words of note, 2008: a new day dawns

The Magazine of The UniversiTy of Texas school of MUsic

A Brief History of the School ........................4A look back through the years

Celebrating Black History with Music ............ 5Students organize collaborative concert

Sarah and Ernest Butler ............................. 2Planting the seeds for the future

Alumni ....................................................... 8

Faculty ......................................................13

New Faculty ................................................18

In Memoriam ...............................................20

Students .....................................................22

Guests .......................................................26

New Endowments and Gifts .............................27

Gifts And Donations ......................................28

SCHOOL of MUSICCollege of Fine Arts

The University of Texasat Austin

DirectorB. Glenn Chandler

Associate DirectorsSteven Bryant

Robert DeSimoneGlenn Richter

Assistant to the DirectorC. Winton Reynolds

Director of Graduate StudiesHunter C. March

Director of Undergraduate StudiesMarianne Wheeldon

Director of AdmissionsSuzanne Pence

WORDS of NOTEVolume 28:

Sept. 2007–Aug. 2008

Editor/DesignJohn Wimberley

PublicityKathryn Van Zandt

ContributorsCharles ClarkNick Likos

C. Winton ReynoldsNathan Russell

Kathryn Van Zandt

Cover DesignAshley Kjos, AKA Design

Cover PhotographJeff Farris

Words of Note The University of Texas

at AustinButler School of Music

John Adams Receives King Award ................. 6Butler School of Music honors iconic American composer

Taking American Culture across Borders ............... 7Alumnus practices musical diplomacy

A new day dawns. Indeed. What a difference a year makes. This time last year we were dealing with a sig-nificant budget cut and this year we are celebrating the largest gift ever to any public school of music in the country. Most of you have heard that Sarah and Ernest Butler, long-time supporters of the UT School of Music, gave us a $55 million endowment, and in appreciation of this gift we have now been named the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music. There are new signs on the outside of our building that remind us every day when we walk in that things are different. They are differ-ent because there is a strong, opti-mistic atmosphere around us. Fac-ulty and students alike take great pride in our new identity. Things are different because we had a great year of recruiting thanks to the in-crease in scholarship funds. Things are different because we were able to purchase some badly needed equipment throughout the build-ing. And we know that this is just the beginning of a new era, thanks to Sarah and Ernest Butler. Every-where I go people know about the generous gift that the Butlers have given us and the reputation of this program grows every day. We are eternally grateful to them for this transformative gift.

This year’s edition of Words of Note covers more de-tails of the generosity of the Butlers as well as many other interesting stories. Later you will read about our outstanding new faculty and see that our quest for excellence continues. I must tell you an interesting story about one of our new faculty members, which eloquently demonstrates this quest for excellence. Two years ago the faculty determined that it would create new degrees in collaborative piano (accompanying). We wanted to recruit the finest teacher in that field to come to UT to run the program. Everyone agreed that this person was Anne Epperson, and so we recruited her and charged her with the establishment of a first-class program. After word spread that she would be teaching here beginning in fall 2008, we had 80 appli-cants for a program that did not yet exist. She screened those 80 students and selected 30 to invite to campus to audition. Of those 30, she selected seven for admis-sion and all seven accepted.

Last summer many of our students had incredible opportunities to enrich their education through inter-national concertizing and study abroad. The largest contingency on such a trip was the UT Wind Ensem-ble, comprised of some 80 music students, which per-formed in many of the most outstanding concert halls in Europe. At the same time, Butler Opera Center stu-dents were singing in Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica, and UT guitar students were performing in a festival at the University of Michoacán in Morelia, Mexico. We

also had a dozen students study-ing cathedral choral techniques through a Maymester course in Cambridge and London.

Back in the USA, the UT Symphony Orchestra traveled to Dallas to per-form at the Meyerson Center, to the International Festival at Round Top, and at the Round Rock Performing Arts Center. This was all part of our burgeoning regional Outreach Program, an initiative designed to showcase our talented students away from the campus. This com-ing year, in addition to presenting performances by UT ensembles in all the major cities of Texas, we plan also to develop more of a presence in the mid-sized regional cities such

as Amarillo, Victoria, Midland, and Lufkin.

I know that our alumni are very proud to know that their alma mater continues to distinguish itself. We want to share our talent with alumni and friends and thus invite everyone to attend some of our nearly 500 concerts, recitals, master classes, operas and other mu-sical presentations each year. For those living too far away to attend in person we invite you to listen to live broadcasts via the Internet. For a schedule and instruc-tions on how to access the webcast please go to music.utexas.edu and click on “Calendar.” I know you will enjoy these great concerts. And please visit us in per-son whenever you can.

Sincerely,

B. Glenn Chandler

B. Glenn Chandler

1

Dear Alumni and Friends:

Lesl

ie N

owlin

SARAH & ERNEST BUTLER SCHOOL of MUSIC2

On March 18, 2008, Dr. Ernest C. Butler and Mrs. Sarah G. Butler made an announcement that

will forever transform the School of Music. The two longtime arts philanthropists announced their $55 million endowment for what we now proudly call the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music.

This gift is the largest single donation to a music school at a public university and is the second largest single gift to The University of Texas at Austin. The Butlers’ gift is designated for student, faculty, and program support, with almost two-thirds of the endowment targeting students’ needs. Their unprecedented gen-erosity is certain to propel the School into one of the finest music schools in the country.“We love music, and we have great appreciation for, and belief in, the educational value of the arts,” Dr. Butler said. “We have supported the UT School of

Music for many years, and we will continue to focus our philanthropy on this worthy institution through this legacy gift.”

“The fine arts influence and define our society. The fine arts enrich our lives in many ways,” commented Sarah Butler. “Future generations will judge us through our art.”

“This is a truly wonderful gift, and it comes from two truly wonderful people – Sarah and Ernest Butler,” said William Powers Jr., president of The University of Texas at

Austin. “The Butlers have been long-time supporters of our School of Music, and they are dear friends. We are proud that our School of Music will now bear their names. This new gift will be transformative by pro-pelling an already outstanding school into one of the very top schools in the nation. No comprehensive university can be great without great arts, and the Butlers have recognized this with their extraordinarily generous gift. We are, and will always be, grateful.”

Ernest Butler, an otolaryngologist, founded the Austin Ear, Nose & Throat Clinic in 1969 and launched Acoustic Systems, a manufacturer of booths used to test hearing, in 1971. These booths are also used for broadcast-ing and as music practice rooms. The success of this company, combined with their careful and conservative investment after it’s sale in 2002, have provided the Butlers with the oppor-tunity to make a significant impact in the two areas they value most highly: public education and the fine arts. “We feel that public education is what makes our country different,” said

Sarah And Ernest Butler: Transforming The School Of Music

“We love music, and we have great appreciation for, and belief in, the educational value of the arts.” — Ernest Butler

Faculty and staff's response to the Butler's announcementincluded several standing ovations.

Director Glenn Chandler addresses faculty and staff at surprise announcement.

Dr. Ernest Butler

Sarah and Ernest Butler (center) receive applause from faculty, staff, administra-tors, and friends, including Joy Chandler (left front) and Dean Douglas Dempster (far right).

Sarah Butler. Both had parents who were public school teachers, and their parents’ dedication to public education left an indelible imprint on them. Sarah Butler was herself a public school teacher and their children, Robert and Linda, attended public schools in Austin, continu-ing on to The University of Texas at Austin for their college education. While at UT, they also played in the Longhorn Band.

The Butlers first established a relationship to the School of Music in the 1970s through one of Ernest’s patients, UT Professor of Violin Leonard Posner. Ernest and Sarah both played music in their youth, but it was through Professor Posner and other School of Music faculty that their passion for opera and concert music was truly kindled.

“The Butlers have been personally committed to supporting UT's School of Music for many years,” said Glenn Chandler, director of the School of Music. “They are knowledgeable philanthropists who fully understand that their gift will not only secure the school’s future, but will immediately benefit our programs by allowing us to achieve a new level of excellence. We are profoundly wateful for their generosity and are proud to be known as the Butler School of Music.”

All photographs in this article by Mark Rutkowski

3WORDS of NOTE

Sarah and Ernest Butler have also been steady supporters of the fine arts throughout UT and the city of Austin. Some of the many benefi-ciaries of their generosity include Ballet Austin, the Austin Symphony Orchestra, the Austin Lyric Opera, the Long Center for the Performing Arts, the Austin Museum of Art, and UT’s Memorial Museum and Blanton Museum of Art. The Butlers also contribute their time and energy to the area’s arts organizations. Ernest serves as Chair of the Music Committee for the UT Austin College of Fine Arts Advisory Council and also serves on the Austin Symphony Orchestra Executive Committee. Sarah is cur-rently Chair of the Ballet Austin Board of Directors and serves on The University of Texas Development Board as well as the Blanton Museum Council. Both have been very active in the past on the boards of prac-tically every other arts organization in the community. In 2004 Ernest and Sarah Butler were inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame for their significant contributions to the community over many years as friends of and advocates for the arts.

In focusing their philanthropy now on the UT School of Music, the Butlers are acting upon their conviction that “it’s the backbone of everything else we’ve supported in town.” They have always recognized that UT graduates and faculty members are integral members of the Austin community’s art and music scene. With this recent transforma-tive gift we will most certainly see even more of the Butler School of Music’s influence on the arts, not just here in Texas, but throughout the country and abroad.

The profound sincerity behind the Butler’s unprecedented support is most eloquently summed up in Sarah Butler’s statement at the press conference when their gift was publicly announced: “I enjoy garden-ing. Every spring I plan for things – I like to grow a vegetable garden. I consider where I plant everything, prepare the earth, and then push the seeds in the ground. But it’s more than that. When I plant a vegetable garden and push those seeds in the ground, it’s an expectation for the future. It’s something that I hope will happen. I hope the seed will ger-minate, the plant will grow and eventually produce.

“Today we announce a gift that is much like the seeds I plant in my garden. The gift we announce today is invested with our hopes and expectations for the future. The School is already recognized as an outstanding school of music, but Ernest and I hope that our gift will encourage and support and help this already outstanding school to prosper in many more ways. We believe that the School of Music at The University of Texas will become the premiere School of Music in the nation.”

“Today we announce a gift that is much like the seeds I plant in my garden. The gift we announce today is invested with our hopes and expectations for the future.“ — Sarah Butler

In 1983 the Butlers established their first endowed scholarship in Opera for what was then the Department of Music. Since

then they have provided a total of ten endowments supporting the students and faculty of the Butler School of Music, including the establishment of the Sarah and Ernest Butler Opera Center in 2004. The complete list of their School of Music endowments, including this latest culminating gift, follows:• Dr. and Mrs. Ernest C. Butler Centennial Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Opera • Dr. and Mrs. Ernest C. Butler Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Opera• Sarah and Ernest Butler Family Fund Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Opera• Sarah and Ernest Butler Family Fund Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Opera 2• Butler Opera Center Endowed Presidential Scholarship• Butler Opera Center Endowed Presidential Scholarship 2• Sarah and Ernest Butler Opera Center• Sarah and Ernest Butler Professorship in Opera• Sarah and Ernest Butler Professorship in Opera Conducting• Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music Endowment

A History of Giving

In a spirit of gratitude, a commemorative plaque was presented to the Butlers at a reception in UT's Littlefield House.

The Butlers proudly arrive in school colors to view our new sign.


1914: Formation of a Department of Music at the University of Texas at Austin. Cours-es are offered in Music History, Apprecia-tion, Analysis of Form, and Harmony – all taught by Frank LeFevre Reed, Associate Professor of the History of Music.

1924: Graduate classes in music are added for the first time. Besides Professor Reed, four other faculty members share the teach-ing load. They are identified in the yearbook

only as Littlejohn, Garrision, Rockwell, and Jackson.

1925: The Department of Music, despite its highest enrollment ever, is “terminated” by Governor “Ma” Ferguson, who apparently felt that there was no place for such folderol at The University.

1938: Dr. Ezra William (“Bill”) Doty arrives in Austin to prepare for the founding of a College o f F i n e A r t s a t

The University of Texas. The new arrival held a triple title: Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Chairman of the Music Department, and Professor of Music. By fall, a faculty of nine had been assembled and classes were offered in art, drama, and music, leading to degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s and, later, the doctoral levels.

1941–42: Construction of the Music Building (now Rainey Hall) on 21st Street next to Littlefield Fountain. Before that, music classes had been scattered in a number of locations: the Littlefield Home, Battle Hall, the ground floor of the Main Build-ing, and two old homes on Whitis Avenue that served as annexes. The new building featured “floated” floors for acoustic isolation as well as the acoustically superb Jessen Auditorium, which is still in use for solo and chamber music recitals. In addition, it was the first and only air-conditioned building on campus at the time!

1950s: A dramatic surge in string activity characterized the 1950s, with graduate string students attracted to UT primar-ily because of Dean E. William Doty’s 1948 founding of the Junior String Project, later to become the University of Texas String Project. The purpose of this innovative program was to help relieve the nation’s short-age of string players by training

skilled, inspiring, and imaginative string teachers. It is still very much alive today continues to be honored nationwide. (Please see pg. 21 of this issue for a more exten-sive story on the UT String Project.)

1968-69: Construction of Music Building East. This expansion housed the ensemble rehearsal halls as well as performance fac-ulty studios and additional practice rooms. The remainder of the Music Department’s courses and activities continued to be housed at the Music Building on 21st Street. Eventually, enrollment in the Music De-

partment burgeoned to the point that classes were once again being held in a wide variety of locations throughout the campus, includ-ing—again—the Littlefield House.

1980: Construction of Music Recital Hall, added to Music Building East as part of the Fine Arts complex. With this new facility, the entire Music Department was reunited in one building complex. Both structures are now referred to as Music Recital Hall, and house all of the academic and performing activities of the School of Music, with two exceptions:

McCullough Theater, a part of the Performing Arts Center just next to the School of Music, is utilized for Butler Opera Center and a few other performances, and Jessen Auditorium, in the old Music Building across cam-pus, for recitals and chamber performances.

1983: Visser-Rowland Associ-ates of Houston build the enor-mous tracker organ in Bates Recital Hall. The largest such instrument in the country at the time of its installation, the organ comprises 5,315 pipes ranging from giant 16-foot principals to pipes smaller than an ordinary pencil—all linked mechanically to the organ's massive console. Adapted from

an 18th-century Dutch design, this 38-foot tall “King of Instruments” is a link connecting the artisanship of the past with today's performers, composers, and students who play it.

1994: The Music Department is re-designated as the School of Music. This change occurred as the leadership of the program changed hands between Chair Richard Lawn and Director Ronald A. Crutcher.

2008: Sarah and Ernest Butler announce their gift of a $55 million en-dowment to the School of Music. As a result, the Board of Regents of The University of Texas Sys-tem approves naming the School of Music of The University of Texas at Austin The Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music.

A Brief History of the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music

Phyllis Young, cello, and Janet McGaughey in a faculty concert,1954

E. William Doty

Music Recital Hall, ca. 1980

Bates Recital Hall

Mar

sha

Mill

er

5WORDS of NOTE

On February 5, 2008, students from the Butler School of Music joined students from Huston-Tillotson University to celebrate the rich contributions that Af-

rican Americans have made to American music in a concert celebrating African American composers and arrangers of the past and present.

