Serenade, Fall 2018

serenade UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SCHOOL OF MUSIC FALL 2018

Making Music at the Kennedy Center

7 Pianist Named Presser Scholar 5 Artists Respond to Problem of Driving While Black 13 Alumni Stories: A Conversation with Gary Foster 19

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 5 6 7 11 12 13

A Year in Review Pianist Named Presser Scholar Making Music Around the World Dreams Come True on the Stage of Kennedy Center Students in the Spotlight New to KU School of Music Faculty Research and Accomplishments

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Alumni of Note

13 - Artists Respond to Problem of Driving While Black

14 - New Morse Code Taps Out Tunes

15 - Music Lessons from Lithuania

15 - AdZel Duo Makes Music for Two Clarinets

16 - New Organ Recording Nearly 40 Years in the Making

17 - Dan Gailey Named a Chancellors Club Professor

17 - Composer Aims to Evoke Emotion with Gorgeous Nothings

18 - Scholarship Shows Musical Theatre Alive and Kicking 19 - Gary Foster: A Dream Well-Lived

21 - 41 Years of the Nebraska Hog Call

22 - KU Grads Advance Music Therapy Research

23 - Lynn Brinckmeyer: An Advocate for Music

25 - Claude T. Smith: Leaving a Legacy of Music

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School of Music Dean's Club and Friends of the School of Music Upcoming Events

Serenade Magazine is published once a year for alumni and friends of the University of Kansas School of Music.

DEAN Robert Walzel EDITOR Christine Metz Howard DESIGNER Leslee Wood CONTRIBUTORS Christine Metz Howard Rick Hellman Emily Cox

PHOTOS Cristian Fatu Mark McDonald Christine Metz Howard Jon Robichaud Tim Seley Chris Steppig Eric T. Williams Andy White PROOFREADER Janet Diehl Corwin PRINTING Kingston Printing, Eudora, Kansas

Alumni updates can be sent to: KU School of Music Attn: Christine Metz Howard 460 Murphy Hall 1530 Naismith Drive Lawrence, KS 66045 For more information call (785) 864-9742 or e-mail musicnews@ku.edu

Cover Photo: Paul W. Popiel, KU director of bands, rehearses with the KU Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble I on the stage of the Kennedy Center prior to KU’s April 29 performance of Freedom From Fear.

Photo Credit: Andy White, KU Marketing and Communications

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A Message from the Dean

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he KU School of Music is off and running in an exciting new academic year and concert season. In this, our second edition of Serenade, we are pleased to celebrate some of our tremendous successes of last year, share some of the exciting plans for the coming year, and look back on our rich and cherished heritage as one of the nation’s leading music schools.

KU music faculty continue to be engaged as national and international leaders in research, performance and other creative endeavors. The fruits of their work can be seen in our students, who continue to realize noteworthy accomplishments in their work. Whether being rewarded in important competitions, selected to present research in national conferences or employed in laudable professional positions, KU music students make us proud in so many ways.

Our West African Drum Ensemble was a big hit with their performance at the Percussive Arts Society International Conference in November. The Chamber Singers stole the show in San José, Costa Rica as KU and the University of Costa Rica celebrated 60 years of working together, the longest such relationship any American institution has had with another in Central or South America. In the spring, the KU Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble I received an enthusiastic reception when they performed in the Eisenhower Theatre at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in our nation’s capital.

Through our students and faculty, music is an amazingly effective ambassador for KU. In this time of turbulence and dissonance in the world around us…music brings beauty… music brings harmony…music brings understanding. And for Jayhawks everywhere, music is continuing the traditions of our great university.

We all hope you enjoy this year’s edition of Serenade!

Robert Walzel, Dean School of Music

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A Year in Review

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he 2017-2018 academic year was one of celebrations for the KU School of Music. It started with concerts that honored women in music and was followed by the celebrations of the 100th and 80th birthdays for two legendary American composers. The school’s ensembles were recognized as they were selected to perform throughout the country, including at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis and the American Choral Directors Association’s Southwestern Division Conference in Oklahoma City in March. The entire Jayhawk Nation rejoiced this spring as they watched KU Men’s Basketball advance to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. Along for the wild ride was the mighty KU Men’s Basketball Band. Here are a few of the highlights from the year: • In a celebration of women in music, the School of Music held two concerts at the end of October, one featuring all women composers and another highlighting treble choirs and female conductors. On Oct. 28, the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM), a global network of women and men working to increase and enhance musical activities and opportunities and to promote all aspects of women in music, held its annual concert at KU. The concert showcased compositions by nine women composers, which were performed by the Kansas Virtuosi.

The works were selected from an international call for scores.

Photos on this page by Christine Metz Howard unless otherwise noted

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As winners of the Percussive Arts Society’s World Percussion Ensemble Competition, the KU West African Drum Ensemble, directed

by Dylan Bassett, performed at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis in November 2017.

