99 (piano), MM ’01, DMA ’05 (composition), was awarded the Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award for 2010 by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, given to a promising composer in mid career. Lee, who serves on the faculty of Morgan State University in Baltimore, has had his work performed by Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Sabrina Ma, BM ’07 (percus-sion), took first place at the 2010 Classic Marimba League International Competition, which comes with a cash prize, an invitation to perform at the 2010 Marimba International Festival and Conference, and a live recording of the recital. Now living in Berlin, Ma’s “immense interest in everything percus-sive” takes her into classical, jazz, and pop realms.

Sheila McClear, BFA ’04 (theatre & drama costume design), has worked backstage in wardrobe at many New York City theaters, including the Classical Theater of Harlem. A freelance writer, she has been published in the New York Observer, New York Post, and on Gawker.com. Her first book, Last of the Live Nude Girls, will be published in early 2011.

Courtney Miller, BM ‘09 (voice), won the district Metropolitan Opera Auditions in Boston,

advancing to the regional competition in Boston. Courtney is attending Boston Con-servatory of Music as a first-year master’s student in voice.

Peter Opie, DMA ’08 (cello), a member of the American Piano Trio, has toured with them to Russia, Korea, the UK, and Belarus, with future tours to Mexico and Russia. He’ll appear on a recording of works by Bernstein, Arthur Foote, David Ashley White, and Jennifer Higdon to be released on the Beneficence label.

Amanda Opuszynski, BM ’08 (voice), won the 2010 Metropolitan Opera district competition in Washington D.C., going on to win the Encouragement Award at the regionals. She has been selected to join the Seattle Opera Young Artist Program next year.

Sean Panikkar, BM ‘03, MM ‘04 (voice), appeared at the Morgan Library and Museum in February with soprano June Anderson, as part of the George London Foundation Series, designed to pair world-class veteran singers with up-and-coming artists.

Jessica Petrus, BM ’08 (voice), has been accepted at both the Longy School and Yale’s Sacred Music program for her master’s work. The program at Yale accepts only four students yearly.

Nicholas Phan, BM ’01 (voice), spent last summer singing with the San Francisco and the Atlanta symphonies and at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival, and the Marlboro Music Festival. Last fall, he toured England with Glyndebourne Opera and in January made his debut with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in L’Italiana in Algieri, followed by a tour with the Musicians from Marlboro for concerts at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In March, he returned to Chicago’s Music of the Baroque for an all-Handel program and in May will perform with Portland Opera.

Amita Prakash, MM ’08 (voice), who will graduate from the College Conservatory of Music in June, was offered a spot in the Seattle Opera’s Studio Artist Program for the 2010-2011 year, where she will sing Zerlina in Don Giovanni, the Prima Donna in Viva la Mamma, and the Forest Bird in Siegfried. She recently sang Ilia in CCM’s Idomeneo.

Scott Prescott, MM ’00 (music education), was named the 2009 Middle Level Educator of the Year by the Minnesota Middle School Association. He currently teaches 6th through 8th grade band and classroom music at Pioneer Ridge Middle School in Chaska, MN. In February, he presented a session with a colleague at the Minnesota Music Educators Association Mid-Winter Conference, “Implementing a School-Wide Composer-of-the-Month Program.” His music team recently received a $5,000 Best Buy Teach Award and a $5,000 NEA Foundation Grant that supports solo instrumental music performance.

Joel Puckett, MM ’01, DMA ’04 (composition), was just named composer-in-residence by the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. Puckett will compose a major work for the CYSO’s Concert Orchestra, a more advanced ensemble, for their

PH

OTO

CR

EDIT

S:C

AR

OL

JAN

TSC

HB

YM

AR

GO

TI.

SC

HU

LMA

N;N

ICH

OLA

SP

HA

NB

YP

ETER

SM

ITH

PH

OTO

GR

AP

HY

CAROL JANTSCH NICHOLAS PHAN

40 Michigan Muse

2010-2011 season, and will work with young composers in creating new works during the three-year residency.

