THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SCHOOL OF MUSIC April and May 2017
Faculty NEWS Julia Broxholm, associate professor of voice, released a new recording of American song on the Equilibrium label. She collaborated on the project with pianist Russell Miller, faculty at the Eastman School of Music. The CD, The Soul Fox, features a new song cycle by Lori Laitman that was commissioned for Broxholm and Miller by Reach Out Kansas, Inc. Other works on the recording include Ned Rorem’s song cycle Women’s Voices and songs by Theodore Chanler, Richard Hundley, Amy Beach and Eric Ewazen. The recording was supported by a grant from the KU General Research Fund. The CD is posted at Equilibrium and Soundset. It has also been distributed to iTunes, Spotify, and all the other major downloading and streaming sites. The Kansas Federation of Music Clubs recognized three KU School of Music faculty — Joyce Castle, David Neely and Forrest Pierce — on
March 31 at a concert during the 97th Annual Kansas Federation of Music Clubs convention in Lawrence. Castle was honored as Musician of the Year, Neely as Artist and Educator of the Year and Pierce as Composer of the Year. The concert featured Castle in two songs from Jake Heggie’s Statuesque, a work commissioned by the University of Kansas and written for Castle, and a piece by Alec Wilder. KU School of Music faculty performed two works by Pierce, Ruin of the Cypress, for alto flute and piano, and Cathedral Grove, for oboe. KU faculty Sarah Frisof, associate professor of flute; Michael Kirkendoll, assistant professor of piano; and Margaret Marco, associate professor of oboe, performed the pieces. Pierce gave a short talk about his work as a composer. Jacob Dakon, assistant professor of music education, presented his research project, “The Violet Experience:
Social Interaction through Eclectic Music Learning Practices” at the 2017 American String Teachers Association National Conference Research-Poster Session in Pittsburgh on March 3. He also guest conducted the Georgia Music Educators Association District 12 Middle School Honors Orchestra in Powder Springs, Georgia on March 17 and 18 and the Kansas City Metro Middle School All-District Orchestra in Kansas City, Missouri on April 8. Abbey Dvor ak, assistant professor of music therapy, recently copresented “Clinical Interventions and Research Applications in DBT-informed Music Therapy” with Deborah Spiegel at the American Music Therapy Association Midwest Regional Conference in Broomfield, Colorado; presented “Music Therapy and Current Models of Mental Health Care Delivery” at the event Celebrating 40 Years of Music Therapy at Iowa: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow in
Cover Photo: On April 25, the University Band, conducted by Sharon Toulouse, assistant director of bands, gave a Celctic-themed performance at the Lied Center featuring David McNally on bagpipes and the Kansas City St. Andrew’s Highland Dancers. Earlier in the concert, Jazz Ensembles II and III performed.
QuickNotes - April and May 2017 - music.ku.edu
Iowa City, Iowa; and co-presented “Using Open Educational Resources at KU” with Josh Bolick at the Center for Online and Distance Learning. In addition, Dvorak’s project “A Systematic Review of Course-based Research Experiences and Implications for Music Therapy Education and Training” was recently selected as a KU Research Sprint, in which faculty work intensively with a team of librarians for one week on one project related to teaching or research. Debr a Hedden, professor and director of music education, presented a paper, “Undergraduate Improvisation in a General Music Methods Course” at the Desert Skies Music Education Symposium from February 23 to 25 in Phoenix, Arizona. This project was an outgrowth of an investigation she conducted during her first Fulbright in Lithuania. Vince Gnojek, professor of saxophone, performed a solo recital with Holly Page at the Kansas City Central Library on the Fifth Floor Helzberg Auditorium on May 22. They performed saxophone and piano compositions by three composers with KU connections: Sonata by David von Kampen, Autumn Soliloquy by James Barnes and Sonata for Tenor Saxophone by Kelly Mahon. The program also included La Cascada by Jose Luis Cortez and a medley of George Gershwin songs. Michael Kirkendoll, assistant professor of piano, performed his lauded program of theatrical piano music by Frederic Rzewski at the Pianoforte Foundation in Chicago. Kirkendoll’s recent performance was in advance of a multimedia DVD/CD recording project that was completed in March and will be released later in 2017. Paul Laird, professor of musicology, just published two chapters in The Palgrave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers, edited by Laura McDonald and William Everett, PhD ‘91 in musicology, and published by Palgrave Macmillan. Laird’s chapters in the volume include “More than a Producer: ‘George Abbott Presents’” and “Hal Prince: Artistry in Producing.” The chapters are based on research that Laird did at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Laird has published widely on various aspects of the musical theater.