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In celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th Anniversary, KU hosted “A KU-Centennial: The Musical Theater of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990),” which featured keynote speakers Paul Laird, professor of musicology, and Elizabeth Wells, Mount Allison University professor of music. KU musicology and music theory faculty, graduate students and alumni also gave talks on their contributions to Bernstein or musical theater studies. The celebration’s centerpiece was KU Opera’s production of Bernstein’s Candide. Pictured above are Candide performers Mackenzie Phillips as the Old Lady, Anthony Rohr as Candide and Gretchen Pille as Cunegonde.

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The KU Women’s Chorale, 3 conducted by Mariana Farah, associate director of choral activities, performed a concert at the American Choral Directors Association’s Southwestern Division Conference (SWACDA) in Oklahoma City in March.

Later in the semester, the KU Women’s Chorale performed with the KU Men’s Glee Club in a special concert at the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka (pictured above). The capitol concerts were sponsored by Reach Out Kansas, Inc.

• On Oct. 30, the KU Treble Choir Festival hosted five Kansas treble choirs, including the KU Women’s Chorale, and five female conductors, including Mariana Farah, KU associate director of choral activities, and Melissa Grady, assistant professor of music.

• Inspired by Richard Strauss’ 1889 tone poem, the School of Music and Reach Out Kansas, Inc. presented Death and Transfiguration on Nov. 6 at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri.

The free concert, featuring the KU Symphony Orchestra with guest conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett, included the performance of Strauss’ four-part masterpiece of the same name and thematically related works. The concert also highlighted the talents of five KU voice students.

• In February the KU Symphonic Band, under the direction of Matt Smith, associate professor of bands, performed at the Friday Night Showcase Concert at the Kansas Music Educators In-Service Workshop in Wichita. The concert also featured Steve Leisring, professor of trumpet, and Ronald Romm, formerly of the Canadian Brass, in a duet, and Sharon Toulouse, assistant director of bands.

submitted photo

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The KU Men’s Basketball Band had a fun run through March Madness. They performed at the Big 12 Tournament at the Sprint Center in Kansas City and went on to play in Wichita, Omaha and San Antonio as the KU Men’s Basketball advanced in the NCAA Tournament and ended its season at the Final Four. The band is pictured above in front of San Antonio’s Alamodome.

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To celebrate the 80th birthday of 5 one of America’s greatest living composers, the School of Music hosted three performances in February to honor John Corigliano.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Grawemeyer Award, numerous Grammy awards and an Academy Award, Corigliano visited KU as a composer-in-residence. During his visit, KU Choirs and Symphony Orchestra performed his works Fern Hill and Red Violin: Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra as part of the Eighth Annual Scholarship Concert.

KU faculty gave a Kansas Virtuosi concert on the same day featuring Corigliano’s works. Pictured above, doctoral student Brooke Humfeld had the opportunity to conduct the KU Wind Ensemble in Stomp, a Corigliano piece she transcribed for wind ensemble, in front of the legendary composer, seated right.

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This May nearly 130 students graduated from the School of 6 Music, celebrating with a Recognition Ceremony in Murphy Hall on May 12 and Commencement in Memorial Stadium on May 13.

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Pianist Named Presser Scholar

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Photo: Tim Seley, KU Marketing and Communications

love of classical music came naturally for Benjamin Dominguez, who grew up in a family of nine children in East Berlin, Pennsylvania. On car trips his father, Arthur, would play Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Mendelssohn.

Even before he started formal lessons, Dominguez would sit at the upright piano his mother Coleen had played in her younger days, pounding away as though he was making music.

"From an early age, I was learning to love music from the classical tradition,” said Dominguez, a senior piano performance major who studies under Jack Winerock, professor of piano.

Dominguez has impressed instructors and peers alike at the KU School of Music with a growing collection of awards, the most recent being the 2018 Presser Scholar, one of the most prestigious awards for KU undergraduate music majors given each year to a deserving junior. In 2017, he won the KU School of Music Concerto Competition and grand prize at the Naftzger Young Artist Competition. In 2016 he performed twice with the Kansas City Symphony at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts after winning the Kansas City Symphony Young Artists Competition.

Dominguez started formal lessons at the age of seven at the request of his mother, who instructed him until they found a private teacher.

In her youth, Coleen studied piano, later majoring in music in college.

While Dominguez is the only sibling to pursue music at the university level, his three brothers and five sisters all learned to play the piano or other instruments. He often performed duets with his older brother Jonathan and still occasionally plays duets with his older sister Michelle. “Growing up in a musical family was a great experience,” he said.

In 2014, Dominguez was introduced to Winerock, with whom he was determined to study and is the reason he came to KU.

“He’s such a great teacher. He’s concerned not only with where you are with piano, but how you’re doing as a person and as a student,” Dominguez said.

Dominguez credits his success at KU to the collaborative atmosphere among students.

“The environment is very comfortable; there’s not too much competition between the students, which is helpful,” he said.