The event had its roots in a concert performed a year earlier. “A year ago about this time, a number of students initiated the idea of doing a concert based on African American composers or arrangers,” said Robert Desimone, Associate Director of External Affairs for the School of Music. “It was just done as a small recital by a group of students interested in the cultural aspect of the music, but we decided this year it should be a part of the observance of Black History Month.”

School of Music graduate student Nicole Tay-lor (opera performance) conceived the idea for the 2007 concert while doing research for her doctoral lecture recitals. She discovered a large number of black singers and composers that were previously unknown to her, and wanted to highlight their contributions to the American repertoire.

For the 2008 performance Taylor, with the help of DeSimone, coordinated with the Music Department at Huston-Tillotson to bring their Jazz Combo and Concert Choir to the Bates Recital Hall stage, where they performed for a packed house.

A number of UT soloists performed, including Morgan Beckford, soprano, Michael Holderer, baritone, Claudia Chapa, mezzo-soprano, Christopher Price, baritone, Icy Simpson, soprano, Daymon Passmore, bass, and Nicole Taylor, soprano.

In addition to works by such composers as Ray-mond Wise, Florence Price, Howard Swanson, and Betty Jackson King, the evening featured

works by School of Music graduate composition student William O. Menefield and Huston-Tillotson student Philip Adair.

While the School of Music sponsored the event, DeSimone noted that like the 2007 event, the February concert was planned, rehearsed, and executed entirely by stu-dents. School of Music alumna Gloria Quinlan, Director of the Huston-Tillotson Concert Choir, noted it was the first time the two departments had collaborated on an event. “I certainly would like to see the music departments continue to have a relationship where we collaborate and do things together,” she said.

Robert DeSimone concurred, noting that response from the Austin community was so positive that concerts for the next two years were already in the planning stages. “This is going to become a big event here in the Austin community,” he said.

Students Celebrate Black History Month with Music

Icy Simpson

Huston-Tillotson Concert Choir directed by Gloria Quinlan

Nicole Taylor

William O. Menefield

Huston-Tillotson Concert Jazz Combo

All photographs on this page by Mark Rutkowski


The Eddie Medora King Award, a semi-annual prize of $25,000 awarded to a com-poser for outstanding contributions to the world of music, was presented this year to John Adams. Perhaps the best-known and most-played living American

composer, Adams was at the Butler School of Music for three exciting days in April. During his visit he attended rehearsals of three UT ensembles, and then heard three consecutive evening concerts of those ensembles performing his music.

On his first day on campus, Monday, April 28 , Adams presented a public lecture that included segments of a newly-released video of his opera The Death Of Klinghoffer. That evening, the UT Symphony, under the direction of Gerhardt Zimmermann, with soloist David Small, presented Adam’s harrowing setting of Walt Whitman's The Wound-Dresser.

On Tuesday, the New Music Ensemble, under Dan Welcher’s baton, performed an all-Adams concert featuring his Christian Zeal and Activity, Phrygian Gates (featuring UT

faculty alumnus William Doppmann as guest pianist), and Chamber Symphony. Following intermission of the concert, Butler School of Music Director Glenn Chandler presented the Eddie Medora King Award to Adams.

On his final day in residence, Adams hosted a master class for composers. Six UT student composers presented their works in front of an audience, and then were critiqued by John Adams, an outstanding opportunity for any young composer. That evening, Jerry Junkin and the UT Wind Ensemble played two Adams works: the band transcription of Short Ride In A Fast Machine, and the monumental Grand Pianola Music.

Like previous King Award winners (Chen Yi, John Corigliano, George Crumb, and Joan Tower), John Adams had many won-derful things to say about the School dur-ing his residency, and will likely enlighten others on the successful program he saw at the Butler School of Music.

King Award Goes to John Adams

John Adams rehearses one of his works with the UT Wind Ensemble and director Jerry Junkin.

Adams considers a student composition.

The composer in rehearsal with conductor Gerhardt Zimmermann and the UT Symphony.

All photographs on this page by Mark Rutkowski

7WORDS of NOTE

Imagine attending a concert of young people performing classical music, Broadway hits, jazz standards, and even hip-hop chart-top-pers. Now, imagine this concert is in the former Soviet Union, Central

Asia, or even the Middle East, and you have an idea of the mission of American Voices. Founded by UT School of Music graduate and pia-nist John Ferguson in 1993, American Voices brings American fine arts to newly opened societies around the world. Through concert per-formances, educational activities, interactive workshops, and master classes, the group provides access and positive exposure to American music in previously isolated parts of the world, while maintaining the highest level of musical integrity and professionalism.

John Ferguson, who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the School of Music and studied with piano professors Lita Guerra and the late Danielle Martin, has demonstrated brilliant entrepreneurship in creating a career in music that exceeds the traditional boundaries of performing or teaching. Ferguson describes, “As a student, I must have driven my professors mad with my eclectic interests and distractions from the practice room: languages, new music, Dalcroze method of music education, obscure art songs, and always traveling whenever I could find an excuse. The broad expe-rience I was able to garner at UT serves me well, from being able to work in six languages to feeling comfortable on stage in a myriad of settings from soloing with orchestra to directing a Broadway show from the pit.”

Ferguson currently resides in Houston and Bangkok, balancing dual roles as pianist and Executive Director of American Voices Foundation. His performing activities include hundreds of con-certs, broadcasts, and festivals throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia, and the Middle East. Ferguson’s recordings include Rhapsody in Blue with the Junge Philharmonie Thüringen, Saxofolies for EPM, Jazz Bridges for American Voices, and a solo recording, Variations on America.

Since its founding, nearly every initiative of American Voices has been

precedent-setting. The group’s reach began with central and eastern Europe, and has expanded to include any coun-try where exposure to American culture is scarce. American Voices organized the first American Hip Hop group, HaviKoro, to visit Azerbaijan and Vietnam; the first Broadway performances ever in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Vietnam; the first international jazz festivals in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan; the first summer jazz academy in Taiwan; and has donated music score collections to many librar-ies and conservatories. Other programs include children’s theater, ballet, hip-hop and jazz dance, piano, and orchestral endeavors.

The highlight of 2007 for American Voices was surely expanding its activities into Iraq. In February, the group performed an historic concert at the Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad, the first such event sponsored by the U.S. Embassy since the beginning of the current conflict. The concert featured John Ferguson on piano and vocalist/dancer Michael

Parks Masterson, with both performers later joining the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra to perform Broadway and jazz repertoire for the first time in its history.

The overwhelming positive response in Baghdad inspired Ferguson and his group to organize the Iraq National Unity Performing Arts Academy. With cooperation of the State Department and the U.S. Embassy, American Voices created a center for the arts which included participation by many Iraqi fine arts schools and groups. For ten days in July, 300 participants from Baghdad and the Kurdish region came together for an arts academy that included four orchestra, jazz groups, a children’s theatre group, a ballet group, and folk and traditional dancers. The long days of rehearsal culminated in two public standing-room-only performances in the city of Erbil.

The program received great acclaim through a live international broad-cast, and demonstrated the wonders of cultural diplomacy, even in con-flict-ridden zones. In 2008, the Unity Youth Performing Arts Academy expanded to reach 650 students from all corners of Iraq. More informa-tion can be found at www.americanvoices.org.

Ferguson and singer Ira Spaulding perform songs from Porgy and Bess with the Moscow Conservatory Choir.

Unity Orchestra at the Unity Performing Arts Academy in Erbil, Iraq

John Ferguson

Taking American CultureAcross Borders

All photographs on this page by Michael Luongo


Soprano Hanan Alattar (BM 1999) made her debut at the Arizona Opera in Die Zauberflöte in the 07-08 season. She most recently made her debuts at the Salzburg Festival in a con-cert with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Bard Music Festival in their produc-tion of Der Zwerg, and at the Berlin Staatsoper in Manon. Upcoming engagements include her return to the Ravinia Festival Constanze and her

debut at the English National Opera in a new production of La Bohéme.

Baritone Brian Carter (DMA 2007) was hired as a Studio Artist for the Sarasota Opera covering the baritone leads in Verdi's Rigoletto and I due Foscari. He was called upon to perform the title role of Rigoletto in two performances.

Bass-baritone Rubin Casas (BM 1992) made his Metropolitan Opera debut during the past season.

Darin Cash (DMA 2007) was appointed Visiting Lecturer in Trombone at Georgia State University.

Anne Clark (DMA 1988) has been selected as the project consultant for Discovering Strings and Orchestra, a strings exploratory project recent-ly launched by the American String Teachers Association. The project will introduce strings to early elementary students by matching string teachers, performers, instrument makers and repair shops with neighborhood youth groups. A national call is being made for volunteer string cli-nicians, string ensembles, and educators to con-tribute lesson plans. Those interested may learn more at astaweb.com/discoveringstringsnew.

Keith Clifton (BM 1990) has been awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor of Musicology at Central Michigan University. His recent publications include reviews of Donald Mitchell's Letters from a Life: Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten, Vol. 3 and Thomas Forrest Kelly's First Nights at the Opera for The Opera Journal. He has seven reviews in press for the same journal, as well as additional reviews for Music Library Association Notes and Fontes Artis Musicae. Recent papers include

“Beyond Childhood: Poulenc, La courte paille, and the Aural Envelope,” pre-sented at the College Music Society 2007 national meeting in Salt Lake City in November 2007, and “Ô Dieu, don-ne-moi délivrance: Honegger's Trois psaumes and Cultural Politics Under Vichy,” given at the 18th Congress of the International Musicological Society in Zürich, Switzerland in July 2007. His Poulenc paper will be published in College Music Symposium in 2009.Rafael Davila (MM 1998) has appeared worldwide with some of the most

important opera companies and orches-tras, including San Carlo Opera in Naples, Italy, New Zealand Opera, Sarasota Opera, Opera de Puerto Rico, Austin Lyric Opera, Puerto Rico Symphony, Fort Worth Opera, Teatro de la Opera, Opera Tampa, the Casals Festival, and the Seattle Symphony. He has collaborated with major conductors such as Gerard Schwarz, Anton Copolla, Sarah Caldwell, Theo Alcantara, Victor DeRenzi, Eugene Kohn, Peter Bay, Renato Palumbo, and Emmanuel Plasson. Last year he cre-ated the leading tenor role in the world premiere of the opera Time and Again Barelas by Miguel del Aguila with the New Mexico Symphony, under Guillermo Figueroa. His recording of Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramirez was nominated for a Latin Grammy award.

Charles Ditto (MM 1992, DMA 1998) won first prize at the National Association of Composers USA (Texas) com-position competition for his piece High Wood, commis-sioned by Austin Symphony oboist Ian Davidson. The

Department of Theater and Dance at Amherst College commissioned an original score by Ditto for a production of Martin McDonogh’s play, The Pillowman. Ditto gave a presentation on Rock Harmony at the 2008 TMEA Convention in San Antonio in February.

Alexandre Dossin (DMA 2001) has been very active performing and recording during the last year. His recent Naxos recording Verdi-Liszt Paraphrases received glowing inter-national reviews from publications such as Diapason, Financial Times, Piano International, Clavier magazine, American Record Guide, and Fanfare. Reviewers compared his recording with Arrau's famous Verdi-Liszt recording from the 1970s: “Like Arrau, Dossin is a big virtuoso who obtains huge sonorities with-out banging, and is not averse to underlining Liszt's expressive directives in red ink, with broad, rhetorical strokes.” (Jed Distler) and “Arrau’s famous readings are, by comparison, slightly dour.” (Peter Rabinowitz). The record-ing was chosen by Michael Cookson as “CD of the month” in July 2007. The Courier-Post in New Jersey ran an article entitled “Brazilian pianist proves to be a master at Liszt.” Dossin recently produced two recordings of music by

Kabalevsky for Naxos. He will edit and record Tchaikovsky's The Seasons for the Schirmer Performance Editions series, to be released nationally during the 2009 MTNA Convention in Atlanta. He has been elected a member of the American Liszt Society Board of Directors. Dossin was featured in the Summer 2008 issue of Clavier magazine with an article and full review of his latest recording. Recent performances include solo recitals, chamber performances, and orchestral appearances in Washington D.C., Portland, San Francisco, Brazil, and Canada.

This year Helen Fanelli (nee Shuler) (BMA 1983) began her seventh season as teacher of voice at the Mozartina Musical Arts Conservatory in Tarrytown, New York. In March 2008 she performed in a concert with other faculty of the school celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the MacDowell Colony. The concert featured music by composers associ-ated with the Colony, including Bernstein, Gershwin, Copland, and

Alumni

Rafael Davila

Keith Clifton

Alexandre Dossin featured in Clavier

Hanan Alattar

Enric

o N

awra

th

9WORDS of NOTE

Hoiby. In 2007 Ms. Fanelli sang with the Metropolitan Opera Chorus in their production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg. Her website is www.classicalsinger.net/HelenFanelli.

Dan Goble (MM 1986, DMA 1993) performed with the New York Philharmonic on their recent historic tour and concert in North Korea. The Philharmonic contingent of 400 included musicians, support staff, television crews, journalists, and patrons, and was the largest group of Americans to visit the totalitarian state since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Dr. Goble is Chair of the Music Department and Professor of Saxophone and Jazz Studies at Western Connecticut State University. He performs frequently as a classical and jazz saxophonist with the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Harvey Pittel Saxophone Quartet, among others.

Geno Gottschall (BM 2003) owns and operates Gott Music in Austin. The retail music store provides services to music programs in area middle school and high school bands. The store sells and rents instru-ments, provides supplies and sheet music, and offers repairs and on-site lessons.

Kristin Ohlson Gramm (MM 2006) continues to oversee the expansion of the harp program at the Suzuki Institute of Dallas.

James Hampton (DMA 2004) recently accepted the position of Artistic Administration Coordinator for Dallas Opera. Previously, he performed with the Austin Lyric Opera for several years.

Owen Homayoun (BM 2006) has been appointed as Second

No one ever accused Nicole Narboni of resting on her lau-rels. Or on her piano bench. Now this 1985 UT School

of Music grad, international performer, college teacher, and recording artist is taking her talent and passion for music on the road—with a grand piano in tow.

The idea for “Piano-in-Tow” came about in a discussion with a friend who’s a classical music producer. Narboni has taught piano at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for 12 years, and she points out that “a large section of Western Nebraska doesn’t have access to live classical music performance.” While a few similar projects have taken place around the country, she has tailored her program to serve this particular audience.

Focusing primarily on high school students, each Piano-in-Tow tour will visit up to four schools and communities. Before performing the music of William Albright, Scott Joplin, David Guion or Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Narboni plans an informal discussion with students. “It’s important to become comfort-able with your audience,” she says. She talks to audiences even at formal recitals. Handing out Piano-in-Tow t-shirts and having stu-dents take cell phone photos to post on their My Space pages further breaks down the barriers and encourages participation, she believes. In the evenings, she plans to have performances for the general public.

Besides increasing awareness of classical music, Narboni also hopes to build her teaching studio, recruit for her department, and promote the University of Nebraska overall.

Narboni is no stranger to travel in the service of her art. An accomplished and respected soloist, she performs regularly in this country and frequently appears throughout France, even

at the invitation of the mayor of Paris. For several years she performed with Mark Clinton as the Clinton/Narboni Duo, winning major competitions in the U.S. and abroad. Their four commercial CD’s garnered glowing reviews, and their debut re-cording, Music for Two Pianos and Piano Four-hands by Germaine

Tailleferre, received a Gramophone magazine Editor’s Choice designation. Narboni’s first solo CD, The Solo Piano Works of Jean Françaix, was released this spring.