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Véronique Mathieu, assistant professor of violin, performed the Canadian premiere of Thomas Adès’ violin concerto with Esprit Orchestra in Toronto on April 2. She also completed a recording of works by Pierre Boulez, Franco Donatoni and Witold Lutoslawski that will be released in July on Parma Records. Scott Murphy, professor of music theory, recently served as a film-music consultant for researchers at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory (Sony CSL) in Paris, who are working on a computer program that generates novel lead-sheet compositions in various popular styles. Murphy’s YouTube video, which introduces to the lay public basic harmonic patterns upon which some of Sony CSL’s algorithms are based, has reached nearly 850,000 views. Br ad Osborn, assistant professor of music theory, delivered a series of short lectures at the East Central College Jazz Band’s All-Radiohead concert on March 14. Osborn gave a short introduction to each of the five arrangements, helping the audience to hear the unique characteristics of Radiohead’s music. Matt Otto, assistant director of the jazz studies program, recently released two CDs, Iberica on Origin Records and Reunion on Jazz Collective Records. Iberica was given 4.5 stars by All About Jazz. Both CDs were reviewed in the website Bird is the Worm. Reunion was also reviewed on the blog Plastic Sax. In January, Otto spent a month as an artist-in-residence at Escape to Create in Seaside, Florida, where he wrote and recorded music. In April, he was the featured soloist along with Hermon Mehari with the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra at Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. The concert celebrated the music of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, with Otto playing the part of Coltrane. In March, Assistant Professor of Musicology Colin Roust enjoyed a two-week residency at the University of Texas, sponsored by the Big XII Faculty Fellowship program. The visit featured guest teaching, a presentation of his work on Georges Auric’s biography and the opportunity to do archival research at the Harry Ransom Center. In addition, he was invited to TCU for guest teaching and a research presentation and to Baylor University, where he met with the musicology faculty as an outside consultant for upcoming curriculum revisions.
QuickNotes - April and May 2017 - music.ku.edu
Roberta Freund Schwartz, associate professor of musicology, presented her paper “New Perspectives on the Villancico Negro: Servitude, Exoticism, and Cultural Transmission in the Spanish Siglo de Oro” at the annual meeting of the South Central Renaissance Society in Austin, Texas on April 21. Schwartz also gave the final lecture for the KU School of Music’s 2016-2017 Milton Steinhart Lecture Series with the paper “The Paradox of Papa Charlie Jackson: Evaluating an Enigmatic Blues Man,” on April 26. She presented a modified version of the paper at the annual meeting of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections in San Antonio, Texas on May 12. Assistant Professor of Music Composition Ingrid Stölzel’s choral composition Into Being was performed by San Francisco’s professional concert choir Volti on March 3 and 4. In March, she was also a guest composer at the 2017 Open Space Festival of New Music in Greely, Colorado as well as the 46th John Donald Robb Trust Symposium in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Stölzel’s chamber composition here there was performed in Luxembourg and Brussels as part of the Festival Osmose. In April she was invited as a guest composer to the 2017 Vox Feminae Festival in Tel Aviv, Israel, which featured the premiere of a newly commissioned piece for soprano, cello and piano. In addition to the concert, Stölzel gave a presentation at The Buchmann- Mehta School of Music at the Tel Aviv University.