It’s behavior that Winerock encourages. “You need your friends, your support system. Being a musician is not easy when you need someone to say ‘Yes, you’re on the right track,’” he said. “Dominguez is a very deep and sincere musician. In addition, everybody loves him. He just gets along with everybody. When someone needs a favor, Ben is the first one to say ‘How can I help?’”

Dominguez performs both solo and collaborative works, with Chopin and Bach being his favorite composers. Over the years, chamber music has been an excellent tool to encourage him to improve not only as a pianist, but as an artist as well, Winerock said.

Working with other instrumentalists, such as singers, has given Dominguez experience with timing and how to communicate more effectively to audiences the piece he is performing.

“It’s very nerve-racking before you go out onto the stage, but once you’re out there you’re in the moment; as you’re playing, your nerves calm down and it is just about the music. It’s a wonderful experience. That’s why I do it,” Dominguez said.

■ Emily Cox

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rom Europe’s acclaimed jazz festivals to the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica, KU School of Music students wowed audiences around the world in the past year. They also had an opportunity to take their studies abroad, visiting the concert halls and opera houses of classical music’s masters.

MAKING MUSIC AROUND THE WORLD

Submitted Photos

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Once again, KU music students returned to Lawrence’s Sister City, Eutin.

This year they performed in the Classical Beat Music Festival in nearby Schleswig-Holstein while staying in Eutin, a city that has a long partnership with the School of Music.

Students who participated were Zhaolin Wang, viola; Nick May, saxophone; Murphy Smith, double bass; Stacia Fortune, bass clarinet; and Daniel Gerona, trumpet.

They were joined by recent graduates Doug Perry, vibes/ percussion; Brian Scarborough, trombone; and Kai Ono, piano.

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The KU Chamber Singers, directed by Paul Tucker, director of choral activities, traveled to San José, Costa Rica in March to celebrate the University of Kansas’ 60 years of academic partnership with the University of Costa Rica. The partnership, established in 1958, is one of the oldest cultural exchange agreements between North American and Latin American universities.

While in Costa Rica, the 24 students sang at the event’s closing ceremonies, as well as at the U.S. Embassy (pictured above).

Other faculty participating in the trip included Dean Robert Walzel, Ketty Wong, associate professor of ethnomusicology; Hannah Collins, assistant professor of cello; Margaret Marco, professor of oboe; and Ellen Sommer, collaborative piano lecturer. While in Costa Rica, the faculty performed and gave master classes.

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Over winter break Martin Nedbal, assistant professor of musicology, led the first ever “Masters of Music,” study abroad program. Nedbal, who is a native of the Czech Republic and specializes in opera history and the music of Mozart, Hayden and Beethoven, took eight students to the musically rich cities of Vienna and Prague. The two-week course included readings, discussions, daily excursions and world-class performances. The program allowed students to study the history of music from the 18th and 19th centuries and then see the music performed in the city where it was composed.

The group visited historical landmarks, concert halls and opera houses; among the highlights were the Schönbrunn Palace, Austrian National Library, Vienna State Opera House, Estates Theatre and Rudolfinum.

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In July the KU Jazz Ensemble I went on a whirlwind ten-show, 13-day European tour, performing at three of the world’s most prestigious jazz festivals: the 52nd Annual Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, 38th Annual Jazz à Vienne in France, and 48th Annual Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy.

The group also played in Italy at the Scarperia Jazz Festival in Florence, as well as at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Music in Milan and Stresa and Torino.

Joining the 21-member Jazz Ensemble I, which is directed by Dan Gailey, director of jazz studies, were Kansas City-based jazz vocalist Deborah Brown and KU faculty guest artists including Steve Leisring, professor of trumpet; Brandon Draper, percussion lecturer; and KU School of Music Dean Robert Walzel, on clarinet. Reach Out Kansas, Inc supported the European tour.

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Dreams Come True on the

Photo: Andy White, KU Marketing and Communications

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e Stage of Kennedy Center

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his spring more than 60 members of the KU Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble I had the once-in-alifetime opportunity to perform at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Conducted by Paul W. Popiel, director of bands, on April 29, the ensembles premiered Kevin Walczyk’s Symphony No. 5 Freedom from Fear: Images from the Shoreline, a monumental work that crossed centuries and musical genres to speak to the courage of displaced people.

“Truly, it’s a dream come true for me and a lot of other people,” said Gretchen Pille, the featured soprano soloist from Omaha, Nebraska.

For Donovan Miller, a percussion major from Woodbury, Minnesota, it was his first chance to visit Washington, Dreams Come True, continued on pg. 9t

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and to experiment with a piece that combined the tradition of jazz with classical music.

“It’s been a dream already just being at this school and playing in this program, but being on the Kennedy Center stage, it was just everything I could have dreamt of,” Miller said.

Elizabeth Phillips saw an opportunity to spread a message of hope and unity and a chance to pay tribute to her father. The junior oboist from McKinney, Texas, lost her father at age 12 to military-related cancer.

“To me it was a memorial for those who fought and gave their lives for this country,” Phillips said.