Jordan Risdon, BFA ’08 (dance), was profiled in insidetoronto.com. After graduating with honors, Risdon moved to New York and is currently a company member at Jessica Gaynor Dance. She is also a collaborator with alexanDance Performance and performs with the Sarah Council Dance Projects and the Ilana Weber Dance. Of life in New York, Risdon told insideto-ronto, “I love it here. I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.”

A.J. Shively, BFA ’08 (musical theatre), is playing Jean-Michel in the Broadway revival of La Cage aux Folles, starring Kelsey Grammar, the same role played by Gavin Creel, BFA ’98, in the 2004 revival.

Clinton Smith, MM ’06 (orchestral conducting), who has been assistant conductor at the Minnesota Opera since 2008, was just renewed through the 2011 season, serving as cover conductor for every production, chorus master, and coach. In March 2010, he conducted a concert version of Madama Butterfly at Hamline University and will spend summer 2010 working for Glimmerglass Opera as a coach in the Young American Artists Program. For two summers, he served as the music director/conductor for Opéra du Périgord and the Franco-American Vocal Academy. He will conduct a production of La Belle Hélène in Le Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

Cary Tedder, BFA ’09 (musical theatre), and Sydney Morton, BFA ’08 (musical theatre), are appearing in the new hit Memphis, playing at the historic Shubert Theatre, with casting done by another graduate Rachel Hoffman (BFA ’99).

Sachal Vasandani, BM ’00 (jazz & improvisation studies), recently released his second CD, We Move, which includes a number of original songs that witness, as critic Nat Chinen says, “jazz and pop commingling in unassuming ways.” Vasandani lives in New York and released his debut album, Eyes Wide Open, in 2007.

Kirsten Volness, MM ’04, DMA ’08 (composition), is the recipi-ent of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts’ most presti-gious award in the field of music composition, the 2010 RISCA Composition Fellowship Award. The review panel described her work as “sophisticated and interesting” and felt that Volness creates compelling and innova-tive compositions that display a range of musical explora-tion. She currently resides and teaches in Providence, RI.

1990sSteven Aho, BM ‘99 (percussion performance), has been a part of the Los Angeles music scene for the past five years. He appeared with Andrea Bocelli, David Foster, Reba McEntire, Natalie Cole, and Katherine Jenkins on PBS’s Great Performances. He has also appeared with Bocelli, Foster,

and the Muppets on the Jay Leno Show. Steve has toured as music director and drummer for recording artist William Joseph, opening for Josh Groban and Il Divo, and performing on the Dr. Phil Show, This Morning, and Canada AM. Most recently he began touring with the Canadian opera and pop group Destino.

Stacy Baker, MM ‘93, BM ‘91 (tuba), along with performing partner Gail Robertson, euphonium, recently released their first compact disc, Symbiosisduo. The name comes from the duet written for them by composer, Chris Sharp. In the program notes for the work, he writes, “Symbiosis is defined as ‘a relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.’ The technical and range requirements for each instrument are compa-rable, suggesting a separate but equal relationship.” This eclectic collection includes original works, opera and popular vocal favorites, and ‘alternative’

classical, with a world beat and elements of jazz and rhythm and blues.

In the past two years, Jeffrey M. Bender, BFA ’98 (theatre & drama), has performed at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), the Seattle Repertory Theatre in The Three Musketeers, and three shows at The Old Globe in San Diego: Opus, The Mystery of Irma Vep, and Lost in Yonkers.

Ross Benoliel, BM ’99 (voice), recently sang the role of the President in the U.S. premiere of Cesar Cui’s opera A Feast in the Time of Plague with the Little Opera Theatre of New York.

Gavin Creel, BFA ’98 (musical theatre), will join the cast of Hair in London this spring, at the Gielgud Theatre. He has been a stand-out in the current revival

||alumni notes|

PH

OTO

CR

EDIT

S:S

YBIO

SIS

DU

OB

YT

IMO

TH

YH

OLB

RO

OK

;JEF

FREY

BEN

DER

BY

GER

RY

GO

LDST

EIN

GAVIN CREEL XIANG GAO JARED HAUSER DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN

STACY BAKER AND GAIL ROBERTSON: SYMBIOSISDUO

JEFFREY M. BENDER

Spring 2010 41

on Broadway. Creel, along with the cast of Hair, recently performed at the 21st GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Awards, presented in New York in March.