“Piano-in-Tow has been a learning experi-ence,” Narboni admits. She’s refined her grant-writing skills, winning a $10,000 grant from UNL’s Layman Fund, the first ever awarded to non-tenured faculty. She sharpened her logistical talents by arranging four new appearances for each tour, not to mention hauling a seven-foot, six-inch grand across the Nebraska plains in a trailer. And her new, though rudimentary, tuning skills may come in handy if a local technician isn’t available.

Narboni has spoken to radio audiences this summer, and Nebraska Educational Televi-sion has expressed an interest in covering the project. Her new Web site (www.nicolena-rboni.com) and a new blog about teaching, travel, and personal interests (www.drnan.wordpress.com) reflect some of the changes the classical music world is experiencing. “If we’re going to have audiences for classical

music in the future, we’ve got to look in new directions and be creative and imaginative in encouraging new contacts,” she says.

Plans call for two tours in the fall and two in the spring. “The weather is the wild card right now,” says Narboni. “We’ve had snow in Nebraska as early as October, but short of snow and ice, I’ll be on the road.” Piano in Tow.

Piano-in-Tow

Nicole Narboni


Trombonist with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic Orchestra. He served as a regular sub with the San Francisco Symphony during their 2007–08 season.

Cynthia Karnstadt (DMA 1997) recently returned from Bangkok, Thailand, where she was Professor of Voice with Mahidol University at Salaya. She taught private voice, vocal repertoire, English diction, and history of vocal music. She currently resides and teaches in the Austin area.

George Garrett Keast (BM 1995) conducted the Brooklyn Philharmonic in Central Park with violinist Tim Fain in June 2008. He recently returned to UT to guest conduct the Butler Opera Center production of Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah. Keast’s season included appearances with the Oregon Symphony, a concert with the New York All-State Symphony, and a return as conductor of Canada's Music at Port Milford Chamber Music Festival. His upcoming season will include debuts with New Orleans Opera, the International Festival Institute at Round Top, the Texas All-State Philharmonic, and a return to the Butler Opera Center to direct Hansel and Gretel.

Electric bassist Lynn Keller (BM 1984) enjoys a varied and exciting career as a touring and recording musician, backing many international-

ly famed performers. She has toured with Little Shop of Horrors, Sister Act, and Mask, and she recently performed on broad-casts of American Idol, and with American Idol vocalists from the past six seasons in San Francisco. She has worked with such greats as Mel Torme, Randy Brecker, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Lew Tabackin, Freda Payne, Rita Coolidge, Diana Ross, Nell Carter, and the original Fifth Dimension.

Lyn Koenning (MM 1983) recently gar-nered her second Austin Critics Table Award in Outstanding Music Direction, this time for productions of Porgy and Bess (ZACH Theatre), Carousel

(TexARTS) and Assassins (UT Department of Theatre and Dance). Lyn is currently a guest faculty member at the UT Department of Theatre and Danc., where she teaches courses in musical theatre performance practices, and audition and rehearsal techniques through the Musical Theatre Pilot Project. Koenning is on the faculty of the US Performing Arts Camp, a summer program for young perform-ers to study, work and learn in a professional theatre environment. Mike Koenning, (MM 1997) is an artist/endorser for LP (Latin Percussion) Instruments and performs with the San Antonio-based bands The Latin Playerz, and The Latin Connection. He also is on the music ministry staff at Bannockburn Baptist Church, where he leads the praise and worship band. Marianne Tatom Letts (MM 1999, PhD 2005) published an article entitled “Sky of Blue, Sea of Green: A Semiotic Reading of the Film

Yellow Submarine” in the British journal Popular Music in January 2008. She presented a paper on Radiohead at the Experience Music Project in Seattle in April 2008 and has articles forthcoming on Radiohead and the film, Shortbus.

Yuan Xiong Lu (MM 1988) accepted a tenure-track professorship at Texas Christian University. Previously, he performed with the San Antonio Symphony and taught two years as an Assistant Professor of Double Bass at Bowling Green University. He continues to serve as a visiting faculty member of the prestigious Shanghai Conservatory and as solo bassist for the Shanghai Symphony.

Mary Shannon McGillen (MM 1985) recently led the Shelby County High School Orchestra to the Sweepstakes Trophy in conjunction with the Shelby County High School Choir at the Atlanta Heritage Festival competition. It is the most distinguished award of the festival, earned by the highest combined points of a school’s ensembles. McGillen is Orchestra Director for the middle and high school orchestras in Shelbyville, Kentucky. She was a teacher in the UT String Project, and started her own string program in Fredericksburg, Texas. She has per-formed as a concerto soloist, served as concertmaster of the Austin Civic Orchestra, and played in a dozen ensembles, including the Louisville Orchestra and the Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra in Oregon. She directed the Louisville Youth Orchestra, and recently founded the Shelby County Community Orchestra, which has had great local success.

Megan Metheney (MM 2004) is harp specialist in the Ector County ISD in Odessa, Texas, overseeing the second largest public school harp pro-gram in the nation. The ECISD has fifty harp students and thirty harps, and offers harp as a part of the curriculum at Milam, L. B. Johnson Elementary, the Academy for Fine Arts at Ector Junior High School, and Odessa High School. Megan will be teaching the harp and conduct-ing the Odessa Harp Ensemble, which has previously performed at the Kennedy Center and the White House.

Evan Morgan (MM 2004) was recently named Director of Marketing at Syzygy Marketing in Austin, which provides marketing and fund-raising for nonprofits. Local clients include the Long Center for the

Performing Arts, Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, San Antonio Symphony, Austin Symphony,

Austin Lyric Opera, UT Performing Arts Center, Paramount and State Theaters, One World Theatre, and KMFA. “We are thrilled to promote Evan,” said David- Anthony Burger, President of Syzygy

Marketing. “His sales and market-ing experience, skilled musician-ship as a violist, and passion for

the arts are a perfect match for this important position.” Morgan was awarded

the Mary Winton Green Endowed Presidential Scholarship during his music studies at The University of Texas.

Jana (Martin) Morris (BM 2004) was recently voted “Teacher of the Year ” at Oak Hill Elementary School near Austin.

William (Bill) Neill (BM 1966, MM 1968) has had an exceptional career performing across the world in opera and concert for more than 30 years, in addi-tion to a parallel career teaching voice. Along with

his beloved wife Dixie Ross-Neill (MM 1964),

Lynn Keller Lyn Koenning

11WORDS of NOTE

deceased May 2007, he was co-recipient of Opera Canada magazine’s 2004 prestigious “Ruby Award” for outstanding lifetime achievement in opera, vocal training, and education. He was recently honored as “2008 Teacher of the Year” by Classical Singer maga-zine at its national convention in New York City. Neill makes his home both in Montreal and New York City, where he maintains a studio comprised principally of internationally established professional singers and

young emerging art-ists. Though he retired in fall 2005 from McGill University, where he served as Director of Vocal Studies for fif-teen years, he recently accepted a tenured professorship as Vocal Area Chair at the University of Oklahoma. He will commute regularly to work with his students in New York City.

Rui Vieira Nery (PhD 1990) was honored as a distinguished alumnus of the Butler

School of Music at a presentation in Bates Recital Hall in April. After his studies at UT, Nery went on to become Minister of Culture in his native Portugal, and is currently coordinator of music for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, one of the most important sponsors of the arts in southern Europe. He teaches musicology at the University of Evora in Portugal, and has published and lectured widely throughout the world. While on campus, Nery gave presentations on his professional career and his specialization, Portuguese and Brazilian music of the late 1700s.

Sue-Jean Park (DMA 2006) recent-ly completed her second year as Assistant Professor of violin and viola at Murray State University in Kentucky. As Concertmaster for the Jackson Symphony in Tennessee, she was recently the soloist in a performance of the Butterfly Lover’s Concerto, one of the most famous works of Chinese music.

Hunter Perrin (BM 2000) is now lead guitarist for John Fogerty, and appeared recently on “Late Night with David Letterman.” Perrin stud-ied classical guitar with Professor Adam Holzman at UT, then went on to win the Eliot Fisk Prize for out-standing guitarist while earning his

MM at the Yale School of Music. He has composed music for several films, including the movie A Normal Life, which won the award for best documentary at the 2003 Tribeca Film Fest. Perrin has released three albums and enjoys performing in a variety of different genres includ-ing Rock, Americana, and Southern Blues.

Nancy Irena Sylya (Ronden) studied opera at UT under Walter Ducloux and Robert DeSimone, and has performed many times internationally, including world premieres in Germany and the United States. She is cur-rently a visiting guest professor at the University of Panama in Panama

City. She will produce her first full opera as Directora General of the Opera Panama In October 2008.

The first performance of Concerto for Piano and Small Orchestra by Andrew Rudin (BM 1962) at Washington’s National Gallery of Art on May 18, 2008, was described by Washington Post critic Stephen Brookes as “The high point of the evening…” and “Extroverted, engaging, and driven by an almost heroic sense of drama…” Rudin was recently awarded the Margaret Lee Crofts fellowship for 2007-2008 by the MacDowell Colony. His Concerto for Viola, Strings, Harp, Piano, and Percussion will receive its premiere in May 2009 at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center.

John Salmon (DMA 1988) gave the world premiere of Dave Brubeck’s piano composition, Remembrance of Madeleine Milhaud, in a recital at the University of

Arkansas-Fayetteville in February 2008. Brubeck composed the work to commemorate the wife of composer Darius Milhaud, who died in January at the age of 105. Radio stations throughout the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have broadcast Salmon’s three recordings of Brubeck piano compositions on the Phoenix and Naxos labels. In February 2008, Naxos released Salmon’s record-ing Nikolai Kapustin Piano Sonata No. 15, Preludes, Etudes, Bagatelles, and was praised by Jed Distler in classicstoday.com as “a jazz pianist blessed with vir-tuoso classical chops…accomplished and committed performances.” It has been broadcast on several public radio stations across the nation. In spring 2008, Salmon gave recitals at the Tulane Keyboard Festival in New Orleans; the Festival for Creative Pianists in Grand Junction, Colorado; McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland; and at the University of Arkansas. He adjudicated for the Texas Young Artists Competition in Conroe, Texas, and the American Pianists Association in Indianapolis.

Dan Sharp (PhD 2006), recent graduate of the UT Ethnomusicology program, accepted a tenure-track position at Tulane University. Sharp had short-term offers this year from two prestigious liberal-arts col-leges on the East Coast.

Dennis Siebenaler (DMA Summer 1992) published his article “The Intersection between Vocal Music and Language Arts Instruction: A Review of Literature” in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, published by MENC: The National Association for Music Education. Clinton Smith (BM 2004) has been named Assistant Conductor in Residence for Minnesota Opera.

Jerry Neil Smith (BM 1956, MM 1957) performed the solo part to Brooklyn Bridge, a new work for solo clarinet and wind ensemble by Michael Daugherty, in a December 2007 performance at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. Smith became Director of the School of Music at the University of Oklahoma in 1975, and served as a faculty member until retiring in 1997. During much of that time, he also per-formed in the Oklahoma City Philharmonic as principal clarinetist. Smith

William Neill

Sue-Jean Park

John Salmon

Rui Vieira Nery


has taught at the University of Florida, the University of Colorado, the Eastman School, and the University of Oklahoma. He has held admin-istrative positions at the University of Northern Iowa, California State University, Long Beach, and served as Acting Director of the University of Central Oklahoma (Edmond) School of Music in 2006-2007.

Mark Spede (DMA 1998) was promoted to Associate Professor of Music with tenure at Clemson University. As Director of Bands, he conducts the Clemson's marching Tiger Band and the Clemson University Symphonic Band. Under his direction, both ensembles have received critical and popular recognition. Spede is the recipient of Clemson University Board of Trustees 2007 Award for Faculty Excellence.

Yoichi Udagawa (BA 1985) guest conducted the TMEA All-State Symphony in a performance of selections from Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in February 2008 in San Antonio. He also conducted the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi's Concerto for Bassoon with the Melrose Symphony. Udagawa is scheduled to conduct over thirty concerts during the 2008-09 season. He serves on the faculty at the Boston Conservatory, and is the music director and conductor of the Cape Ann, Melrose, and Quincy Symphony Orchestras.

David Viscoli (BM 1987) was recently promoted to Professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. In October 2007, he returned to the Butler School of Music to perform a solo piano recital.

A new CD by bassoonist Lecolion Washington (BM 1999) was released by Albany Records in August 2008. Entitled Legacy: Works for Bassoon by African-American Composers, the record-ing features works composed by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Ed Bland, William Grant Still, and Gary Powell Nash. After receiving his MM from the Manhattan School of Music, Washington served on the faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia and as bas-soonist for the Missouri Wind

Quintet, before joining the Memphis Woodwind Quintet and faculty of The Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis in 2004.

David Ashley White (DMA 1978) has been on the composition and theory faculty the Moores School of Music, University of Houston, for thirty years, and was named Director of the school in 1999. Throughout his tenure, he has maintained a busy career as a composer, primarily in the choral area, including strong emphasis on liturgical music. He has been published by E.C. Schirmer and Paraclete, and has three collections of hymns pub-lished by Selah. The choir Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, Houston, recorded choral works by White on the recording Praise the Spirit (GOTHIC).

A solo recital CD by Hyunah Yu was released in January 2007 by

EMI after her success in Peter Sellar's production Zaide for Lincoln Center and Wiener Festwochen. Gramophone praised the recording, saying “As a calling-card for a young singer entering the profession, Hyunah Yu's ambitious recital shows enough genuine quality to justify EMI's obvi-ous faith in this young Chinese soprano.”

Amy Zolkoski (BM 2004) is the Assistant Director and Director of Public Relations and Marketing of the Houston Children's Chorus. She recently graduated from South Texas College of Law.

Trevor Gureckis (BM 2005) won two major composition awards in the past year. In March, he received a 2008 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and in May he took one of nine prizes awarded in the 56th An-nual BMI Student Com-poser Awards. Thirty-two young composers re-ceived the ASCAP award, selected from almost 600 submissions.

While at UT, Gureck-is studied composition with Kevin Puts, Rus-sel Pinkston, and Dan Welcher. He studied pi-ano with Dariusz Paw-las and the late Danielle Martin, and was awarded an Endowed Presidential Scholarship. He received a Masters degree in composi-tion from Yale University in 2007, and was the winner of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

As a performer, he has participated in chamber ensembles and new music ensembles at UT Austin and at Yale, and performed at the United Nations in 2005 as the winner of the Emil and Ruth Beyer Competition. His music has been performed by the Yale Philharmonia and New Music New Haven. His BMI award-winning work was premiered by the Yale Philharmonic with Shinik Hahm conducting and was later performed by the Minnesota Orchestra under the baton of Osmo Vänskä. Recent projects include a solo piano work premiered by pianist Han-I Wang at Carnegie Hall in April 2008, and a newly revised musical which will run next season in Fort Worth, Texas, and New York City.

Trevor is a co-owner and staff composer for Found Ob-jects Music Productions with colleagues Bryan Senti and Jay Wadley, and continues to work with Philip Glass on multiple film music productions at his studio in New York City.