Student NEWS Ji Hye Lee, DMA piano performance student of Michael Kirkendoll, performed the music of Arnold Schoenberg at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City as a winner of the American Protégé Competition. Sekyung Jang, PhD student with an emphasis in music therapy, has accepted a tenure-track position in music therapy at Radford University in Radford, Virginia. Christy Miller, PhD candidate in musicology, was awarded the Best Graduate Student Paper on an International Topic from the Alpha Pi chapter of Phi Beta Delta for her paper “Hillbillies in England: American Folk Music as Wartime Propaganda on the BBC.” Sor a Park, DMA piano performance student of Michael Kirkendoll, presented a full solo recital on March 5 in St. Louis sponsored by the Artist Presentation Society of St. Louis. Cellist Xiaolai Zhou, a DMA student in cello performance, has been named a fellow of the 2017 Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer program for emerging professionals.
Eric Stomberg, professor of bassoon, gave two master classes this spring, one at the Julliard School on April 6 and the other at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music on April 17.
Stephanie Zelnick, associate professor of clarinet, performed recitals at Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, the MidWest ClariFest at the University of Nebraska, the University of Northern Iowa’s Single Reed Day and the University of Montevallo’s Single Reed Symposium. Zelnick also performed a concerto with the Longmont Symphony Orchestra in Longmont, Colorado. KU MUSIC ALUMNI - SEND US YOUR NEWS Land a new job or finish that Ph.D? We want to hear about the great work our alumni are doing in the world of music. Send your music related news to musicnews@ku.edu.
Four School of Music graduate students won awards in the 2017 KU Graduate Research Competition in April. The students were Evan Kr amer, musicology; Alan Martin, music education; Justin Sextro, musicology; and Leslee Wood, musicology. The group received a fourth of the awards given at this year’s competition. Dorothy Glick Maglione received the Chancellor’s Graduate Teaching Assistant Award for the 2016-2017 academic year. This is the highest teaching award given at KU and recognizes a graduate student who demonstrates outstanding professional interaction with students and faculty throughout their tenure as a GTA. Pictured above are Sextro, Kramer, Maglione, Wood and Martin at the KU Graduate Studies recognition ceremony on April 20.
QuickNotes - April and May 2017 - music.ku.edu
Graduating Student NEWS Richard Adger, BM ’17 in clarinet performance, was accepted to Yale University to begin a Master of Music program. Melissa Cummins, PhD ’17 in musicology, presented the paper “Jacques Offenbach’s La belle Hélène: Parodic Mythology” at the American Musicological Society Southwest Chapter spring 2017 meeting held at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas on April 1. Robbie Harvey, DMA ’17 in saxophone performance, accepted a position with the New York City Ballet and performed with them in April. Harvey, a freelance saxophonist, has also established a saxophone studio in New Jersey. Sunnat Ibr ahim, MM ’17 in violoncello performance, has been named a cello fellow of the 2017 Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado.
K atherine Okesson, DMA ’17 in violin performance, has won the Kansas Orff Chapter’s Sue McCormick Memorial Scholarship. This scholarship was set up by the Kansas Orff Chapter to help defray costs for a teacher to attend an American Orff-Schulwerk Association Level Certification program. Okesson will use the scholarship to attend Level 1 Orff certification in June. Okesson has also been accepted as a violin orchestral apprentice for the 2017 Hot Springs Music Festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Michael R aehpour, BME ‘17, was one of four trumpet players to be chosen nationally for the Disneyland Resort AllAmerican College Band. Leanne Wade, PhD ’17 with an emphasis in music therapy, has accepted a position as program coordinator at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, California and will be responsible for starting a new music therapy program. KU music education student teachers worked in music classrooms during the spring semester. Their supervisory teachers accepted them for six-week long student teaching assignments and 11-week internships, with one experience at the elementary level and one at the secondary level. Students and school locations include K atie Jacobsen at
Eudora Elementary and Baldwin Junior High School, Alex Lawson at Bradley Elementary and Shawnee Mission East High School, Jordon Brown at Fairview Elementary and Aubrey Bend Middle School, Sophia Miller at Lakewood Middle School and Corinth Elementary, Maria Pileski at Oxford Middle School and Cedar Hills Elementary, Chenxi Liao at Lawrence High School and Tecumseh North Elementary, Erin Bonifield at Forest View Elementary and Oxford Middle School, Devin Carey at Sunrise Point Elementary and Shawnee Mission West High School, Max Rohlf at Ravenwood Elementary and Blue Valley Southwest, Chase Wallace at East Antioch Elementary and Prairie Star Middle School, Br aden Oliphant at State Street Elementary and Baldwin City High School, Fern Stevermer at Oskaloosa Elementary and Shawnee Mission South High School, Lauren Rigby at Sunset Hill/Woodlawn Elementary and Lawrence High School and Lauren Martens at Schwegler Elementary and Shawnee Heights High School.