Sam Davis, BM ’98 (composi-tion), had a new work, The Scottish Musical, included in the Penn State New Musical Theatre Festival, a “Monty Pythonesque” tale as told by a cast of the greatest writers in history.

Linda Dzuris, BM ‘92, MM ‘93, DMA ‘98 (organ), was elected to the Guild of Carillonneurs board of directors during the June congress in Kennett Square, PA. In October, she was appointed an Honorary Texas Carillonneur at the Texas Regional Carillonneur’s conference in San Antonio, in recognition of her contributions to the art of caril-lon playing in North America.

Hunter Foster, BFA ’92 (musical theatre), is playing legendary record producer Sam Phillips in the new musical Million Dollar Quartet, which opened in April.

Xiang Gao, BM ’96 and MM ’97 (violin), is the ZiJiang Professor of Music at the East China Normal University in Shanghai and the young-est professor of music at the University of Delaware. He spent the past year participat-ing in performances across the world, including a concert in Washington, D.C. to welcome the vice president of China and a U-M alumni event in Hong Kong. Gao is also featured in solo violin music on the soundtrack to the film Ashes of Time, released last summer by Sony Music Entertainment China.

Gregory Hamilton, MA ’90 (musicology) and DMA ’01 (composition), announces the release of his new CD Illuminations, containing chamber music for a variety of instruments, including Visions of the Cross for violin and piano, Hymn of Peace for cello and piano, and excerpts from The Breath of the Spirit, for flute and organ.

Jared Hauser, BM ’94 (oboe), joined the faculty of the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University in 2008. Vanderbilt performance highlights from last season include the televised premiere of Peter Schickele’s woodwind quintet, A Year in the Catskills, and an appearance as soloist with the Vanderbilt Wind Symphony, performing Rimksy-Korsakov’s Variations on a Theme of Glinka. Meanwhile, he released his second solo CD, Operatic Oboe, featuring works by Pasculli, Vogt, Verroust, and Kalliwoda. His first solo recording, Temporal Fantasies of Britten and Hindemith, was described as “beautifully played” (Gramophone) and “meditative and thoughtful” (American Record Guide).

Timothy Jones, MM ’91 and DMA ’95 (voice), recently delivered performances of Mozart’s Requiem with the Baltimore Symphony, Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem with the Akron Symphony, and Schubert’s Mass No. 2 in G Major with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. Singled out for his performance with the Utah Symphony as “a marvel-ous singing actor,” Jones looks forward to a number of performances, including Porgy and Bess with the Arkansas Symphony and La Damnation de Faust with the New Mexico Symphony, among others.

Timothy McAllister, BM ’95, MM ’97 (saxophone & conduct-ing), DMA ’02 (saxophone performance), was chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and creative chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, John Adams, and the rest of LA Phil artistic planning team to perform throughout the orchestra’s 2009–2010 season as saxophonist for Adams’ major new orchestral work, City Noir. The work was commis-sioned by the LA Phil for the inaugural concert of newly appointed music director Gustavo Dudamel. It received its world premiere in October 2009 in the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall, and was broadcast

on PBS “Great Performances” worldwide, and released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophone.

Robert Mirshak, MM ’92 and DMA ’95 (voice), is president and founder of Mirshak Artists Management in New York. Prior to forming his own management agency, he was employed by Columbia Artists Management and was a member of the voice faculty at Southwest Missouri State University, Albion College, and Central Michigan University.

Daniel Bernard Roumain, MM ’95, DMA ’00 (composition), just released a new CD, Woodbox Beats and Balladry. The official CD release concert will be held this summer at the Central Park Summer Stage concert series. DBR plays a custom 6-string amplified violin which, because of the extra strings for bass lines, makes his violin a “vital sonic and compositional force.” He says the CD “is an amalgam of what contemporary compos-ers are doing and where contemporary classical music might be going.”

Samantha Shelton, MFA ‘94, (dance), was elected to the SMTD Alumni Board and to the Michigan Dance Council. She was invited by Shawn Bible (MFA ’05) to Grand Valley State University to choreograph a ballet on the GVSU dance company. She teamed up with the Detroit Dance Loft and the Detroit Opera House to present holiday classes and workshops for students and professionals home on break and taught for Ballet Hispanico during their run at the Detroit Opera House. This summer she will participate in the American Ballet Theatre curriculum-training program and teach and choreograph for the ABT Summer Intensive.