Alumnus Wins ASCAP and BMI Young Composer Awards

Trevor Gureckis

Latest CD by Hyunah Yu

New CD by Lecolion Washington

13WORDS of NOTE

Elliott Antokoletz, Professor of Musicology, received the E.W. Doty Professorship in Fine Arts for 2007-08. He published four articles: “Bartók’s Bluebeard: Trauma and the New Musical Language of Symbolist Op-era,” 2007-2008 Yearbook for ABAO-OLBE (Bil-bao, Spain: Friends of Opera Society, 2007); “Bartók’s Bluebeard: Modernism in Opera,” Season Book 2007-2008 (Barcelona: Amics del Liceu, 2007); “Music and the Unconscious: Socio-Cultural Context and New Correspondences in Early Twen-tieth-Century Symbolist Opera,” Music and Society in Eastern Europe 2 (2007): 1-27; and “Polymodal Chromaticism in Ravel's Sonate pour violon et violoncelle,” in Ravel Studies, ed. Peter Kaminsky (University of Rochester Press, forthcoming). Antokoletz contin-ues as editor of the annual International Journal of Musicology, now in its tenth year. He also completed a book entitled From Modality to Serialism in the Music of Georg von Albrecht, and is preparing re-vised and enlarged editions of two of his books, Twentieth-Century Music and Béla Bartók: A Research and Information Guide, both to be published by Routledge. Editorial work on Debussy Perspectives, eds. Elliott Antokoletz and Marianne Wheeldon, has been prepared for publication by Oxford University Press.

Rebecca A. Baltzer, Professor Emerita of Musicology, was elected to Honorary Membership of the American Musicological Society in 2007, only the fifth woman in a half-century to receive the honor. The category was established by the Society to honor “long-stand-ing members of the Society who have made outstanding contri-

butions to furthering its stated object.” She had previously served the society as a member of the Board of Directors, Vice President,

Treasurer, and as an appointed member of numer-ous committees. Baltzer continues as a member of the Board of Directors of Early Music America and as review editor for books on music for Speculum,

the journal of the Medieval Academy of America. During 2007-08, she published book reviews in two journals and completed various entries for the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. She has three book chapters in press.

Nathaniel Brickens, Professor of Trombone, was a featured cli-nician and conductor at the 2008 Brazilian Trombone Festival at the University of Sao Joao Del Rei-MG. He performed with the Cramer Trombone Choir at the International Trombone Festival in Salt Lake City and for a live broadcast of “Music and the Spo-ken Word” with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He also served as principal trombone in performances of the Verdi Requiem at the Victoria Bach Festival and at Austin’s Dell Concert Hall. Dur-ing 2007-08 he was soloist in Chorus Austin’s Mozart Requiem, performed with the Austin Brass Ensemble, and was active as a substitute trombonist with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, with over 80 performances during the season. He adjudicated the 2008 ITA Remington International Trombone Choir competition, the ITA Gagliardi Trombone Solo Competition, the Texas State Solo and Ensemble Competition, and the Texas Music Educators As-sociation All-State Ensembles tryouts. Brickens conducted the UT

Martha Hilley, Professor of Group Piano and Pedagogy, was honored with the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Distinguished Service Award at the 2008 MTNA National Conference in Denver, Colorado. The MTNA Distinguished Service Award recognizes an MTNA leader who has provided significant and lasting volunteer service to the national association.

Hilley is a longtime professor at The University of Texas Butler School of Music, where she has held positions as Coordinator of the Group Piano Program, Head of the Keyboard Division, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Director of the school, among others. Hilley has served MTNA on the Board of Directors, Pedagogy Committee, as Collegiate Chapter Committee chair, and was responsible for spear-heading the creation of the Virtual Collegiate Chapter Initiative. She was awarded the first MTNA Foundation Fellow for the state of Texas and was given the Outstanding Collegiate Teacher Award by the Texas MTA in 2002.

Hilley's abilities as a music educator have been well-documented through the years. She received the Texas Excellence Teaching Award

in 1983 and was awarded a Dad's Association Centennial Fellowship in 1988. In 1992, Hilley was presented the prestigious Orpheus Award by Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and in 1998 she was awarded the William Blunk Endowed Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching. In 2005, Professor Hilley was inducted into The University of Texas Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

In addition to her many awards, Hilley has had articles published in Clavier, Piano Quarterly, and Keyboard Companion.

She also co-authored two college piano texts: Piano for the Developing Musician, 6th edition (first text to embrace dedicated digital sequencer technology through disks furnished

to teachers as well as the first to provide web-based computer tutorials) and Piano for Pleasure (4th Edition).

Faculty

Martha Hilley Honored With MTNA Distinguished Service Award

Martha Hilley (center) receives award from MTNA President Gail Berenson and Gary Ingle, Executive Director of MTNA.


Trombone Choir in performances at the Historically Black Colleges and Universities National Band Directors Convention in Atlanta, at Huston-Tillotson University, and for the Jupiter Instruments National Sales Meeting held in Austin. Brickens served as clini-cian and conductor for the South American Trombone Festival in Santa Fe, Argentina, during summer 2008. Robert DeSimone, Director of the Butler Opera Center, was named Associate Director for External Affairs at the Butler School of Mu-sic in Fall 2007. This newly created position focuses on developing regional, national, and international project initiatives and out-reach. In addition to guiding all Butler Opera Center activities, he directed productions of Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti in the McCullough Theatre, The Magic Flute in Morelia, Mexico, and La Tragedie de Carmen in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and San Jose, Costa Rica. He will travel to Panama City in September 2008 to direct Puccini’s Madama Butterfly for the 100th anniversary of the Teatro Nacional, presented by Opera Panama. In conjunction with the BOC activities in Morelia, Mexico, DeSimone developed a new Guitar Institute initiative with the University of Michoacan, a week-long residency of classes and performance bringing together guitar students from the University of Texas and the University of Michoacan, featur-

ing UT Professor of Guitar Adam Holzman.

Delaine Fedson continues to perform with the Dallas Opera Orchestra and the San Antonio and Austin Sym-phonies. During the last year she taught master classes in Chicago, Denver, and New Orleans, and judged the Louisiana Harp Rally and the Mildred Milligan Com-petition in Houston. She conducted the flute and harp choir at the Suzuki Associa-tion of the Americas (SAA) International Conference, where she also presented a workshop. Additionally, she taught Suzuki Teacher

Training in Lafayette, Colorado, and at the University of Wiscon-sin, Stevens Point. She continues to serve as Southwestern Regional Director and Secretary to the American Harp Society (AHS). She also serves on the AHS Strategic Planning Committee and the SAA Repertoire Committee.

Professor of Musicology Robert Freeman and Ben Roe, former Music Director of National Public Radio, secured a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for UTunes: Music 1.01, a collaborative effort with the Butler School of Music to establish an online project that investigates the relationship between musical learning and new technology. UTunes aims “to re-imagine how we learn about music…to interact with the millions of Americans who have been drawn by the power of music into the new-media landscape, marrying the academic traditions of inquiry, scholar-ship, and rigor with the accessibility, portability, and egalitarian-ism of iTunes, MySpace, and YouTube.” UTunes can be reached on the web at utunes.utexas.org. Freeman won a grant from the

Ewing W. Kauffman Foundation to organize and teach a week-long seminar in August 2008 at Round Top Festival Institute on the development of future leadership for American music schools. Former UT President Larry Faulkner and Don Randel, President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, were among those par-ticipating in the seminar. During the year, Freeman played the Schumann Piano Quintet with the Miró Quartet and completed a series of performances of the Tennyson-Strauss Enoch Arden with Professor Lucien Douglas of the UT Department of Theater and Dance. Freeman served as board chair of the Institute for Music and Brain Science at Harvard-Massachusetts General Hospital and as a board member of the National Center for Human Perfor-mance at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. Robert Freeman is the Susan Menefee Ragan Regents Professor of Fine Arts and Director of the Bryce Jordan Arts Entrepreneurship Incubator at The University of Texas at Austin.

Donald Grantham, Professor of Composition, fulfilled three com-missions in 2007-08. The Grossmont Union High School District (San Diego, California) commissioned Baron LaCroix’s Shuffle (wind ensemble) and premiered it in San Diego in January 2008, conducted by Jerry Junkin. The Lone Star Wind Orchestra com-missioned Lone Star Twister (wind ensemble) and premiered the work at the Eisemann Center in Richardson, Texas, conducted by Timothy Rhea. Michigan State University Wind Symphony com-missioned Starry Crown (wind ensemble) and premiered the piece on the final concert at the Midwest Convention in Chicago, con-ducted by Kevin Sedatole. The Stephen F. Austin Wind Ensemble, conducted by David Campo, performed Starry Crown at theTMEA Convention in San Antonio in February. The University of Texas Wind Ensemble, conducted by Jerry Junkin, recorded the work for a collection to be released on Klavier in fall 2008. During 2007 and 2008 Grantham served as composer in residence for the Uni-versity of Houston, the Grossmont Union High School District, Florida University, San Angelo State University, and the Lone Star Wind Orchestra.

Eugene Gratovich, Associate Professor of Violin and Chamber Mu-sic, performed in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, in June 2008 at the famous Composer's Union Concert Hall. He performed the world premiere of Meditation for violin and piano, by American composer Sidney Knowlton, with the composer at the piano. In August, he performed in Portugal at the Viana Costelo Interna-tional Music Festival, where he performed the Adagio for violin, piano and clarinet by Alban Berg. His article, “Bach: Solo Works for Violin,” was published in Italy in book form. Professor Gra-tovich is the Associate Concertmaster of the Austin Symphony Orchestra.

Gerre Hancock taught summer improvisation studies at East-man School of Music’s ImprovFest. He had ample recruiting op-portunities as he lectured and performed in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York, in addition to conducting choral festivals in Florida and Texas. He and Judith Hancock performed to a full house at the annual Holiday Organ Concert in Bates Recital Hall. The Hancocks were named co-directors of the new Center for Sacred Music Studies at the Butler School of Music. The center is already offering confer-ences and workshops to individuals and organizations involved in religious music. Other projects include special seminars and custom-designed courses for those students pursuing the Master

Delaine Fedson

15WORDS of NOTE

of Music performance degree with a sacred music emphasis. The enrollment of organ performance majors has nearly tripled since this initiative was announced three years ago. The Hancocks have also assumed direction of the organ studio, whose members per-formed the works of Olivier Messiaen in two concerts on the famed Visser-Rowland organ in Bates Recital Hall.

In addition to teaching a full studio of performance majors, Judith Hancock also teaches two courses: Sacred Literature for the Or-gan, and Great Organ Accompaniments. She performed Duruflé’s Requiem with the UT Choral Arts Society at Bates Recital Hall and Saint Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston. She also performed Holst’s The Planets on the magnificent Fisk Organ at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas and again in Bates Recital Hall with the UT Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Gerhardt Zimmermann. Hancock lectured and performed at the Univer-sity of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She recently edited and produced the recording, “Conversations and Lessons with David Craighead,” the celebrated Professor Emeritus of organ at The East-man School of Music. The project was sponsored by the American Guild of Organists National Committee on Educational Resources, of which she is an active member.

Jeff Hellmer enjoyed an active performing and teaching year in Austin and around the United States. He performed and adjudicat-ed with Los Angeles saxophonist Gary Foster at the Riverside (Cali-fornia) Community College Jazz Festival, and with saxophonist Jimmy Green at the Western Connecticut Jazz Festival. He taught at the Litchfield (Connecticut) Jazz Camp, and served on the faculty at the Idyllwild Summer Jazz Workshop for his eighth summer. For the third consecutive year, he was guest conductor and soloist with the Dallas Wind Symphony for their “Big Band Valentine” concert, performing and conducting Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. As Head of the Jazz and Music Industry Division, Hellmer coordinated the Longhorn Jazz Festival, directed the Jazz Orchestra, helped launch of the Austin Live Music Academy (ALMA), and performed with the UT Faculty Jazz Group. He frequently performs on the Austin music scene in a variety of contexts.

Rebecca Henderson, Associate Professor of Oboe, was on a par-tial leave of absence during the 2007-08 academic year while per-forming as acting principal oboist with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. She also performed with a variety of chamber ensembles at the Kennedy Center and in the Washing-ton area. Henderson taught half-time at UT during the year. In her absence, UT oboe students worked with some of the nation's top artist/teachers of oboe, including Richard Killmer, Robert Ather-holt, and Alex Klein. She resumes her full-time teaching position at UT in fall 2008.

Karl F. Kraber, who was Associate Professor of Flute at the School of Music from 1983 to 2004, completed a recital and master class tour of Ohio in February 2008, with engagements at Ohio State, Miami University, and Capitol University, where his former stu-dent Lisa Jelle (MM 1995) is Associate Professor of Flute. Kraber continues as founding member of the Chamber Soloists of Aus-tin, which gave concerts in Austin, San Antonio, and Georgetown during the season. In March 2008, Kraber gave the world premiere of the chamber version of David Chaitkin’s Concerto for Flute and Strings, with UT Professor Dan Welcher conducting.

Violin Professor Brian Lewis, holder of the David and Mary Win-ton Green Chair in String Performance and Pedagogy, recently returned from a two-week tour of Japan, where he performed numerous recitals and worked with more than 1,500 children. This season also marked his debut as soloist with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City. Three sold-out performances at CitiCenter in New York featured collaboration with Morphoses, a critically acclaimed new dance company founded by choreogra-pher Christopher Wheeldon. After last year’s recording release of music by Leonard Bernstein and Michael McLean with the Lon-

The Butler School of Music con-gratulates two faculty mem-bers who received awards in the past year.

Betty Mallard, Associate Professor of Piano, won the School of Music Teaching Excellence Award in applied music for 2008. She has taught at UT since 1980, and has also received a College of Fine Arts Teaching Excellence Award and the Texas Music Teachers A s s o c i a t i o n C o l l e g i a t e Teaching Award. Dr. Mallard

often gives duet recitals with Professor David Renner, perform-ing four-hand repertoire on national and international tours. Of her solo skills, critics have spoken of the musical values of her playing, her “singing line balanced with attention to detail,” her “poised and sensi-tive playing,” calling her “intel-ligence and performance … major league.”

M a r k S a r i s k y, A s s i s t a n t P r o f e s s o r o f R e c o r d i n g Technology, received the 2008 School of Music Teaching Excellence Award in academ-ics. Over the last 20 years, Mark Sarisky’s work has established him as one of the top engineers and producers in the recording industry, where he has worked on projects for hundreds of artists, including Tori Amos, Jafar Barron, Josh Wink, Susanne Vega, Donna Lewis, Kahn Jamal, King Britt, Chuck Berry, and Korn. Professor Sarisky joined the faculty of the School of Music in Fall 2004, where he is now establish-ing a world class recording technology program.

Faculty Members Receive Teaching Excellence Awards

Mark Sarisky

Betty Mallard


don Symphony Orchestra, Lewis has thrilled audiences through-out the 2007-08 season with debuts of McLean’s Elements at the St. Barth’s Music Festival in the French West Indies, and with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra in Ithaca, New York. In April, Lewis returned to his home state of Kansas to perform the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto at the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Murphy Hall at the University of Kansas.