2017 STUDENT AWARDS E. THAYER GASTON AWARD Halle Nick MARCUS E. HAHN AWARD Katrina Jacobsen Fern Stevermer CARL AND FRANCES HAVEN PREYER AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING GRADUATING PIANIST Kai Ono CARL AND FRANCES HAVEN PREYER AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING GRADUATING VOCALIST Calvet Young SIGMA ALPHA IOTA SCHOLASTIC AWARD Katelyn Schroeder SIGMA ALPHA IOTA COLLEGIATE HONOR AWARD Halle Nick EUGENE AND MARY MINGLE SCHOLARSHIP AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING UNDERGRADUATE MUSIC THEORY & MUSIC COMPOSITION STUDENT Dustin Chau SANDRA KELLER DAUGHERTY AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING GRADUATE CHORAL CONDUCTING Song Yi Park DICK WRIGHT JAZZ AWARD Kai Ono UNIVERSITY HONORS PROGRAM Erin Bonifield Rebecca Kurtz Calvet Young
QuickNotes - April and May 2017 - music.ku.edu
Alumni NEWS Ethan Bartley, BM ’14 in trumpet performance, was selected in a national audition for the US Navy Ceremonial and Concert Bands in Washington, D.C. The US Navy Concert Band is the premier wind ensemble in the Navy. Kristee Haney, DMA ‘14 in voice performance, had her Carnegie Hall debut as a soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass.
William V. “Will” May, Ph.D. ’83 in music education, has retired after 48 years in the music teaching profession. He was a Baylor University professor of music education after having served as dean of the Baylor University School of Music from 2000 until 2014. Prior to Baylor, he served for 20 years as a professor and administrator at the University of North Texas (UNT) College of Music. At UNT, his administrative posts included interim dean, associate dean and chairman of the Division of Music Education. May has been a choral conductor in junior high, high school, university settings and is past president of both the Texas Music Educators Association and the Texas Association of Music Schools. May is widely published and served on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Research in Music Education. He and his wife, Ann, live in McGregor, Texas.
Madison Mikenna Dugan, MM ‘13 in opera, will be serving as assistant director of development and alumni relations at the Michigan State University College of Music, her undergraduate alma mater. Dugan was previously the development associate at Mid-America Arts Alliance in Kansas City. Andrés Mojica, DMA ‘16 in organ performance, was the artistic director of the First International Organ Festival of Puerto Rico. The festival was held in January 2017 at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras and Union Church of San Juan with Daniel Brondel and Erik WM. Suter as guest organists. The festival attracted more than 3,000 people and included recitals, lectures and presentations. Mojica is the organist and organ professor of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Stanton Nelson, BM ’13 in piano performance, was accepted into the Doctorate of Pastoral Music program at Southern Methodist University. He intends to graduate with a Master of Divinity from The King’s University in the Spring of 2020. After graduating from KU, Stanton received a Master of Music in collaborative piano performance from the University of Michigan under Martin Katz. Then he moved to Dallas and became an adjunct piano professor at The King’s University and one of the three organists at Highland Park United Methodist Church.
QuickNotes - April and May 2017 - music.ku.edu