Arlene Sierra, DMA ’99 (composition), received a commission by the New York Philharmonic; her piece, Game of Attrition, was premiered in December as part of the orchestra’s New Music Series. It was also performed several days later at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

TIMOTHY MCALLISTER

42 Michigan Muse

Jennifer Laura Thompson, BFA ’91 (musical theatre), is co-star-ring with Anthony LaPaglia and Tony Shalhoub in the revival of Ken Ludwig’s Lend me a Tenor, directed by Stanley Tucci.

1980sRobert Breault, MM ’87 and DMA ’92 (voice), recently joined the Florentine Opera as Jupiter in Handel’s Semele. Also in the past season, Breault sang Pulcinella with the New York City Opera at Alice Tully Hall and Verdi’s Requiem with the Santa Fe Symphony. In December, he was the tenor soloist for the San Diego Symphony’s performance of Beethoven’s soaring Ninth Symphony.

Rachel Kramer, MM ’88 (piano pedagogy), was named 2009 Ohio Independent Music Teacher of the Year by the Ohio Music Teachers Association. The award recognizes an individual teacher who has made a difference in students’ lives and contributed to the advancement of music in their community. Kramer is president of Music Learning Center, Inc., in Cincinnati, with 250 students ages 6 months to 16 years.

William Neil, DMA ’86 (compo-sition), had his Other Echoes Inhabit the Garden for clarinet, bass clarinet, erhu, and pipa premiered by the innovative multi-cultural quartet Birds and Phoenix. His year as the McKnight Foundation Visiting Composer for the city of Winona, MN culminated in the

Celebration of Words, Images and Music Concert, a multi-media event featuring the premiere of Trompe de l’oeil, Certain Miracles and Mea Maxima Culpa. All three works incorporate digital acoustics integrating the poets’ voices into Neil’s setting of their works. Two new CD’s, At the Edge of the Body’s Night and This Music, will be released this year.

Perry Ojeda, BFA ’89 (musical theatre), has been cast in a new production of Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See, which opened at the Blank Theatre in Hollywood in April. The musical premiered Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 2005 under the direction of Tony Award-winner Ted Sperling.

1970sMary Z. Maher, DMA ’73 (theatre), is the author of Actors Talk About Shakespeare, a collection of interviews that gathers behind-the-scenes information on how today’s most renowned actors interpret and perform the works of Shakespeare. Just published in December, Maher’s work analyzes the theatrical processes of actors including Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, and Derek Jacobi. Maher is professor emerita at the University of Arizona drama department and is also the author of Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies and Actor Nicholas Pennell: Risking Enchantment.

1960sCharles Atkinson, MM ‘65 (music education) was recently named Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Music at The Ohio State University. The conferring of the award coincided with the completion of his term of office as thirty-sixth president of the American Musicological Society, which took place in Philadelphia last November at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society.

Richard C. Burke, Ph.D. ’63 (theatre & drama), appeared recently in The Sound of Music with the Cardinal Stage Company, a new professional company in Bloomington, IN. In May 2009, he served as the verse coach for a co-production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a collaboration between Indiana U’s Department of Theatre & Drama and the Department of Drama Studies at the University of Kwa Zulu, Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Although officially retired, he continues to teach the course “Ideas and Experience” for the Hutton Honors College at Indiana University.

Donald Parrish, BM ’60 (music education), MM ’69 (music literature), just retired as founding director of the Dexter Community Orchestra.

1950sWilliam Doppmann, BM ’56 and MM ’58 (piano), will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Chopin with the release of his CD, Celebrating Chopin and Scriabin, in 2010. Doppmann is currently the artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Port Townsend, WA, and is collaborating with his wife on an opera, The Apprentice: A Magic Comedy.