John Mills, Assistant Professor of Jazz Composition and Jazz Saxo-phone, won the ArtEZ Composition Contest for a piece, If Memory Serves, at the Grolsch International Festival of Jazz at Enschede, the Netherlands. His Story Lines was selected for performance at the Center for Jazz Composition Symposium in Tampa, Florida. Wal-rus Music published two of Mills’ new charts for jazz ensemble: Chasing Air and Signify. Mills has recently written new pieces for the Tosca String Quartet, the Wild Basin Winds, and the Austin Pops Orchestra, and has contributed string and brass arrangements to new re-cordings by Eliza Gilkyson, Andrew Heller and others. As baritone saxophonist of the Texas Horns, Mills returned for the eleventh consecutive year to the Ot-tawa Blues Festival, where the horn section serves as artists in residence for the two-week event. In January, he presented his published lecture on the music of the late Joe Zawinul at the An-nual Conference of the In-ternational Association for Jazz Education in Toronto. Mills was a co-presenter on “Jazz Advocacy” at the TMEA convention and an adjudicator for All-State Jazz saxophonists, who competed on a program of his original etudes. He was a clinician for scholastic jazz festivals at Texas State University, Blinn College, and Texas A&M–Kingsville.

Robin Moore, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, present-ed papers at several academic conferences during the past year, including the Society for Ethnomusicology national meeting in Columbus, Ohio, a conference on Caribbean immigrant culture at Tulane University, and a conference on race and black identity in Latin America at Indiana University. He was also invited to give academic presentations at the University of California, Los An-geles, at Florida International University in Miami, and at Vassar College in New York state. Most of these presentations related to his recent book publication, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (University of California Press, 2006). Locally, Moore lectured on Cuban history for a UT Forum event at the Thompson Conference Center, helped organize a conference on Cuban politics at The University of Texas, and made a presenta-tion at a conference entitled “What’s Left of the Latin American Left,” organized by the Lorenzo Long Institute of Latin American Studies at UT. The presentation involved the history of socially conscious protest song in Cuba from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Moore also helped create a new local chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Texas and Oklahoma. Anton Nel, Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Distinguished Profes-sor of Piano and Chamber Music, recently returned from a busy summer in which he performed more than forty concerts world-wide. Highlights included an extended tour of South Africa with recitals and master classes in all the major cities and universities, and concerto performances in Cape Town (Brahms D Minor), Durban (Beethoven C Minor), and Johannesburg (Rachmaninov C Minor). The remainder of the summer was spent at festivals in the United States. At the 20th anniversary concert of the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego, he was one of the soloists in the Mo-zart Concerto for Three Pianos. He was the soloist with the Aspen Concert Orchestra in performances of Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain and Franck’s Symphonic Variation at the Aspen Music Fes-

tival where he also played many chamber music per-formances. To finish the summer, he performed with the Arianna String Quartet at the Britt Festi-val in Oregon and played ten concerts at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival. One of many highlights earlier in the season was an appearance with the San Francisco Symphony in December, perform-ing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Mi-nor. He also performed at the opening of the new Long Center for the Per-forming Arts in Austin.

David Neubert has been busy in his new appoint-

ment as Director of Instructional Technology at the Butler School of Music. He completed an online theory diagnostic exam and on-line study course for new music students to help raise their skills and knowledge to a standard entrance level. During the summer, Neubert received a College of Fine Arts research fellowship to complete two instructional projects: an online, self-paced basic theory course for non-majors, and a series of podcast lectures on an Introduction to Western Music course. He also prepared an in-troductory undergraduate course on music software applications for students unfamiliar with computer music programs. Neubert remains active as principal bassist with the Austin Symphony and Austin Lyric Opera, recently performing at the opening of the Long Center. In the fall, he will perform a selection of interactive com-puter pieces he composed with former student P. Kellach Waddle, for the Paris International Double Bass Symposium. Professor of Saxophone Harvey Pittel continues to tour as a solo artist, chamber musician with the Harvey Pittel Saxophone Quartet and the Harvey and David Pittel Duo, and clinician representing the P. Mauriat Paris Saxophone company. He was recently fea-tured soloist with the UT New Music Ensemble and the UT Wind Ensemble performing concerti by Walter Mays and John Mackey.

Anton Nel solos with the UT Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gerhardt Zimmermann, in a concert at the Round Rock ISD

Performing Arts Center.

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In addition, he performs with the San Antonio and Austin sym-phonies. The Harvey Pittel Saxophone Quartet recently celebrated thirty years of touring by filming a one-hour documentary that will air in 2009. The film features original and current quartet members including UT alumni Todd Yukumoto, Professor of Saxophone at the University of Hawaii, and Dan Goble, who chairs the Depart-ment of Music at Western Connecticut State University.

Glenn Richter, Professor of Instrumental Conducting, was recently named Associate Director of Academic Affairs for the Butler School of Music. He also serves as Director of the Center for American Music. During the past spring, he served as the moderator for a McCombs Business School Conference on the future of Web 2.0 in the music business world. In April he served as the guest conduc-tor for a 3,500 piece massed band performance at the San Antonio Fiesta Association's Band Festival in Alamo Stadium.

Mark Sarisky, Assistant Professor of Recording Technology, served as co-chair of the Research and Curriculum Development panel at the 2008 International Conference on Engineering Edu-cation in Hungary. The focus of the conference was “New Chal-lenges in Engineering Education and Research in the 21st Century.” Sarisky provided a preliminary assessment of accepted papers, introduced presentations, moderated debates and discussions, and concluded each session with a summary statement. He also presented an original paper on teaching classroom-based audio technology.

David Small, Associate Professor of Voice, recently sang the role of Dancairo in Austin Lyric Opera's Carmen, the first opera produced in the new Long Center for the Performing Arts. He followed by creating the role of Dr. Falke in ALO's The Bat (a production of Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, comically re-written by the mem-bers of Esther's Follies). Other performance highlights included a solo recital with New York pianist John Novacek and a concert performance of Puccini's La fanciulla del West, both for Le Festival du Musique in St. Barthelemy, French West Indies. He returned to the Des Moines Metro Opera as Sergeant Belcore in L'elisir d'amore. Small was invited to the University of Evansville and Temple Col-

lege for recitals and master classes. Local performances included Frankenstein! with the UT New Music Ensemble, the Durufle Re-quiem with James Morrow and the UT Choral Arts Society, and selections from Schubert's Die Winterreise for Austin's A. Mozart Festival. Small also performed The Wound Dresser by John Adams, with Professor Gerhardt Zimmerman and the UT Symphony, a performance nominated for two Austin Critics Table Awards: Best Classical Symphonic Performance and Best Singer. In June he was invited to lecture for the national convention of the National Asso-ciation of Teachers of Singing on the topic, “From Studio to Stage to Studio; The Life and Times of an Artist Teacher.” Professor Dan Welcher saw the world premiere of his third String Quartet in Chicago in March 2008. The new piece, composed dur-ing a fellowship/residency last summer at the Yaddo artist retreat in New York state, was premiered by the Cassatt String Quartet on a concert broadcast live on WFMT-FM, Chicago. Subtitled Cassatt, the new work is based on three paintings by American impression-ist painter Mary Cassatt. The Cassatt Quartet, currently celebrat-ing its twentieth anniversary, has recorded the piece along with Welcher's first String Quartet and Harbor Music (String Quartet #2) for a soon-to-be released Naxos American Classics CD. Welcher had a busy year at the Butler School of Music, directing six concerts of the New Music Ensemble and organizing events and perfor-mances for visiting composers Susan Botti, Claude Baker, and John Adams. Welcher continues to produce and host his award-winning weekly radio program, “Knowing the Score,” broadcast on KMFA 89.5, on Sunday evenings. The programs can be heard live via the web.New projects for Welcher include a woodwind quintet, com-missioned by the Chamber Music Conference and Composers Fo-rum of the East to be premiered in August 2008. Welcher returned to Yaddo in July 2008 to work on his Fifth Symphony, which was commissioned by a consortium of music-lovers in Austin as a gift to the Austin Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director, Peter Bay. The piece is scheduled for premiere in May 2009 at the Long Center for the Performing Arts. At the recent Austin Critics Table Awards, Welcher accepted the “Outstanding Body of Work/Sea-son” prize awarded to the Butler School of Music for the John Ad-ams Week, which he was instrumental in organizing.

Center for American Music Offers New Degrees

The Center for American Music received good news in February 2008 with

the announcement from the Higher Education Board that the Center's two new degree proposals, a Bachelor of Music in the Music Business, and a Bachelor of Music in Recording Technology, have been approved. Both degrees will be initiated in the fall of 2008.

The Center is beginning prepara-tions for a major conference on music in film, scheduled for the spring of 2010. Board members David Neumeyer, Professor of Theory, and James Buhler, Associate Professor of Theory, will lead the conference.

In conjunction with a rare staging of Duke Ellington’s opera Queenie Pie, the Center for American Music and the Butler School

of Music will sponsor a conference exploring the music and life of the composer on April 15–17, 2009.

“Echoes Of Ellington: A Conference about the Music and Life of Duke Ellington” will feature talks by musi-

cian/author James Lincoln Collier, com-poser John Franceschina, and other

scholars.

Conferees will be invited to the Butler School’s opening night performance of Queenie Pie, with Carmen Bradford singing the title role. The UT Jazz Orchestra will also present an all-Ellington concert.


Anne EppersonProfessor, Collaborative PianoAnne Epperson will inaugurate and head the new Collaborative Piano Program in fall 2008. Epperson enjoys a distinguished career as a per-former, recording artist, teacher, and clinician. She made her debut at age twelve with the New Orleans Philharmonic under Alexander Hilsberg. After studies at Louisiana State University and the Juilliard School, she entered graduate school at the University of Southern California and was appointed staff pianist for the master classes of Jascha Heifetz. This auspicious beginning led to a career as a superla-tive collaborative partner.

Ms. Epperson has appeared in concert to wide critical acclaim with distinguished artists through-out the United States, Canada, South America, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Scandinavia, Taiwan and Korea. Critics have praised her collaborative artistry: New York Times “…an excellent partner…technical ability and musicality admirably displayed…”; Seattle Times “….extraordinarily sensi-tive and well-realized work…..a gifted accompanist…”; Los Angeles Times “…eloquent sup-port…”; Cleveland Plain Dealer “…Epperson is a chamber music pianist with few peers….”

Epperson was previously Professor of Collaborative Piano at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she created a new graduate degree program. She has also been on the faculty of the University of California–Santa Barbara, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the University of Illinois, and the North Carolina School of the Arts. She has adjudicated many prestigious com-petitions, including the W. Naumburg Foundation competitions, the Fischoff Chamber Music compe-titions, and the New Orleans International Piano Competition.

Epperson has been a panelist, lecturer, per-former, and presenter of master classes for the Music Teachers National Association, National Conference on Piano Pedagogy, the Colorado Music Teachers Association, the Indiana Music Teachers Association, the South Carolina Music Teachers Association, and the Vocal Arts Resource Network in Ohio. In 2005 she presented a week-long series of master classes in Seoul, Korea. She is active as a consultant in the development of collaborative piano programs internationally. Epperson has been on the artist faculty at the Colorado College Summer Music, the Sarasota Music Festival, the International Festival–Institute at Round Top, the Taos Chamber Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival, among many others.

Robert Hatten Visiting Professor,Theory/CompositionRobert Hatten, of Indiana University, is joining the School this fall as Visiting Professor in the Theory/Composition division. He previously taught at SUNY at Buffalo, The University of Michigan, and Penn State University, and held a Mellon Fellowship for the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Musical Meaning in Beethoven (Indiana University Press), which was co-recipient of the Wallace Berry Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory in 1997. His articles and reviews have been published in music theory, musicology, and semiotic journals and volumes here and abroad, and he has given guest lecture series at universities in Helsinki and Mexico City, among others. His research interests include speculative theo-ries of musical gesture, semiotic and hermeneutic approaches to the interpretation of musical expres-sive meaning, and twentieth-cen-tury opera. He is a member of the Executive Board and the Awards Committee of the Society for Music Theory. Hatten is also active as a pia-nist and librettist.

Nathan WilliamsAssistant Professor, ClarinetCritically acclaimed clarinetist Nathan Williams has appeared as concerto soloist and given recitals and chamber music performances at the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, Kaufmann Hall at the 92nd St. Y, and throughout the United States, Austria, Canada, China, Italy, Israel, Hungary, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.

Williams has played in concert on National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Austrian Radio Network, Dutch Radio, and WNCN-New York. He has taken part in world-premiere recordings and performances of both solo and chamber music for the New York Guild of Composers, the Austrian Composers Foundation, the Focus! Festival at New York’s Lincoln Center, and San Francisco’s Composers, Inc. He has received critical acclaim for his recordings for Albany, Composers Recordings, Inc., Naxos, New Dynamic Records, and Arizona University Recordings. He is a fea-tured soloist on Music from the I.C.A., distributed by the International Clarinet Association. Strata, a trio he founded with violinist James Stern and pianist Audrey Andrist, has recorded works by Khachaturian, Max Bruch, Martin Rokeach, Stravinsky, and Don Freund for AUR.

Williams earned the Artist Diploma with highest honors from the Academy of Music and Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria, as well as graduate degrees from the Eastman and Juilliard schools, where he

New Faculty AppointmentsThe University of Texas at Austin School of Music announces these new appointments for 2007-2008.

Anne Epperson

Nathan Williams

Robert Hatten

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studied with Stanley Hasty. He formerly performed with the Continuum ensemble in New York and was principal clarinetist of the Winston-Salem Symphony. He has taught at the East Carolina University School of Music, the Interlochen Arts Academy, and recently joined the artist faculty of the Amalfi Coast Chamber Music Institute in Vietri-sul-Mare/Naples, Italy. He is on the artist roster of Lois Scott Management, Inc. in New York and is artist/clinician for Buffet Crampon.

Caroline Polk O’MearaAssistant Professor, MusicologyCaroline Polk O’Meara received her PhD in Musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2006. Her current book project is a study of how place and space mark twentieth-century American music. Her research interests also include popular music, avant-garde music, American experimentalism, music and technology, and gender and music. O'Meara has been published in Popular Music and American Music,

and has presented at national conferenc-es including the American Musicological Society, the Society of American Music, and the International Association of Popular Music. Her awards include several fellow-ships at UCLA, and a 2003 prize for the best graduate student paper published in Popular Music. From 2001 to 2005, she served on the editorial board and was web designer for Echo: A Music-Centered Journal, an entirely web-based academic journal at UCLA, where she designed web pages incorporating sound, video, and images. She was also an Instructional Technology Consultant for the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities.

Chuck DillardLecturer, Collaborative PianoChuck Dillard will join the faculty of the new Collaborative Piano Department at the Butler School of Music in fall 2008. Dillard received his BM in Piano Performance and Theory from Furman University in South Carolina and his MM in Chamber Music and Accompanying from the University of Maryland, where he studied with Robert McCoy and Rita Sloan. He was an instructor of music theory and staff accompanist at Furman and served as coach/accompanist for Opera Carolina’s education and outreach program.

Upon entering the DMA program at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Dillard was awarded a full assistantship and received the Robert Spillman Award for outstanding collaborative work. He has worked as coach/accompanist for the Central City Opera’s outreach ensemble and with Opera Colorado as rehearsal pianist and orchestra keyboardist for a production of John Adams’ Nixon in China, conducted by Marin Alsop. A recording of the production is set for release on the Naxos label in 2009. The performance was also featured at the National Performing Arts Convention.