A Pulitzer Prize- and Grawemeyer-nominated composer, Walczyk drew inspiration for Freedom from Fear from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address Four Freedoms, which identified freedom from fear as a fundamental human right.

In a rare fusion of the KU Wind Ensemble, conducted by Popiel, and KU Jazz Ensemble I, directed

by Dan Gailey, director of jazz studies, the fourmovement piece flowed among varied musical styles, including classical, Delta Blues, jazz improvisation, Syrian folk music and the voices of a soprano and boy soprano. Unifying the piece were images of displaced peoples along shorelines, spanning from the Old Testament to today.

Freedom from Fear referenced the biblical story of Jochebed relinquishing her infant son Moses; the

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“The reason is words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.”

- Kevin Walczyk “This piece found a universal truth among different countries and different societies throughout history,” said Popiel. “There was an element of loss, sacrifice and separation that goes beyond immigration and into something deeper.”

When composing Freedom from Fear, Walczyk was struck by Life magazine’s explanation for publishing the photographs from the Battle of Buna-Gona, which were

Photo: Andy White, KU Marketing and Communications

Luis Matos performs a saxophone solo at the Kennedy Center.

1943 Life magazine photograph of three World War II soldiers lying dead on a South Pacific beach during the Battle of Buna-Gona; Civil Rights era wade-ins on the segregated beaches of Biloxi, Mississippi; the 2015 photograph, Humanity Washed Ashore, of 3-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, whose body was found on a Turkish beach after his boat capsized; immigrants arriving at the Statue of Liberty; and Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, The New Colossus.

Photo: Andy White, KU Marketing and Communications

Prior to the world premiere of Freedom from Fear, the concert featured Palos Nuevos: The Jazz/Flamenco Project with the KU Jazz Ensemble I. Composed by Dan Gailey, director of jazz studies, and choreographed by Michelle Heffner Hayes, “Palos Nuevos” emulated the flamenco tradition of dialogue between dancer and musician and the practice of trading fours in jazz improvisations. The suite featured Hayes, chair of the KU Department of Theatre and Dance, performing the “baile” (dance); Steve Leisring, professor of trumpet, playing the ‘cante’ (voice); flamenco guitarist Beau Bledsoe as the “toque” (guitar); and Brandon Draper, music lecturer, performing on percussion. Palos Nuevos is a legacy project of Reach Out Kansas, Inc. and premiered at the Lied Center of Kansas in spring 2017.

the first images of dead American servicemen in World War II to be published by the American media: “The reason is words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens…”

Walczyk intended for Freedom from Fear to similarly affect the audience.

The piece was commissioned by Reach Out Kansas, Inc., which through legacy projects such as Freedom from Fear aims to create transformative works that will impact the world for generations. Washington, DC—

where national policy is created and home to embassies from around the world — was selected as the site for the world premiere with the hopes to inspire more reasonable discussion.

“We were in a world class venue, presenting the premiere of world class music that was commissioned for us. This was an incredible opportunity that is a rare thing at any level, even for a professional orchestra,” Popiel said.

■ Christine Metz Howard

Photo Page 8: Paul W. Popiel conducts the KU Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble I at the Kennedy Center on April 29.

Photo: Andy White, KU Marketing and Communications

Students Noah Zoller, Abbey Sigler, Colin Wreath, Andre Womack and Megann Lawrenz spent time visiting the National Mall.

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Students in the Spotlight A

s an undergraduate student in China, Xiaolai Zhou had only one picture in his practice room — that of his idol Yo-Yo Ma. In March, while his classmates were on spring break, Zhou, a doctoral student in cello performance, was one of two college cellists selected to take a public master class from Ma in Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri. Zhou was impressed by Ma’s genius, genuineness and honesty.

The masterclass was part of the Kansas City Symphony’s Charles and Virginia Clark Inside Music Series. Afterward Ma, Kansas City Symphony Music Director Michael Stern and Kansas City Mayor Sly James held a discussion on the importance of arts in the community. An added bonus for Zhou was the chance to interview Ma for his doctoral paper on composer Chen Yi’s cello concert, which Ma premiered. ■

Photo credit: Eric T. Williams

“On stage, he tried to inspire me by kneeling on one leg in order to watch me directly. I remember the audience was laughing at the beginning, but after I was inspired by his simple guidance and played again, applause burst through the hall. It was amazing,” Zhou recounted.

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octoral student Han Wang wowed piano judges throughout the country during the spring semester, earning top place finishes in three international competitions. In early February Wan, a student of Piano Professor Steven Spooner, was awarded the top prize in the Fourth Annual United States Virtuoso Artists International Piano Competition at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Later in February Wang won a grand prize at the Seventh Metropolitan International Piano Competition in New York City. As the grand prize winner, Wang was a featured artist at the Metropolitan International Music Festival’s Gala Concert held at Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Auditorium. In March Wang was awarded the third prize at the Ninth Chopin International Piano Competition in Hartford, Connecticut.