CHARLES ATKINSON DONALD PARRISH

||alumni notes|

RACHEL KRAMERROBERT BREAULT

Spring 2010 43

||inmemoriam|

1940sBarbara M. (Cahoon) Abney, BM ’40, MM ’41, in piano, died January 25, 2010

Wilda Frances (Perkins) Atkins, MM ’48, in theatre, died January 8, 2010

Anne (Schaeffer) Carrothers, BM ’40, in education, died September 27, 2009

Howard Eber Ellis, MM ’47, Ph.D ’57, in music education, died March 12, 2010

Ralph E. Hall, MM ’49, in music education, died June 12, 2009

Joseph (Cole) Howes, BM ’44, in music education, died March 22, 2010

William B. MacGowan, BM ’49, in organ, died December 15, 2009

Andrew C. Minor, MM ’47, in musicol-ogy, died October 29, 2009

Frances (Phillips) Nelson, BM ’44, in music education, died September 9, 2009

Beth (McLellan) Landis Noggle, MM ’43, in music education, died September 30, 2009

Dagmar (Carter) Wright North, BM ’44, in music education, died September 14, 2009

Jane (Neiser) Rife, MM ’48, in organ, died March 19, 2010

John Daniel Rohrer, BM’42, MM ’51, in music education, died January 22, 2010

1950sPerry Cliffe Daniels, MM ’54, DMA ’65, in voice, died January 26, 2007

Mary Jane (Fyke) Fisher, MM ’51, in voice, died November 21, 2009

June E. (Moore) Huber, BM ’52, in music theory, died February 11, 2010

Jane G. Linsenmeyer, MM ’51, in theatre, died September 7, 2009

Arthur E. McCombie, MM ’50, in music education, died October 22, 2009

Jon Edwin Petersen, BM ’55, MM ’57, in piano, died August 24, 2009

Robben Wright Fleming, U-M President from 1968-1978 and again for an interim year in 1988 between the tenures of Harold Shapiro and James J. Duderstadt, died in Ann Arbor in January at the age of 93. He was perhaps best known for skillfully leading the University during a period of unrest and student protests on college and university campuses. His background as director of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Wisconsin surely contributed to his leadership and arbitration abilities. U-M President Mary Sue Coleman said, “Robben Fleming will be remembered in the same breath as Henry Tappan and James Angell as one of the truly great presidents of the University of Michigan. In an era of friction and fighting, he provided a voice of reason and respect.”

Fleming recounted those turbulent years in his 1996 autobiography, Tempests into Rainbows: Managing Turbulence. “In a very real sense during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s,” said James Duderstadt, Fleming’s successor, “the universities became the social consciousness of the nation and

Michigan was one of the most prominent of those. I think its impact on our society has a lot to do with the wise, passionate, leader-ship of Robben Fleming.”

Described by those who knew him as friendly, funny, and unpretentious, he was a Michigan Man through and through. He was an avid Wolverines fan. Fleming was married for 63 years to his college sweetheart, Sally Quixley Fleming, who preceded him in death. Together they established the Sally Fleming Master Class, in large part for Sally and her love of music, which to this day brings noted soloists to the School of Music, Theatre & Dance for master classes in all disciplines, including Sally’s special interest, strings. The family has suggested donations to the Sally Fleming Master Class as one possible memorial to him. (University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, Office of Development, 2005 Baits Drive, Ann Arbor, 48109-2075). A memorial service was held at First Presbyterian Church in January, followed by a campus tribute at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre.

Robben Fleming, 1916-2010

RO

BB

ENF

LEM

ING

PH

OTO

:B

L00

017

8B

ENT

LEY

HIS

TOR

ICA

LLI

BR

AR

Y,U

NIV

ERS

ITY

OF

MIC

HIG

AN

44 Michigan Muse

Robert H. Pratt, MM ’55, in voice, died November 30, 2009

Durward R. Roberson, BM ’50, MM ’51, in winds, died December 5, 2007

Richard S. Saylor, MM ’58, in music theory, died December 11, 2009

Robert H. Pratt, MM ’55, in voice, died November 30, 2009

Marylyn E. (Ruff) Snook, BM ’50, in music education, died September 5, 2009

Martha N (Burckhalter) Stevens, MM ’51, in music literature, died December 22, 2009