Chuck Dillard has spent summers at the Aspen Music Festival, where he was a fellowship pianist in the vocal studios and at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California where he held fellowships in

both the collaborative piano program and the vocal piano program in subse-quent summers.

Rebecca M. Doran Eaton Lecturer in Theory/CompositionRebecca M. Doran Eaton graduated in May 2008 from the University of Texas at Austin with a PhD in Music Theory. Her dissertation, completed under the guidance of Dr. Eric Drott, examined the history and function of minimal-ist music in film. She recently gave a lecture on that subject at a College Music Society conference held at Arkansas State University. She also made a presentation at the Music and the Moving Image symposium at New York University. Her awards include scholarships and fellow-ships and two Outstanding Student Paper awards from the College Music Society. A composer as well as a theorist, Eaton holds a Master of Music in composition from the University of Louisville, where one of her pieces was chosen as the student composition for the New Music Festival in 2003.

Colette ValentineLecturer, Collaborative PianoPianist Colette Valentine, one of the most active professional collabora-tive pianists in the United States, joins the faculty of the Collaborative Piano Department. She completed her DMA in Piano Performance at

Stony Brook University with Gilbert Kalish after earning a BM and MM from the University of Maryland, where she studied with Nelita True.

Critically hailed for her technique and musicianship, Colette Valentine has performed in such venues as Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery, and internationally in Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, Seoul, and Hong Kong. Valentine’s ensemble, Ecco Trio, praised by the Washington Post for capturing “the intimacy of chamber music at its best,” has repeatedly toured the United States and Japan to critical acclaim. She serves as assisting pianist for numerous national and internation-al competitions and events, including the Washington

International Competition for Strings, the National Flute Association Convention, Young Concert Artists, and the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and has been on the faculties of Long Island University/CW Post Campus, New Jersey City University, and the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp. She has col-laborated in chamber concerts with the New York Philharmonic Winds, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Washington Chamber Society, the Left Bank Concert Society, and many others. Valentine has recorded for the Albany, Fontec, Antara, Well-Tempered and CRI labels.

Colette Valentine

Caroline Polk O’Meara

Chuck Dillard

Rebecca M. Doran Eaton


Dr. William C. Race was a member of the keyboard faculty at The Butler School of Music for thirty-two years and served as its head for twenty years, during which time he was largely responsible for establishing the national and inter-national prestige of the piano faculty and its pro-grams. Among the many accomplishments during his tenure was his involvement in the passage of a bill to award waivers of out-of-state tuition to se-lected scholarship holders. Since the passage of this bill in 1971, waivers worth more than $8,000,000 have been awarded by the Butler School of Music. These waivers continue to have a profound impact on the School’s recruitment efforts. After Dr. Race’s death in 1999, his wife Kay established the William C. Race Endowed Presidential Scholarship to honor his memory through the provision of scholarships to gifted undergraduate or graduate piano students in the School of Music. Katherine Race’s own dedication to music, the piano, and the legacy left by her husband at the Butler School of Music deserve to be highlighted here. Butler School of Music Pro-

fessor Robert Freeman presents a brief outline of her current activities: “Kay Race, now an octogenarian, has become a close personal friend of Carol’s and mine, a person whom we both

admire deeply and who serves as a role model for countless others in Austin. Herself a fine pianist, Kay has especially dedicated her recent activities to practicing, playing, teaching, study-ing, and fostering the piano and its magnificent literature. She attends a great many recital and concerts at the Butler School, promotes the work of the Tuesday Morning Club, a group of local musicians who perform regularly for one another, and travels all over the world, visiting family and friends, and supporting all who play the piano. But best of all, and a special mark of Kay Race’s dedication to the University of Texas at

Austin and the memory of her husband: all of the proceeds raised from her public performances is contributed to the piano scholarship fund in Bill’s memory.” —Robert Freeman,

Susan Menefee Ragan Professor of Fine Arts

Kristin Leigh Cunningham, passed away March 17, 2008, at the age of 29, after a three-year battle with leukemia. Kristin was born in Illinois, and was the daughter of Ted and Cathy Cunningham. She graduated in 2000 from the University of Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in advertising. An enthusiastic French horn player, she played in the symphony and marching band at the University of Illinois. Kristin’s love for music continued at The University of Texas where she received a master’s degree in music performance in 2005. She performed with the UT Wind Ensemble at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 2005. The day that Kristin was to gradu-ate, she became ill with leukemia. Her degree and hood were conferred in the hospital by School of Music administrators. Elinor Wortley Doty, the wife of William Doty, founding dean of the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin, passed away November 29, 2007. She was born in Detroit, Michi-gan, in 1910 and grew up in Ontario, Canada. She graduated from the University of Michigan, where she studied organ and met her future husband, Ezra William Doty. William Doty was dean of the College of Fine Arts from 1938-72, and served simultaneously as chair of the Department of Music from 1938-65. Throughout Bill Doty’s tenure at The University, Elinor was his most stalwart and enthusiastic supporter. She is remembered by the College and its alumni and colleagues with fond memories. After her husband’s death, she continued to be a friend to and presence in the College, and in Austin. She served as organist at All Saints Episcopal Church, as a volunteer of the American Red Cross, and was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. The family has requested that any donations be made to the American Red Cross or the E. W. Doty Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. To make a gift toward the scholar-ship, please contact Mary Beth Lickteig at (512) 475.7026 or email: [email protected].

Patricia Patterson Norwood died following a stroke on January 22, 2008. She was Professor of Music at the University of Mary

Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She earned a BM from Wheaton College and her MM and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Texas in Austin. She had taught in the Music Department

at the University of Mary Washington since 1977. She served two terms as Chair of the Music Department and in 2005 received an award for outstanding faculty service to her university and community. Dr. Norwood presented papers and articles on the topics of medieval vocal music, 19th-century Lied, and music of the American Federal era related to President James Monroe. She was active within her discipline, with membership in the Ameri-can Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, the Medieval Academy of America, and the Hagiographical Society, and served as secretary-treasurer of the Southeastern Medieval Association.

Pianist Diana B. Smith, 66, of Bowling Green, Ohio, died October 12, 2007. She was born in Houston, Texas. She received her degrees in piano from the University of Houston and The University of Texas, studying with Albert Hirsh, Dalies Frantz, and Leonard Shure. She married and is survived by Alan Smith, alumnus of The University of Texas and Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University. She also studied at the Aspen Music School with Rosina Lhevinne and participated in master classes with Gina Bachauer and Darius Milhaud. She is winner of the Houston Symphony Young Artist Competition, the Phi Beta National Young Artist Award, and other competitions. Performances have included the Kennedy Center, the Phillips Collection, and the National Gallery of Art. As soloist with the Houston Symphony, she collaborated with such artists as Jean-Pierre Rampal, Andre Navarra, and the Haydn String Quartet. As a member of the Guarneri Duo, she presented duo recitals and master classes around the world. With other Bowling Green State University faculty members, she performed in Europe and the United States, and released a recording of piano trios by Haydn, Brahms, and others. She had also taught at Southwest Texas State University, Colorado College, and Duke University.

In Memoriam

William Race

Katherine P. Race Continues Dedication to the William C. Race Endowed Presidential Scholarship

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Recently, The University of Texas String Project was named “String Project of the Year” by the American String Teacher's Association

(ASTA) and the National String Project Consortium at the ASTA national conference. The program received this award in recognition of creative and quality programming, teacher training opportunities, and com-munity impact.

The history of the UT String Project began in the years following World War II, when an acute shortage of string players became apparent, with a dearth of qualified string musicians to fill symphony positions, and few school children being attracted to and trained in the art of string

playing. In 1948, Dr. E. William Doty, founding Dean of the College of Fine Arts and chair of the then Department of Music at The University of Texas at Austin, lis-tened to and sup-ported violist Albert Gillis’ idea of tack-ling the problem by developing an imag-

inative program for the training of string teachers. Together they founded the Junior String Project and Professor Gillis was the director for the first 10 years. Professor Phyllis Young joined the staff in its fifth year, began directing the program in 1958, and continued as director for 35 years.

In 1964, the program w a s r e n a m e d t h e University of Texas String Project. Dr. Anne C. Witt directed the program from 1993-1995, Susan Wallace from 1995-1997, Dr. Linda Jennings from 1997-1999, Dr. Christine Crookall from 1999-2 0 0 1 , a n d J e s s i c a G i l l i a m -Va l l s f ro m 2001-2002. In the fall of 2002, Dr. Laurie Scott filled a position at The University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music in Str ing

Education and became the director of the Project. The current assistant director, Andrew Strietelmeier, and Dr. Scott work jointly to over-see the training of 25 string teachers and over 250 young students. It is believed that tens of thousands of people are playing string instru-ments today because of the far-reaching effects of the UT String Project, which has served as a nationwide example for more than 30 such programs in universities across the country. Attracting students from almost every state and a number of for-eign countries, the UT Butler School of Music has trained string teachers who on graduation have founded, developed, and expanded string programs in public schools, taught in universities, or played in symphony orchestras. Many of these musicians began their string study as children in the UT String Project.

Heralded by musicians and educators throughout the world as one of the finest programs for training string teachers and developing young

talent, The University of Texas String Project is sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music, with the cooperation of the Austin Public Schools. It has received elev-en national awards, including the First Education Institution Award granted by the National Federation of Music Clubs for being the most significant program in strings among American uni-versities and colleges.

The UT String Project includes group classes (below) and private instruction (above left and right). A gala ensemble and orchestra concert is held in Bates Recital Hall at the end of each season (top).

UT String Project Named “String Project of the Year” by ASTA


On CampusStudents are listed with the degree they are pursuing.

Yonghwa Kim (DMA, Piano) won First Prize in the 2007-08 Sydney Wright Piano Accompanying Competition. Other winners included Amy Harris (DMA, Violin) for Best Instrumentalist and Icy Simpson (MM, Opera) as Best Vocalist. Simpson was also awarded the Harrington Graduate Fellowship for 2007.

Zhi Shuai Chen (BM, Piano) was the winner of the Inaugural David O. Nilsson Solo Piano Competition (please see separate story, p. 27). He alsowon Second Prize in the 2007 Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition.

Marcus Wilcher (BM, Jazz Composition) received the Eleanor Alexander Stribling Award for Excellence in Jazz Studies for undergraduate students. The graduate recipient was Peter Stoltzman (DMA, Music and Human Learning, Jazz Emphasis).

Students awarded 2007-08 Performer Certificates of Recognition included Ashleigh Pierce (BA, French Horn),

Phelecia Neal (BM, French Horn), Lauren McCarty (BM, French Horn), Emily Tannert (BM, Percussion), Americo Lara (BM, Tuba), David Breeding (BA, French Horn), Claire Koonce (BA, Violin), Michel Bigelow (BA, Voice), Mollie Alred (BA, Harp) and James Tolleson (BM, Tuba). Tolleson also received both the 2008 Cactus Yearbook Outstanding Student Award and the Dean’s Dozen Award from the Dean of Students Office.

Thomas K. deWitt (BM, Bassoon), Joanna Martin (MM, Flute), and Colleen McCullough (DMA Violin) won the Butler School of Music

2007-08 Concerto Competitions.

Cherise Lukow (BM, Voice) received the award for Outstanding Junior Recital in 2007-08. Outstanding Senior Recital honors went to Emily Cole (BM, Violin). Awards for Outstanding Master of Music Recitals in 2007-08 went to Dan Schwartz (MM, Oboe), Barbara Danko (MM, Violin), and Erin Montalto (MM, Voice). Nicholas Sibicky (DMA, Composition) and John McGuire (DMA, Voice) won honors for Outstanding Doctor of Musical Arts Recitals. Awards for Outstanding Doctor of Musical Arts Lecture Recitals went to Justin R. Stolarik (DMA, Percussion), Cole Burger (DMA, Piano) and Mieun Lee (DMA, Piano). Outstanding

English choral music continues to be recognized as the pre-mier sound of its genre. Choirs around the world strive to

mimic this rich tradition. Recently, I and other students in a University of Texas maymester course directed by Dr. Hunter March were given the opportunity to hear this sound firsthand. We attended the rehearsals of some of the most famous choirs in the world, including those of King’s College, St. John’s College, St. Paul’s, West-minster Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey. By arranging access to these rehearsals, Dr. March provided us a unique experience during our four-week stay in England. The class opened in Cambridge,

h o m e o f the famous King’s and St . John’s College choirs. The class attended rehearsals, evensongs (night servic-es), and met with the headmasters and music directors of both colleges. The first boys choir rehearsal we heard was absolutely stunning, with a sound so pure and vibrant it was hard to believe most of the choir were

near the age of ten. It was a feeling of arrival, and we knew we were in for an amazing experience. The following week the class traveled to St. Paul’s Cathe-dral in London for our first evensong, where we were formally greeted by the priest before a congregation numbering near a thousand. Later in the week, we met with the Headmaster who gave us a tour of the school and spoke about St. Paul’s

rich history. The third week of the course we headed over to Westminster Cathedral to hear rehearsals and vespers. We also had the opportunity to hear the Westminster Cathedral Choir in concert with Harry Christophers and The Sixteen. The last week of class we visited Westminster Abbey. The

view from the Abbey is remarkable, and the choir sang beautifully dur-ing our visit. Our course was also organized to expose us to other areas of Brit-ish fine arts. We heard a concert of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at St Martin’s in the Field, attended a performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe Theater, visited several art museums including the Tate Mod-ern, and attended a performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria in Cambridge. Our visit wasn’t all work and no

play. We went punting on the Cam in Cambridge, toured Stonehenge and the Salisbury Cathedral, and witnessed the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and the Troup-ing of the Colours for the Queen’s Birthday celebration. We also saw the usual tourist sights in London, had a visit with a Parliament member, cruised the Thames, and rode the London Eye, the tallest ferris wheel in Europe. Staying with families in North London allowed us to experience British family life first hand. Looking back on the trip, it is absolutely remarkable to think about the experiences we had. There is nothing quite like the English choral sounds we were fortunate enough to hear in other contexts than just performance. My classmates and I would like to thank Dr. Hunter March and all those who worked on making this trip such a rewarding experience.

UT Students Spend Maymester in UKby Nick Likos, BM 2008, Music Studies,

Student Awards and Prizes

Hunter March

Maymester students visit Stonehenge.

James Tolleson

23WORDS of NOTE

Dissertation Award for 2007-08 went to David Alan Renter (DMA, Composition, Jazz Emphasis)Ashley M. Pribyl (BM, French Horn) was named as the 2008-09 Presser Foundation Scholar. The Presser Scholar award is made each spring to an outstanding junior to be applied during the student’s senior year.

Beryl Johnson (MM, Ethnomusicology) won a Summer Travel Grant from the 2008 Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies. Johnson also received the Henry Bullock Presidential Graduate Fellowship in African and African-American Studies for 2008-09. Ana P. Sanchez-Rojo (MM, Musicology) was awarded a Mexican Center Summer Research Grant from the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies. Ricardo Bernardes (PhD, Musicology) received the Luso American Foundation Pre-Dissertation Award in Portuguese Studies for 2008-2009.