Throughout the competitions, judges called Wang’s performances “stunning,” “brilliant, tasteful and very colorful,” and “very musical and beautiful.” Wang competed alongside students from other top music schools such as the University of Cincinnati, University of Illinois, The Julliard School, Northwestern University, Yale University and Mannes School of Music. ■

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Photo credit: Chris Steppig

embers of the KU Men’s Basketball team weren’t the only ones who had an opportunity of a lifetime at the 2018 NCAA Final Four. The Tuesday before the Final Four, Darius Sheppard, an undergraduate voice major, received an unexpected call asking if he could come to San Antonio to perform the national anthem with three other students representing the Final Four schools. On March 31, the tenor joined students from the University of Michigan, Villanova University and Loyola University Chicago to sing the anthem at the start of the Michigan-Loyola game, which was broadcast on national television. Sheppard is pictured on the far right. ■

NEW TO KU

The School of Music welcomed four new faculty this fall

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arolyn Watson comes to KU as the new director of orchestral activities and conducts the KU Symphony Orchestra.

Formerly the director of orchestral studies at Texas State University, Watson was a major prizewinner of the 2012 Emmerich Kálmán International Operatta Conducting Competition in Budapest, Hungary, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival.

Watson has conducted orchestras throughout Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic in Interaktion. She was one of six conductors to be selected for the elite Dallas Opera Institute for Women Conductors and has participated in

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aniel Velasco has been named assistant professor of flute. Before coming to KU, Velasco was appointed to the faculty at the University of Akron in 2016.

Velasco is the first prize winner of the National Flute Association’s Young Artist Competition, WAMSO Minnesota Orchestra Competition, MTNA Young Artist Competition, and Claude Monteux Flute Competition; the second prize winner of the William C. Byrd Competition; and finalist at the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh International Competition.

He has been a soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ecuador, Northern Iowa Symphony Orchestra, Luciano Carrera Chamber Orchestra, University

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oris Vayner has been appointed as an assistant professor of viola. Vayner joined the KU faculty as a lecturer in 2017. Previously, he had served as adjunct faculty and a member of the quartet-in-residence at Wichita State University.

Vayner's students have gone on to win concerto area competitions as well as local and national chamber music competitions. At Wichita State Vayner was the founder and director of the Suprima Chamber Orchestra; and he successfully led the orchestra to performances in Russia and at the Bargemusic in New York, where they collaborated with violin prodigy Jonathan Okseniuk.

Originally from Novosibirsk, Russia, Vayner has enjoyed a diverse career in music as a violist, educator and conductor. A member of the Grammy-nominated St. Petersburg String Quartet since

master classes with Marin Alsop, Peter Eötvös, Yoel Levi, Martyn Brabbins and Alex Polishchuk.

From 2013-15 she was the music director of the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra and has also conducted the World Youth Symphony Orchestra and Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra since moving to the U.S. in 2013. She is the recipient of the Brian Stacy Award for emerging Australian conductors, Sir Charles Mackerras Conducting Prize, Opera Foundation Australia’s Bayreuth Opera Award and Berlin New Music Opera Award.

Watson holds a PhD in Performance (Conducting) from the University of Sydney.

of Akron Symphony Orchestra and University of Akron Wind Ensemble. An active freelancer, Velasco has been a member of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, Florida Grand Opera, and Palm Beach Symphony, and has performed with Boca Sinfonia, Michigan Philharmonic, Akron Symphony and Pittsburgh Opera.

He performs with the Solaris Woodwind Quintet and is a founding member of the Miamibased NuDeco Ensemble.

Velasco earned a doctoral degree from the University of Miami-Frost School of Music and holds degrees from the University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin and University of Northern Iowa.

2005, he has toured throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia. The highlights of his career include performances at Lincoln Center, Library of Congress, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Manchester Bridgewater Hall, Dublin National Concert Hall, London King’s Place, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Great Hall. He is also a member of the St. Petersburg Piano Quartet that debuted in New York in 2014.

Vayner holds bachelor’s degrees from Novosibirsk Music College and Novosibirsk State University and master’s degrees in viola performance from the St. Petersburg Conservatory and the New England Conservatory. He is currently pursuing a DMA in orchestral conducting at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance.

David Colwell, continued pg. 13

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ARTISTS RESPOND TO PROBLEM OF

‘DRIVING WHILE BLACK’ DWB is the rueful shorthand for “Driving While Black,” and it’s also the title of a new chamber opera project that featured the work of three KU faculty last spring.

In March at a performance in Swarthout Recital Hall, Roberta Gumbel, lecturer in voice and opera; Hannah Collins, assistant professor of

New Faculty continued....

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cello; and Michael Compitello, assistant professor of percussion, premiered the 45-minute work with music composed

by Susan Kander and libretto written by Gumbel, based on her own personal experience with the issue.

Kander approached Gumbel last year about writing something for the soprano and New Morse Code, as the duet of Collins and Compitello is known. The idea of DWB came up, as Gumbel’s son had recently reached driving age. In the wake of recent infamous encounters that led to the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Philando Castile, Gumbel worried like many African-American parents that her son could be profiled or targeted by police for arrest or worse.