Sterling W. Thomas, MM ’52, in piano, died March 18, 2008

Auburn G. VanSyoc II, BM ’51, in music education, died October 4, 2009

Charles H. White, BM ’53, MM ’59, in music education, died June 10, 2009

Russell Williams, MM ’50, in music educa-tion, died August 4, 2009

1960sBrenda (Gee) Bjorklund, BM ’66, MM ’69, in music education, died October 27, 2005

James Elwood Evans, MM ’64, in music education, died July 30, 2000

Robert K. Mauch, BM ’60, in music literature, died December 17, 2009

Barton Meech, MM ’69, in music literature, died March 19, 2009

Beverly (Ketcik) Cortes Reynolds, MM ’61, in theatre, died January 20, 2010

Richard J. Ruhlen, MM ’62, in music education, died September 11, 2009

Donald O. Smith, BM ’61, in organ, died October 27, 2009

Nannette Lou (Horton) Tooman, BM ’60, in music literature, died December 18, 2009

1970sJohn R. Griffiths, MM ’77, in tuba, died July 10, 2007

Carol A. (Pao) Nakamaejo, BM ’75, MM ’77, in piano, died February 9, 2010

1980sLinda A. Koch, MM ’89, in clarinet, died October 19, 2009

Erven Thake Thoma, DMA ’86, MM ’77, in organ, died, October 29, 2009

Trudy Huebner 1915-2009

A true and loyal friend to the dance program at Michigan, Gertrude Trudy Huebner, Regent Emerita, died in November at the age of 94. Huebner worked for thirty-five years in advertising, creating award-winning copy and jingles that became advertising icons for decades. She served the U-M Board of Regents from 1967 to 1975. At the time she was elected, she was the only woman on the board and the fourth in its 150-year history. Her enthusiastic commitment and tireless support of the university continued after leaving the Board of Regents. She was a key figure in bringing the Department of Dance from Kinesiology into the School of Music, Theatre & Dance in 1974. Friends and family endowed the Trudy Huebner Dance Scholarship in 1994 in recognition of Huebner’s service to dance and her steady attendance at all dance performances.

Margaret Fox 1919-2010

Margaret Woodruff Fox, BM ’41, MM ’46 (music education), passed away in April after a short illness. Some might remember Margaret from her years on the staff at the School of Music. After finishing her master’s degree, Margaret began part time work assisting music faculty; that led to a half-time position as faculty secretary for the School, where she worked for 46 years. In later years, she acted as assistant to organ professor Marilyn Mason. Fox began piano lessons at an early age and at 14 became the pianist at her church. During the war years, she taught music and other subjects for the Marlette (MI) schools.

TR

UD

YH

UEB

NER

GR

OU

PP

HO

TO:P

ETER

SM

ITH

PH

OTO

GR

AP

HY

||in memoriam|

TRUDY HUEBNER, STANDING CENTER, WITH DANCE SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS; STANDING RIGHT, FORMER DEAN KAREN L. WOLFF; DANCE FACULTY BILL DE YOUNG AND JUDY RICE, KNEELING

Spring 2010 45

Sara Titus Kring 1922-2010

Sara Kring, BM ’43, a long time supporter of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, died this past February at the age of 87. She graduated from Michigan in 1943 with a major in violin, followed by post-graduate studies at Juilliard. Kring met her future husband, William Kring, in a chamber music class at Burton Tower. She enjoyed a career as a professional violinist, playing and touring with the San Antonio Symphony and teaching violin at Trinity University in San Antonio. She played in various orchestras and chamber music groups on Long Island, NY, while raising her three daughters, and toured abroad with the Osko Symphony. She collaborated with her husband in many performances over her 30 years in New York. In 1995, she retired from professional music and moved to Ann Arbor where she continued to play in various chamber groups.

Robert Hause III 1935-2010

Robert Hause, BM ’58 cum laude, MM ’60 (music education) had a stellar career as a musician, composer, conductor and music educator. He taught music in the Jacksonville (FL) public school system and served as assistant conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. He taught music and theory at Stetson University in Deland, FL, from 1962 to 1967 before accepting a position as professor of music and conductor of the symphony at East Carolina University, a post he held until his retirement in 2005. During his tenure at East Carolina University he founded and served as director of the North Carolina Suzuki Institute. He was chairman of and helped found the Greenville Boys Choral Association and conducted the Greenville Community Symphony. He also created an annual series of special concerts for local elementary schoolchildren and composed and arranged several instrumental and choral selections. Hause was a guest conductor for several summers at the Brevard Music Camp and at the Eastern Music Festival. He traveled the country guest conducting for many musical arts organizations, and once conducted a big band from the deck of the USS North Carolina for the Riverside Pops festival in Wilmington.