Outside Achievements

Icy Simpson (MM, Opera) won her division at the recent Classical Singer Convention and Expo. Her prize included scholarships to sev-eral summer programs, cash, a photo shoot with a well-known New York arts photographer, and a professional studio recording session for audition purposes. She also won the Encouragement Award in the 2008 Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition. Agnes Vojtko (DMA, Voice , Opera Emphasis) was a finalist in the 2007 Sternhammer Voice Competition. Yoon-Sang Lee (DMA, Voice, Opera Emphasis) was a semi-finalist in the Irma M. Cooper Opera Columbus International Vocal Competition and a finalist in the 2007 International Verdi Baritone Competition, the 2007 National Opera Association Artist Division Vocal Competition, and the 54th Annual Connecticut Opera Guild Competition. Luis Octavio Cardenas (DMA, Opera Directing) has accepted a position as a stage director for next season with the Minnesota Opera Young Artist Program. His directing credits at the Butler Opera Center include Gordon Getty's Plump Jack and Mozart's The Impresario.

Anne Marie Cherry (BM, French Horn) received Third Place in the 2007 International Horn Competition of America.

Michael Hengst (DMA, Trumpet) won Fourth Place in the 2007 National Trumpet Competition College Solo Division.

Several members of the trombone studio received honors from the International Trombone Association. The Nomadic 4,(Alex Glen, Ben Balleza, David Gonzales, Brad Hartley) was listed as 2nd Alternate in the ITA Trombone Quartet Competition. Robert Hoveland (MM, Trombone) won Honorable Mention in the Wiehe Solo Competition, and Alex Glen (BM , Trombone) received Honorable Mention in the Gagliardi Solo Competition. Darren Workman (MM, Trombone) received Honorable Mention at the Smith Solo Competition, and Graham Gibson (BM, Trombone) was a finalist in the Orchestral Excerpt Competition. Javier Stuppard (DMA, Trombone) won Second Place in the 2008 Eastern Trombone Workshop National Trombone Solo Competition.

Rai Morales (DMA, Trombone) has been appointed Assistant Professor of Trombone at West Texas A&M University. He also earned Second Prize in the 2008 Big 12 Trombone Solo Competition.

Martin McCain, who earned his DMA in 2008, was appointed to a ten-ure-track position as Director of Instrumental Studies and Low Brass at Huston-Tillotson University.

Hyo Jin Song (DMA, Organ) won First Prize in the 2007 Hall Organ Competition in San Antonio. Lenore Alford, DMA student, won

honorable mention in the San Antonio International Organ-Playing Competition, and was a finalist in the 2008 First Presbyterian Church Organ Competition of San Antonio. Organ DMA student Kristopher Storm Knein was a semi-finalist in the National Organ-Playing Competition of The American Guild of Organists. Bruce Ludwick, (MM, Sacred Music Emphasis, 2008) has been appointed Cantor, Organist, and Director of Music at the Church of Saint Gabriel in Saint Louis, Missouri. John Tidmore (MM 2008) has been appointed Organist and Associate Director of Music at the University United Methodist Church in San Antonio.

MM student Dan Schwartz performed his own arrangement of famed composer John Corigliano’s Oboe Concerto on his degree recital in November 2007. He later sent a recording of the performance to Corigliano, who was so impressed that he asked his publisher to include copies of Dan's arrangement with all future sales of the concerto. Schwartz has enjoyed much success in his last year at UT. He reached the finals of the audi-tion for principal oboist of the Grant Park orchestra, the semi-finals of the audition

for principal oboist with the San Francisco Ballet, and performed this past summer with the National Repertory Orchestra in Colorado. He begins doctoral studies this fall at the Eastman School

of Music.

Several members of the saxophone studio have recently joined their colleagues in music careers. Erik Steighner (DMA 2008) has joined the faculty of Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, after completing two years as adjunct professor at Texas State University in San Marcos. Sophomore saxophone major Benjamin Kessler and James Hairston (MM 2008) had on-screen roles playing saxophone in the new Disney film Will, which is about a battle of the bands com-petition in high school. Hairston was also recently hired as Artist and Quality Control Engineer for the P. Mauriat Paris Saxophone Company in Taipei, Taiwan.

Graduate cello student Leanne Zacharias was presented a University Continuing Fellowship for 2007-08, one of the highest honors awarded at the University of Texas.

Vioinist Barbara Danko (MM 2008) performed a recital in St. Petersburg, Russia, as part of the 2008 International Academy of Music summer festival.

Alexandr Tsiboulski (MM, Guitar) won Fourth Prize in the 2007 Guitar Foundation of America Festival and International Guitar Competition. Isaac Bustos (DMA, Guitar) was awarded Third Prize at the 2008 Alhambra International Guitar Competition in Valencia, Spain.

Ryan McCormack (PhD, Ethnomusicology) was awarded a 2008-09 Fulbright Institute of International Education Grant.

John Lato (DMA, Composition) won First Prize in the 2008 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition in Composition. Lato’s com-position was awarded a cash commission, and will be premiered at the 2009 SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the US) National Conference. Lato was recently named to a faculty position in the Department of Music at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. Greg Cornelius (DMA, Composition), received an Honorable Mention in the ASCAP/SEAMUS competition.

Students Dan Schwartz


The Butler Opera Center opened the 2007-08 season in September with a new produc-tion of Mozart’s The Magic Flute in McCullough Theatre. This production, a digitally devised collaborative concept with the Institute for Digital Performing Arts originated

in San Jose, Costa Rica, in July at the Auditorio Nacional, Museo de los Ninos, and at the Teatro Peralta in Mazatlan, Mexico. The production of Mozart’s opera was also the first

venture of a newly developed educational program be-tween the Butler Opera Center and Austin Lyric Opera. More than twenty-five performances were presented to public school students in the Austin metropolitan area. This joint educational opera program will eventually produce two operas a year especially targeted for stu-dents of all grade levels.

In February, BOC a presented highly successful double bill production of Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and The Impresario by Mozart. The season finale was a new production of Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah plus a joint concert with the UT Early Music Ensemble.

Summer activities included a week-long tour to Morelia and Zamora, Mexico, pre-senting performances of The Magic Flute in a collaborative program with University of Michoacan faculty, orchestra, and solo-ists. Later in June and July, Director Robert DeSimone traveled with members of the BOC to the University of Sao Paulo, Brasil, for a new exchange program production of La Tragedie de Carmen. The group then trav-eled to the Auditorio Nacional in San Jose, Costa Rica, to mount another new produc-tion of the opera.

The UT Jazz Studies program had an active and productive year highlighted by the annual Longhorn Jazz Festival, numerous stu-dent ensemble concerts, and performances by UT jazz faculty.

In March the 2008 Long-horn Jazz Festival featured bassist and composer Rufus Reid performing with the UT Jazz Orches-tra. Mr. Reid has performed with many jazz legends, including Dexter Gordon, Bill Evans, and Stan Getz. In keeping with what has become a tradition, student members of the Jazz Orchestra arranged several of the selections performed by Mr. Reid. The residency allowed students to work with him during workshops on improvisation, composition, and jazz history, as well as the chance to interact with him in more informal settings. Numerous high school jazz bands attended the festival to participate in clinics and competitions, and

to witness many outstanding performances. The next Longhorn Jazz Festival will be held April 19, 2009, in conjunction with the planned “Echoes of Ellington” conference, which will include per-

formances of Ellington’s last work, the folk opera Queenie Pie.

The UT Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Ensemble, and AIME (Alternative Improvised Music Ensemble) also per-formed numerous con-certs throughout the year featuring historical reper-toire as well as composi-tions and arrangements by students and faculty.

In January 2008 the UT Faculty Jazz Group, fea-

turing John Mills, Ron Westray, Dennis Dotson, Mitch Watkins, Jeff Hellmer, John Fremgen, and Brannen Temple, played to an enthu-siastic audience as the featured ensemble at the Trinity Jazz Fes-tival in Houston.

Butler Opera Center Tours Latin American

Longhorn Jazz Festival to Coincide with Ellington Conference

Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah (above left; below)

The Magic Flute digitally enhanced

Jeff Hellmer directs the UT Jazz Orchestra in performance with Rufus Reid.

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25WORDS of NOTE

June of 2009 saw a great milestone in the history of musical outreach at the Butler School of Music – the thirtieth anniver-sary of the Longhorn Music Camp. Since its beginnings in 1979, Longhorn Music Camp (or LMC as it is affectionately known to its staff, faculty and campers) has provided an opportunity for thousands of young musicians from across Texas and the nation to experience the outstanding level of instruction offered at the Butler School of Music. Offering programs for singers and instrumentalists at both the middle and high school levels, LMC seeks to create a positive musical and social environment that provides students the op-portunity to learn from some of the finest music educators from across the state. Asked to comment on the significance of the occasion, current LMC Director Scott Hanna noted “The success of this program has in large measure been due to the tireless efforts of many Butler School of Music faculty and staff members over the years. The great collaborative spirit that is created by students and teachers from public school music programs working alongside our own faculty provides an exciting environment in which to learn and make music. It has been great fun to celebrate our thirtieth anni-versary, and we look forward to the next thirty years of Longhorn Music Camp.” Happy Birthday, LMC!

The Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation recently renewed their grant to Butler School of Music violin professor Brian Lewis,

while also increasing it from $300,000 to $400,000. This four-year grant will support scholarships for both undergraduate and grad-uate violin students, as well as fund the Starling Distinguished Violinist Series. Dr. B. Glenn Chandler, Director of the Butler School of Music, com-mented, “I am very pleased that the Starling Foundation has

renewed this grant and that the Butler School of Music will continue to have access to these resources for the next four years. These resources contribute significantly to the quality of our string program and to the cul-tural opportunities that are available to the community as well.” The Starling Distinguished Violinist Series, under the artistic manage-ment of Professor Brian Lewis, brings the best and brightest violinists to the School of Music to perform con-certs and teach master classes. Past performers have included such vir-

tuosi as Glenn Dicterow, Sylvia Rosenberg, and Stephanie Chase. Guests of the series for the 2007-08 season were Augustin Hadelich and Mark O’Connor. Juilliard graduate Augustin Hadelich won the gold medal at the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and has established himself as unique voice among a new generation of violinists. The year 2008 marked his Carnegie Hall recital and orchestral debuts, as well as his professional recording debut with two CDs and a collaboration with violinist Midori. Vio l in ist and composer M ark O'Connor is widely recognized as one of the most gifted contempo-rary composers in America and one of the brightest talents of his gen-eration. The New York Times calls his “one of the most spectacular jour-neys in recent American music.” The Baltimore Sun and the St. Louis Post Dispatch label him “genius,” and The Los Angeles Times describes him as an artist who is “one of the most talented and imaginative...working in music -- any music -- today.”

Starling Foundation Increases Grant

UT Wind Ensemble Tours EuropeThe University of Texas Wind Ensemble toured Europe in July 2008, performing in Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Highlights of the trip included performances at the Mid-Eu-rope Festival in Schladming, Austria, and the JungFrau Festival in Interlaken, Switzerland. There the ensemble performed works by Strauss, Holst, and Bernstein, and performed the European premiere of John Corigliano's Circus Maximus: Symphony No. 3 for Large Wind Ensemble. The premiere won a standing ovation from the enthusiastic audience, and critics hailed the performance as “unequalled perfection” and “extreme virtuosity.” While in Interlaken, the Wind Ensemble also served as the demonstration group for a conducting workshop led by renowned English conductor Douglas Bostock. After their performance at the Mid-Europe Festival, the UT Wind Ensemble appeared at the Wiltz Open-Air Music Festival in Luxembourg and played concerts in Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, and at Cadogan Hall in London.

Longhorn Music Camp Celebrates Thirty Years of Musical Excellence

Wind Ensemble rehearses in Valencia, Spain.

Augustin HadelichMark O'Connor

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While all of the musicians and scholars visiting the School are too numerous to list here, the following is a glance at a few of our distinguished guests in the previous year.

In October 2007, tuba virtuoso Øystein Baadsvik gave a recital in Bates Recital Hall. The Norwegian is the only tuba player to have established a career exclusively as a soloist. Baadsvik began playing at age fifteen, and soon decided to explore the tuba’s possibilities as a solo instru-ment. Within a few years he had won soloist competitions, had his own radio programs, and had played with all of Norway’s professional symphony orchestras. Baadsvik’s musician-ship is celebrated by audiences all over the world and he has played with many of the great orchestras. His CD Tuba Carnival has become a tremendous international success around the world.

Philip Smith, Principal Trumpet of the New York Philharmonic, visited campus in November to give a recital and master class. He has been with the Philharmonic since 1978, when he was appointed by Zubin Mehta. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, and was appointed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by Sir Georg Solti while still at Juilliard. Smith regularly appears as a soloist, recitalist and clinician. He has been on the faculties of The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music,

and has appeared as recitalist and clinician at Caramoor International Music Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, Swiss Brass Week, Bremen (Germany) Trumpet Days, Oslo (Norway) Trumpet Week, Harmony Ridge (Vermont) Festival, Scotia Festival of Music and numerous International Trumpet Guild conferences. He also performs with his Gospel ensemble, Resounding Praise, throughout North America.

Oboist Christian Schmitt performed in Jessen Auditorium in February. As the solo oboist of the Basel (Germany) Symphony

Orchestra, he is also dedicated to chamber music and sonata repertoire. Schmitt studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe. With pianist Joseph Nykiel, he has recorded a CD dedicated to 20th-cen-tury French composers and another of romantic pieces of the 19th century. He is at the cutting edge of contemporary performance for

the oboe. In the last few years, he has premiered works writ-ten for him by Vincent Paulet, Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, Hans Tutschku, and Laurent Riou. Parallel to his soloist activ-ity, Christian Schmitt teaches at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe.

Emily Mitchell, harp, played a leap-year recital on February 29, 2008, in the Recital Studio. Mitchell has earned critical

acclaim as a con-cert harpist and as a singer accompa-nying herself on

the Celtic harp. She is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and the Royal College of Music, London, and the recipi-ent of numerous awards. She has per-formed world-wide and has soloed with many notable orchestras. An established name in television, motion picture

and record-ing studios, she has worked with Natalie Cole, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Johnny Mathis, played on the historic Barbara Streisand tour.

International award-winning soloi flautist and recording artist Amy Porter visited for a March recital and master class. She is Associate Professor of Flute at the University of Michigan and former Associate Principal Flute for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Porter leapt to international attention when she won the Kobe International Flute Competition in Japan, leading to perfor-mance invitations throughout the world. She has been acclaimed by major critics as an exciting and inspiring artist. Bernard

Holland of The New York Times described Porter’s New York debut as “technically robust and musically forceful.” She has been heard on National Public Radio, highlighted on PBS Live From Lincoln Center, and featured on the cover of Flute Talk magazine. CD releases include William Bolcom’s Lyric Concerto for Flute and Orchestra and Music for Flute and Oboe with Nancy Ambrose King on oboe.

Also in March, renowned harpist María Luisa Rayan-Forero visited for a recital and two master classes. Rayan-Forero has performed to much critical acclaim, and was described by New York Concert Review as “Clearly an extremely talented, accomplished, experienced per-former who can keep an audience listen-ing with rapt attention.” She is in demand as a recitalist, teacher, chamber musician, and soloist. She has furthered her inter-est in chamber music with performances at the Tanglewood Music Center of the Boston Symphony, and at the Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina. An active performer of new music, Rayan-Forero commissioned composer Mischa Zupko to write a piece which won awards from the National Society of Arts and Letters and the USA International Harp Competition. She was born in Concepción del Uruguay, Argentina.