“She called me and said, ‘I know what I want to write about: your concerns for your son, an AfricanAmerican boy behind the wheel in this time,’” Gumbel said.

Kander asked Gumbel to write the libretto, even though Gumbel had never written a song, much less an operatic piece. Gumbel accepted the challenge and sat down to write out her thoughts in the form of vignettes — experiences from her own life or things she had heard about from relatives. She interspersed those scenes with “news bulletins” alluding to notorious cases.

After Gumbel’s own editing process was complete, Kander went to work

avid Colwell is a visiting assistant professor of music (violin) at KU. From 2011 to 2018, Colwell served on the faculty of State University of New York at Fredonia and attained the rank of associate professor. Prior to that appointment, he was a member of the University of Virginia performance faculty.

Colwell enjoys a diverse career as a soloist, chamber musician and educator in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Middle East. He has given recitals and master classes at Eastman School of Music, Cornell University, McGill University, Swarthmore College, Ithaca College, California

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with the words and “made it work with the musical shape of the piece,” Gumbel said. Kander is a former playwright who turned to musical composition years ago. Since then, Kander has written numerous operas and song cycles. But she knew that, as a white woman, she was not qualified to write the text to DWB.

"The narrative is all leading up to, 'How will I gather the courage to give (my son) the keys to the car?'"

- Roberta Gumbel “The story is mine, with other pieces thrown in,” Gumbel said. “There are four chairs on stage, representing the four seats in a car. The baby starts out in back in a child-safety seat. When he’s old enough, he gets to ride up front.

This is how time is marked. Eventually I teach him to drive. The narrative is all leading up to, ‘How will I gather the courage to give him the keys to the car?’”

Gumbel, Collins and Compitello will perform the piece again this fall at the Lawrence Arts Center.

■ Rick Hellman Photo Page 13: Roberta Gumbel Photo Page 14: Hannah Collins, left, and Michael Compitello, right.

State University-Fullerton, Buffalo State College, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, the Deià International Music Festival (Spain) and the Palau March Summer Concert series in Palma de Mallorca (Spain). Concerto engagements have included the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Alberta Baroque Ensemble, Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra and the Charlottesville Symphony Orchestra.

Colwell earned his undergraduate education in his native Canada at the University of Alberta.

He completed his graduate degrees at Yale School of Music.

FACULTY RESEARCH

NEW MORSE CODE

taps out tunes

There’s not a lot of repertoire for cello and percussion, so faculty members Hannah Collins and Michael Compitello, the cellist and percussionist, respectively, who form the duo New Morse Code, commissioned some of their favorite composers to write for them.

The result is the group’s first album, Simplicity Itself, released on CD late last year

by New Focus Recordings.

“We create the repertoire to a large extent,” said Compitello, assistant professor of percussion. “There are some things, particularly from a famous percussionist and cellist who worked together in the 1990s.

But most music we play is stuff we have commissioned and we have worked with the composer on, to some extent, either in the compositional process – bouncing ideas off of one another, workshopping a piece together, making changes together – or even at the foundational level.

“We developed relationships together with our friends who are composers. We traded music that we liked, went to concerts together, played together in some cases,” he said. “And so when we asked them to write a piece for us, it really became a piece for the two of us as people, instead of us as those two instruments.”

Some of the composers represented on the album are world-renowned, including 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music winner Caroline Shaw and 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient Tonia Ko. Collins, also an assistant professor of cello, said that many great works throughout classical music history have been inspired by the personal relationships between composers and particular performers.

“I like to be a part of that process in that way,” she said.

She said the name of the group, New

Morse Code, was inspired by the notion of communicating by tapping on something.

“The idea came from a friend of ours,” Collins said. “I liked it because it captured a little bit of our mission: sending information to people who are maybe miles apart using a sonic language.”

As to whether their group’s music is classical, Compitello and Collins aren’t quite sure.

“Those boundaries are starting to break down,” Compitello said. The composers New Morse Code has worked with “feel like they are allowed to include a bit of bluegrass fiddling or a bit of plain, no-vibrato singing, or a rock drum beat, or an electric guitar riff that might be familiar to people, or a reference to a song a lot of people know.”

■ Rick Hellman

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MUSIC LESSONS FROM LITHUANIA

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he Baltic state of Lithuania is home to “a singing culture,” says Debra Hedden, professor and director of music education, and, in her most recent scholarly article, she tries to adapt some of that country’s methods for an American audience. She also infuses these in her methods classes, in which she’s preparing future teachers to teach children to sing.

“Lessons from Lithuania: A Pedagogical Approach in Teaching Improvisation” is the article Hedden published in the International Journal of Music Education. Hedden, who directs the music education program, has earned two Fulbrights and other awards to fund her Lithuanian research for the past six years.

Lithuania’s music culture has fascinated Hedden since her first visit in 2010, when she and her husband, former KU dean and music professor Steve Hedden, were invited there to lead a weeklong workshop for teachers.