Allen Hughes 1921-2009

Allen Hughes, BM ’47 (organ), longtime music and dance critic for The New York Times, died in November 2009 at the age of 87 in Sarasota, FL where he had been living

since 2003. After completing his degree at Michigan, Hughes studied choral conducting with Robert Shaw at the Berkshire Music Institute, now Tanglewood. In 1948, Hughes moved to New York to pursue graduate studies in music history and theory at New York University and it was there his writing career began, starting with reviews for Musical America, before moving to Paris where he worked as a freelancer for two years. After his return to America, he joined The New York Herald Tribune staff as music critic. Five years later, he moved over to The New York Times, where he was music editor for their “Arts and Leisure” section in the early 1980s, writing about music, but also dance, perhaps his first love.

The New York Times, who described him as an “urbane observer of the musical and dance worlds,” wrote that, “[Hughes] championed avant-garde groups, often to the consternation of mainstream ensem-bles, and advocated for multimedia presentations and other innovations.” Along with dance, his other great love was 20th century French music. Of a New York Philomusica performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, the Times noted, he wrote that the composer had “managed to suspend time, to make the listener lose all sense of orientation and to be conscious only of a continuum of melody that seems to have no beginning and that makes no demand for an ending.”

Charlotte McGeoch 1914-2010

Charlotte Whitman McGeoch, BM ‘36, died in February in Ann Arbor, the city where she was born, at the age of 95. Charlotte was a graduate of the University of Michigan, earning a bachelor’s degree in what was then called public school music. She married Glenn Douglas McGeoch, legendary professor of music appreciation, with whom she shared a love of music and who preceded her in death. Charlotte taught piano and directed high school choral groups prior to becoming a full-time mother. Active in the planning for the recent renovation of Hill Auditorium, completed in 2004, her estate gift to the School of Music, Theatre & Dance will be used to establish an ongoing renovation fund for Hill.

ROBERT HAUSE

CHARLOTTE MCGEOCH

GIVING UPDATEWe are pleased to share the impact of the following recent and future gifts to benefit the students and programs of the U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

46 Michigan Muse

Presidential Challenge for Student Global Experience ContinuedUniversity of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman has extended the Donor Challenge Program for student interna-tional experiences through December 31, 2010. The challenge continues to encourage donors to provide scholarship support for U-M students to study abroad. The challenge will now also provide matching funds for scholarship support for international students to attend the University of Michigan. The 1-for-2 match is for endowment gifts of $25K or more, pledged over a maximum of five years. To learn more about this opportunity to leverage your gift in support of interna-tional student experiences, please call Maureen Schafer at 734-764-4453.

Stamps Renew Commitment to Scholars ProgramBack in 2006, Penny (BS, Art & Design, ’66) and Roe Stamps established the Stamps Scholars Program, merit based and earmarked to support the most outstanding incoming freshmen admitted to six colleges and schools, including the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. So far, 70 U-M students are Stamps Scholars.

The Stamps have now renewed their commitment for another four classes of students. “We couldn’t be happier with the young men and women we have been able to meet and support at Michigan,” said Penny Stamps. “We are certain that many outstanding business and community leaders of the future will be graduates of this program.”

Stamps Scholars become members of the Stamps Scholars Society, a student organization that fosters academic achievement, international learning, community involvement, and career planning. So far, SMTD has nine Stamps Scholars, two of whom, Andrew Kotarbo (clarinet) and Michael Tyszko (percus-sion), just finished their senior year.

Support for SMTDTwo new scholarships have been estab-lished to recruit and support SMTD students: the Barbara and Jeffrey Duncan Scholarship will provide a four-year scholarship for an incoming freshman in musical theatre and the endowed Steven M. Schwartzberg Music Scholarship will provide support for students in voice performance.