Guest Artists

Øystein Baadsvik

Philip Smith

Christian Schmitt

Emily Mitchell

Amy Porter

María Luisa Rayan-Forero

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27WORDS of NOTE

The 2006 issue of Words of Note announced the establishment of the David O. Nilsson Solo Pianist Award Fund by retired UT mathematics professor Dr. David O. Nilsson. On March

1st, 2008, the Butler School of Music held the first competition for what is certain to become one of the School’s most significant un-dergraduate student awards. Three undergraduate piano majors competed in this unique competition that judges the participants on two criteria: tech-nical proficiency in playing the piano and the ability to give an approximately two-minute talk, in English, using proper grammar, intro-ducing the music to be performed in an engag-ing fashion which will build a bridge between the performer and the audience.

Professor of Musicology Robert Freeman worked with Nilsson to establish the crite-ria for this novel event during his tenure as Dean of the College of Fine Arts. The follow-ing are his reflections on the origins of and principles behind the David O. Nilsson Solo Piano Competition:

“In the fall of 2005, during my last year as dean of the College of Fine Arts, David Nilsson, UT emeritus professor of mathematics, asked how I would like a Van Cliburn Competition on campus. My response was that I thought there were already too many such competitions for the good of music, focusing student attention on too narrow a repertory and on a process from which there are bound to be a great many losers, no matter how high the artistic level of achievement.

I proposed instead a competition limited to UT pianists. After a couple of months of discussion we decided upon a radically new kind of compe-tition. Professor Nilsson was quick to ratify my idea that our competing pianists would have to perform on a very high level, and that a jury of UT performance faculty would judge the performance. The radical departure about the Nilsson Competition was, however, the fact that the performance jury would award only 70% of the student’s grade, with the other 30% based on a two-minute talk that the competitor would give about the mu-sic the student was to play, judged by a completely independent jury of

the Butler School’s academic faculty. We agreed that it is a real art to be able to give a brief talk that leads the audience into the work ahead, one that very few musicians have thus far tried to master.

One of the best I have ever heard was given by Anton Nel, who told a Bates audience one evening before a performance of the Debussy prelude

Evening in Granada, that the Spanish composer DeFalla had once sent a post card avowing that Debussy was the best composer of Spanish music never to have visited Spain.

David Nilsson’s endowment provides an annual prize for UT pianists to learn important new skills that are bound to broaden audiences. The first Nilsson Competition was held on March 1, 2008 and was won by Zhi Shuai Chen, a student of Professor Nancy Garrett. We hope many read-ers of this column will attend next year’s David O. Nilsson Solo Piano Competition. The Butler School is deeply grateful to our friend and col-league David Nilsson for his generosity.”

—Robert Freeman Susan Menefee Ragan Regents Professor of Fine Arts

The performance jury for the competition was comprised of dis-tinguished pianists Alegria Arce, Dr. Timothy Woolsey, and Dr. Vincent DeVries. Butler School of Music Professors Elliott Anto-koletz, Sonia Seeman, and Anne Epperson adjudicated the spoken component of the competition.

The competition proved to be a great success and was one of the most highly attended competitions in the school’s history. Under-graduate students in the piano program now have a vital means of inspiration towards furthering both their musical artistry and their verbal facility. Now in its second year, the David O. Nilsson Competition is expected to be an even more dynamic and artful event. Currently, the next competition is slated for the last weekend of February 2009. Visit the Butler School of Music web calendar for exact time and location.

NEW ENDOWMENTSThe School of Music is pleased to announce the establishment of the following new endowment

between September 2007 and August 2008.The Sarah and Ernest Butler Professorship in Opera Conducting

Sarah and Ernest Butler have continued to show great dedication to the Butler Opera Center even while making history with their naming gift to the Butler School of Music. In 2006 the Butlers made a pledge towards an Endowed Professorship in Opera. Having completed the funding for that pledge, the Butlers have now established a second Endowed Professorship in Opera Conducting. These two endowments will secure the future of the Butler Opera Center as one of the top opera programs in the country.

GIFT HIGHLIGHTSProfessor Emeritus Vince DiNino created his fifth planned gift for the Butler School of Music, this time to establish the Vincent R. DiNino Professorship for the Director of the Longhorn Band. This second named endowment will then associate the legend-ary DiNino name with two of the most significant directorships in the UT Band Program.

New Endowments and Gifts

Inaugural David O. Nilsson Solo Piano Competition

Endowments

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Endowments held in the School of Music, 2007-2008Endowed Faculty PositionsMary D. Bold Regents Professorship of MusicThe Sarah and Ernest Butler Professorship in OperaThe Sarah and Ernest Butler Professorship in Opera ConductingCollege of Fine Arts String Quartet Endowment FundVincent R. and Jane D. DiNino Chair Fund in MusicE. W. Doty Professorship in Fine ArtsThe Walter and Gina Ducloux Fine Arts Faculty Fellowship EndowmentFrank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Fine ArtsFrank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professorship in MusicFrank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professorship in OperaParker C. Fielder Regents Professorship in MusicPriscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professorship in Organ Or Piano PerformanceFoxworth Centennial FellowshipDavid and Mary Winton Green Chair in String Performance and PedagogyM. K. Hage Centennial Visiting Professorship in MusicFlorence Thelma Hall Centennial Chair in MusicFlorence Thelma Hall Centennial Visiting Professorship in MusicHistory of Music ChairThe Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Fine ArtsThe Wolf and Janet Jessen Centennial Lectureship in MusicMarlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professorship in MusicMarlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Visiting Professorship in MusicJohn D. Murchison Fellowship in Fine ArtsSusan Menefee Ragan Regents Professorship in Fine ArtsJack G. Taylor Regents Professorship in Fine ArtsLeslie Waggener Professorship in the College of Fine Arts

Endowed ScholarshipsAlamo City Endowed Scholarship for PianistsBurl H. Anderson Endowed Presidential Scholarship for the Creative ArtsBurdine Clayton Anderson Scholarship in MusicRichard S. Barfield Endowed ScholarshipWayne R. Barrington Endowed Scholarship in HornBetty Osborn Biedenharn Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicMary D. Bold Scholarship FundMarietta Moody Brooks Endowed Scholarship Fund in the College of Fine ArtsDavid Bruton, Jr. Endowment for Graduate Fellowships in the College of Fine ArtsDr. and Mrs. Ernest C. Butler Centennial Endowed Presidential Scholarship in OperaDr. and Mrs. Ernest C. Butler Endowed Presidential Scholarship in OperaButler Opera Center Endowed Presidential ScholarshipButler Opera Center Endowed Presidential Scholarship 2Sarah and Ernest Butler Family Fund Endowed Presidential Scholarship in OperaSarah and Ernest Butler Family Fund Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Opera 2Pauline Camp Operatic Voice ScholarshipEloise Helbig Chalmers Endowed Scholarship in Music Therapy and Special EducationPearl DuBose Clark Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Music

College of Fine Arts Student Excellence FundConcert Hall Patron Seat EFBarbara Smith Conrad Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Fine ArtsMary Frances Bowles Couper Endowed Presidential Scholarship for Graduate Students in Piano PerformanceMary Frances Bowles Couper Endowed Presidential Scholarship for Undergraduate Students in Piano PerformanceAinslee Cox Scholarship in MusicPatsy Cater Deaton Endowed Presidential ScholarshipWilliam Dente Endowed Memorial Scholarship in OperaE. W. Doty Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Fine ArtsE. W. Doty Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicE. William Doty Scholarship FundWhit Dudley Endowed Memorial Scholarship in HarpMarguerite Fairchild Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicPriscilla Pond Flawn Endowed Scholarship in MusicFondren Endowed Scholarship in MusicDalies Frantz Endowed Scholarship FundDavid Garvey Scholarship FundGarwood Centennial Scholarship in Art Song PerformanceMary Farris Gibson Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicMary Farris Gibson Memorial Scholarship in MusicThomas J. Gibson IV Endowed Presidential ScholarshipAnnie Barnhart Giles Centennial Endowed Presidential ScholarshipAnnie B. Giles Endowed Scholarship Fund in MusicLucille Roan Gray Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicMary Winton Green Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicMargaret Halm Gregory Centennial ScholarshipVerna M. Harder Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicLouisa Frances Glasson Hewlett Scholarship in MusicNancy Leona Dry Smith Hopkins Endowed Presidential Scholarship in PianoVirginia McBride Hudson Endowed ScholarshipLee and Joe Jamail Endowed Presidential Scholarships for the Longhorn BandJesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones Endowed Presidential ScholarshipMichael Kapoulas Endowed Scholarship in CompositionJean Welhausen Kaspar 100th Anniversary Endowed Longhorn Band ScholarshipKent Kennan Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Music Composition Or TheoryAnna and Fannie Lucas Memorial Scholarship FundGeorgia B. Lucas Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicGeorgia B. Lucas Foundation FundPansy Luedecke Scholarship FundDanielle J. Martin Memorial ScholarshipJ. W. “Red” McCullough, Jr. Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Jazz StudiesMusic Endowment FundGino R. Narboni Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Orchestral ConductingWillie Nelson Endowed Presidential ScholarshipDr. David O. Nilsson Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Performing ArtsDavid O. Nilsson Solo Pianist AwardNelson G. Patrick Endowed Scholarship in Music EducationLeticia Flores Penn Endowed Presidential Scholarship in PianoWilliam C. Race Endowed Presidential Scholarship in PianoA. David Renner Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Piano

Lucille Roan-Gray Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicPhyllis Benson Roberts Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicE. P. Schoch Endowed Presidential Scholarship in BandThe Mary A. Seller-Yantis Endowed Presidential ScholarshipWilla Stewart Setseck ScholarshipEffie Potts Sibley Endowed Scholarship FundLomis and Jonnie Slaughter Scholarship in MusicCarl and Agnes Stockard Memorial Endowment FundElizabeth McGoldrick Surginer Endowed ScholarshipCharles W. and Judy Spence Tate Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Fine ArtsJack G. Taylor Memorial Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Fine ArtsTexas Endowed Presidential Scholarship in MusicMollie Fitzhugh Thornton Music Scholarship FundThe Trammell Scholarship Endowment in Music

GiftsGifts of $1,000,000 or moreErnest and Sarah Butler

Gifts of $100,000 to $999,000Austin Community FoundationProfessor Vincent R. DiNinoDorothy Richard Starling Foundation

Gifts of $10,000 to $99,999Austin Community FoundationMr. Moton H. Crockett, Jr.Robert S. Freeman, Ph.D.The Ann and Gordon Getty FoundationMr. James R. LittlefieldMr. and Mrs. John V. McLaughlinDavid O. Nilsson, Ph.D.Silicon Valley Community Foundation

Gifts of $1,000 to $9,999Anonymous Mr. Daren R. AppeltThe Austin Lyric OperaMr. John L. BlackburnM. H. Crockett Properties Inc.The Dell FoundationThe Ex-Students' AssociationLarry R. Faulkner, Ph.D.Friends of MusicChristopher M. Godell, M.D.Grady L. Hallman, M.D.The Lyndon Baines Johnson FoundationProfessor Jerry F. JunkinDr. Michael KapoulasKinder Morgan FoundationProfessor Donald L. KnaubMs. Arleen LamonicaLittle Elm Investment Company LTDMrs. Nancy W. McCannDr. John R. MillsThe Presser FoundationSt. Martin's Episcopal ChurchPaul J. Tsang Foundation Inc.University Federal Credit UnionMark R. Williams, D.M.A.

Laura Duncan Trim Scholarship in MusicElizabeth Anne Tucker Centennial ScholarshipRuth Middleton Valentine Endowed Presidential ScholarshipRobert Jeffry Womack Endowed Presidential ScholarshipLola Wright Foundation Centennial Endowed ScholarshipSidney M. Wright Endowed Presidential Scholarship

Endowed Program SupportWilliam D. Armstrong Music Leadership EndowmentSarah and Ernest Butler Opera CenterSarah and Ernest Butler School of Music EndowmentFine Arts Advisory Council Endowment for ExcellenceThe Eddie Medora King Award for Musical CompositionMusic Education EndowmentMusic Leadership Program Endowment

Gifts of $500-$999Arcon Architectural Construction ProductsAustin District Music Teachers AssociationMr. Swamy R. BeharaSterling K. Berberian, Ph.D.B. Glenn Chandler, Ph.D.Ms. Ruth G. CutlerThe James Dick FoundationMr. Steven A. FleckmanFruhauf Uniforms Inc.Eugene A. Gratovich, D.M.A.Mr. Stephan B. GriffithGrady L. Hallman, M.D.Mr. Cappy R. McGarrMr. David B. MillerShepherd of the Hills Lutheran ChurchUniversity of South CarolinaStrait Music Company Inc.Mrs. Tobin M. TateTrinity Episcopal Church of Marble FallsUniversity Co-operative Society

Gifts of $250-$499Ms. Vickie L. BibroMr. Ara V. CarapetyanConcept Music Inc.Fanco-American Vocal AcademyMs. Judith G. FaireyMr. George L. GreeneNational String Project ConsortiumMrs. Katherine P. RaceMrs. Helen RecordMr. Richard C. RobinsonDr. William M. Sage

Gifts under $250Professor Gregory D. AllenMrs. Darla E. AndersonMs. Shannon H. ArmstrongMs. Jeanette BallDavid Braybrooke, Ph.D.Mr. Michael BristolMs. Strelsa H. BurksMs. Judith K. CampsMr. Mark K. ClardyMr. Charles A. ClarkMrs. F. A. ColtmanMs. Barbara L. ConnorMr. Tommy N. Cowan, F.A.I.A.Mrs. Alice CrabtreeMrs. Beverly A. CranshawMs. Patty CroftMr. W. Kennedy CroneMr. Robert CrystalMrs. Helen S. FanelliMr. Alan W. FordFriends of MusicProfessor George A. FrockSusanna P. Garcia, D.M.A.Ms. Hettie Page GarwoodMs. Martine B. GeorgeMs. Kathryn B. GovierProfessor Lita A. GuerraScott S. Hanna, D.M.A.Mr. Scott I. HarmonMs. Mary K. HarrodMr. Mark C. HastingsMr. Steven L. HavensMs. Lori HawkinsMr. Peter HerbertMs. Sylvia S. HuntsmanIBM International Foundation

Gifts under $250Professor Kristin W. JensenProfessor Jerry F. JunkinMs. Carolyn L. KirkMr. James P. KirkseyMrs. Edith C. KnauerMr. G.J. LipovskiMrs. Myrna S. LongeneckerBetty P. Mallard, D.M.A.Ms. Carmen MarinoMr. Bradley C. MaximMrs. Mary M. McDonaldMs. Sarah McGiffertMr. C. R. McKnightMs. Shruti MehtaMr. Michael F. MelantMrs. Mary M. MorganMr. Carl V. MullerMrs. Charlotte A. NarboniProfessor Anton NelDavid P. Neumeyer, Ph.D.Ms. Mary K. O'BrienParallel Petroleum CorporationMs. Wynne W. PragerMs. Judith M. RatliffProfessor A. David RennerNicolas Shumway, Ph.D.Ms. Anneke L. SpellerMs. Susan C. SpellerMr. C. Todd StephensonMs. Leslie M. StevensKiyoshi Tamagawa, D.M.A.Mr. Alton C. White, Jr.Ms. Karen J. WhiteMrs. Darlyene Yarian

words of note, 2008: a new day dawns

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