“There are boys singing schools and girls singing schools,” Hedden said. “They meet four or five times a week after the regular school day for two or more hours. These schools are subsidized by the government. They learn to read music. They do several performances a year.”

In “Lessons from Lithuania,” Hedden writes about observing how a master teacher she calls Lukas (a pseudonym) taught improvisation in a

university setting.

“He was a very knowledgeable teacher,” Hedden said, “but he had few materials and no money to work with.”

The secret to his success, Hedden said, involves “high expectations, no messing around and the use of humor — although it’s a serious business.”

Hedden observed Lukas’ teaching methods, some of which involved physical activities like clapping or playing different instruments and some of which involved mental practices, like creating music on the spot to illustrate a situation the teacher was describing verbally. All are designed to break down inhibition and stimulate creativity.

In her article, Hedden places these pedagogical methods into five categories: • Freedom to create • Convincing the students • Establishing expectations • Learning experiences • Environment Under “expectations,” for example, Hedden wrote that Lukas “encouraged and validated all students’ attempts at improvisation to dispel fears and avoid inappropriate responses by their peers.”

He reminded them that “there can be no mistakes in improvisation.”

“By the end of the semester, they are on stage with dance majors, creating music for them to dance to on the spot,” Hedden said.

Improved methods of teaching

Photo Credit: Christine Metz Howard

improvisation to U.S. college students who want to become music teachers are necessary, Hedden said.

“One of the great issues I see is that our students are so good at reading and interpreting music on the page, but they are not so good at creating it on their own,” Hedden said. “Think about trying to study English only by reading it and never improvising a conversation or writing.”

Hedden said she brought some of Lukas’ teaching methods home to KU, but they only worked to a certain extent.

That’s one reason she is continuing her line of research.

■ Rick Hellman Photo Above: Debra Hedden, right, teaching a KU music education class.

AdZel Duo makes music for two clarinets

Mariam Adam, left, and Stephanie Zelnick, right

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Stephanie Zelnick, associate professor of clarinet, has embarked upon a new phase of her career.

“My big passion right now has shifted to recording,” said Zelnick, who has spent 11 years teaching at the KU School of Music, while also performing regularly in Colorado as the principal clarinet of the Boulder Philharmonic and the Central City Opera.

In addition to playing in orchestras and recording solo works — she has made two solo albums, is a Naxos and Innova label recording artist and has recorded multiple tracks for compilations — Zelnick has added a new color to her palette – that of a clarinet duo. Her nine-yearold performing collaboration with former Imani Winds ensemble member Mariam Adam, the AdZel Duo, has just released its first, self-titled

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album, available at adzelduo.com.

The album was recorded at Oktaven Studios in New York.

“I want to record some standards that I might have a slightly different twist on,” Zelnick said, “but there are a lot of good clarinetists out there. Somebody has recorded every standard really well. So I am trying to find pieces that haven’t been recorded that much, that haven’t been championed or that are by new composers.

Pieces that I think are really valid — by people who have really great voices — I try to record those pieces and perform them a lot.”

Zelnick and Adam met in 1995 while attending the Aspen Music Festival.

by the Nazi occupation of France.

“Despite this seemingly impossible scenario, his father published a three-volume set of his son’s works in 1942,” Higdon said.

“He published 100 copies. You needed ration coupons to buy paper in those days, and he collected the necessary coupons from his son’s friends.”

Higdon obtained one of those 100 copies during the course of his research into Jehan Alain from the musician’s niece and biographer, Aurelie DeCourt.

“She said she would give me Albert’s personal copy of the first edition,” Higdon said. “I took it to the paper conservators here at KU, and they put them in these special binders.

I decided to make a recording based on the first edition. There are many differences in the father's, Albert’s, edition. There are a lot of handwritten notes.”

Higdon said Albert Alain’s emendations includes “note changes and different registrations for certain pieces. I am thinking that he quite likely would have gotten these notions from hearing his son, Jehan, play or from speaking to him, but, of course, there is no way of knowing for sure,” Higdon said.

Albert Alain is an interesting figure in his own right. The woodworker and church organist hand-built a large, four-manual pipe organ in his Photo by Christine Metz Howard

hen James Higdon, now the Dane and Polly Bales Professor of Organ, arrived at the University of Kansas School of Music 38 years ago, he received a faculty research grant that set him on the path that has culminated in his new two-CD album, Jehan Alain: Organ Works – a 1942 Perspective.

“I proposed that the university send me to France to study,” Higdon recalled.

Back in the 1980s, Higdon extended his working partnership with Marie-Claire Alain, who, in addition to teaching, was said to have been the world’s most prolific classical organ recording artist. That was where Higdon first encountered the works of Jehan Alain, Marie-Claire Alain’s late older brother.

Jehan Alain (19111940) had died in combat at age 29 while serving in the French Army during the early stages of World War II. He had published only a couple of organ works before his death, so, as a memorial to the young artist, his father, Albert Alain, arranged to publish a series of Jehan’s works, despite the hardships imposed

Since forming their group, Zelnick said, “We work to find composers who, first of all, would write for a pretty restricted medium.