Two estate gifts have been received for the following initiatives: the Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Estate to enhance the already existing Walgreen Scholarship Fund for outstanding students at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and the Charlotte McGeoch Estate to establish a new renovation fund for Hill Auditorium.

Three new scholarships were initiated for the Michigan Marching Band: the Betty Cummings Marching Band Scholarship, The H. Richard & Denise M. Elmquist and Family Marching Band Scholarship, and the Austin Moore Family Marching Band Scholarship. The Soucie Family Flag Fund was established to provide programmatic support for the flag line of the MMB.

New bequest intentions to ensure SMTD continues to thrive were recently received from Richard Kruse (BM ’64, MM 65’, wind instruments) to benefit clarinet students and Dr. Edward Maki-Schramm (MM ’93, DMA ’99, organ) to benefit organ students.

The Men’s Glee Club Celebrates 150th AnniversaryTradition, Camaraderie and Excellence: these pillars of the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club have helped to build a legacy of 150 years steeped in repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Louis Elbel’s The Victors. To honor this tradition, the Club’s Tails, Tours and Tuition fundrais-ing campaign began with these objectives: No one is kept out of Club because he cannot afford tails. No one will ever miss tour because of cost. Tuition support through scholarship awards doubles. And total endowment value more than doubles.

At the mid-point of its campaign, the Men’s Glee Club is well on its way to achieving these objectives. Thanks to the leadership of Campaign Chair Steve Ramsey (LSA ’67), a core group of volunteers, and a dedicated group of alumni, the Glee Club reached $1,085,000 in March of this year—just in time to publicly announce its goal to raise a full $1.5 million by the end of 2012!

New Men’s Glee Club gifts include:

Five new named endowments: The Craig D. Brennan Pay-it-Forward Award, The Ramsey Team Leadership Award, The Christine and Anthony Alcantra Endowment, The Weidler Family Scholarship Endowment, and The Jim and Stephanie Walter Fund for International Tour Cultural Experiences.

Seven gifts of $10,000 and above from Tom Marion, Reid Wagstaff, Joe Gradisher, Sky Lance, Chris Nordhoff, Allen Wilcox, and one anonymous donor, all former Men’s Glee Club members.

Bequest intentions: Terry Bangs, Dick Bowman, Craig Brennan, Bob Chapel, Jack Cowles, Tom Markus, Chris Nordhoff, Jim Pollock, Steve Ramsey, Don Sanderson, Carl Smith, Tom Sweeny, Rich Von Luhrte, and Jim Walter.

All of these generous gifts have helped to secure the future of this storied Club.

Spring 2010 47

Please call the Office of Development and External Relations at 734-764-4453 if you have any questions or would like to explore giving opportunities.

48 Michigan Muse

Calling All Alums: What’s new with you?Briefly describe your professional activities or other information you would like to share with your classmates. 100 words max, longer entries will be edited for length. Please—No CVs, resumes, or press releases.

Deadline for the Fall issue is August 1, 2010. E-mail to: bgoolian@umich.edu or use the form below to reply via regular mail. (Attach additional sheet if needed.)

Editor, Michigan MuseUniversity of MichiganSchool of Music, Theatre & Dance2005 Baits DriveAnn Arbor, MI 48109-2075bgoolian@umich.edu

Photos: Photos are welcome in either digital (min. 300 dpi) or hard copy format. Please include a SASE if you want photos returned. Be sure to identify photo subjects and include photographer’s name and release, if required.

NAME

ADDRESS

CITY STATE ZIP CODE

IS THIS AN ADDRESS CHANGE? YES NO

CLASS YEAR(S) AND DEGREE/DISCIPLINE:

DAY PHONE (WITH AREA CODE):

E-MAIL:

cap

tivat

e.w

here

exc

elle

nce

com

es to

Superior conservatory training at a world-class researchuniversity. Prestigious, resident faculty and exceptionalstudent talent. It’s all here: www.music.umich.edu

NON-PROFITORGANIZATION

U.S.POSTAGEPAIDANNARBOR,MI

PERMIT#144

The University of MichiganSchool of Music, Theatre & Dance1100 Baits DriveAnn Arbor, MI 48109-2085

MMD 100109