It’s two clarinets. So we came up with these composers who had a vision for what our personalities were like, what our lives have been like. These different composers on the album did the same thing.”

The album contains one piece written

by Jason Barabba, two by Anne Guzzo and a four-part composition by Mohammed Fairouz. There are also six tracks written during the 19th century by Bernhard Henrik Crusell.

“Crusell, he’s an oldie but a goodie,” Zelnick said. “But the new ones, these are three really unique and innovative

family’s home in the Paris suburb Saint-Germain-en-Laye, inspiring his three children (Jehan, Marie-Claire and Olivier) to become players and composers. Today, Albert Alain’s organ has been restored and moved to a building in Romainmotier, Switzerland, where the Association Jehan Alain owns it.

After many years of visiting France and playing the various organs Jehan Alain had played, Higdon decided to record some of his latest CD set on Albert Alain’s organ in Switzerland.

“It’s a fabulous, large instrument, carefully constructed,” Higdon said.

“It’s very, very musical. It’s the organ that inspired many of Jehan Alain’s compositions. I wanted to include it both for artistic reasons and because of the research I had done on it.”

Five tracks on the CD set were made in late 2016 and early 2017 in Switzerland. The remainder of the album was recorded at Bales Recital Hall last year.

■ Rick Hellman

FACULTY RESEARCH

NEW ORGAN RECORDING Nearly 40 Years in the Making

composers. It’s a cool, timbral possibility that hasn’t been done that much before — just two clarinets without piano, and they have come up with some great stuff.”

■ Rick Hellman

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DAN GAILEY NAMED A CHANCELLORS CLUB PROFESSOR Photo Credit: Mark McDonald, KU Endowment

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS • His students have won 25 DownBeat Student Music Awards, considered the most prestigious and competitive awards in jazz education. DownBeat Awards are given on an international level, including large and small jazz ensembles.

• Jazz Ensemble I received the award for Best College Jazz Ensemble in the Graduate Division in 2015, and the Outstanding Performance Award in the same category in 2017.

Last fall Dan Gailey, director of jazz studies and professor of music, was one of five KU professors to be recognized with a prestigious Chancellors Club Teaching Professorship in 2018.

Honored by KU Endowment for their excellence in education, the five educators receive an annual $10,000 honorarium for each of the next five years.

In announcing Gailey’s award, KU Endowment noted that he has a knack for bringing out the best in his students. Under his direction, KU’s Jazz Ensemble I has earned national

and international recognition. Most recently, it was one of only six collegiate jazz bands to perform at the prestigious Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival in 2017.

Music Dean Robert Walzel has called Gailey “one of the premiere jazz educators in the world.” In his nomination letter, he said of Gailey, “His consistency in producing excellence in his teaching, as demonstrated by the many student and ensemble awards, is nothing short of remarkable!”

Gailey performed at the Chancellors Club Celebration in

• Jazz Ensemble I and Jazz Singers, both led by Gailey, have performed by invitation at five international conferences and have been featured at several major international jazz festivals, including the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

November.

Other honorees for 2017 included Linguistics Professor Joan Sereno and Aerospace Engineering Professor Saeed Farokhi. KU Medical Center honorees were Neurology Professor Gary Gronseth and Nursing Professor Karen Wambach.

�orgeous �othings

Composer Aims to Evoke Emotion with

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Photo Credit: Cristian Fatu

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ngrid Stölzel is all about the goosebumps – the emotional effect that contemporary classical music can have on the listener.

Now an assistant professor of composition in the University of Kansas School of Music, Stölzel has followed that philosophy throughout her career as a composer, including on her first commercial solo recording, The Gorgeous Nothings, released July 13 on Navona Records.

“If I had to boil down why I want to create music, it is because of the amazing things music can do,” Stölzel said. “I can think about a piece of music and induce goosebumps in myself. It’s called frisson when the hair stands up on the back of your neck. You can be transported when you listen to something.”

Stölzel was inspired by the writings of American master poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. The Gorgeous Nothings is the title of a 2013 collection of Dickinson’s previously unpublished writings that reproduces the scraps of paper on which she wrote them. Stölzel’s five-song cycle for flute, oboe, piano and soprano by the same title opens

MUSICAL THEATRE ALIVE AND KICKING

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he third edition of The Cambridge Companion to the Musical (Cambridge University Press, 2017) features the cast of Hamilton on the cover, and that show’s smash-hit status informed the publisher’s demand for an update of the book.

Paul Laird, professorof musicology, and co-editor William Everett, University of Missouri-Kansas City Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Musicology, came out with the first edition in 2002, followed by a second edition in 2008. But Hamilton, among other things, is included in the new third edition.

the record. Soul Journey – Three Whitman Songs is for mezzo-soprano and piano. Stölzel said the poems she chose were those that made her say to herself: “There is a piece of music in that! I read the text and thought I can express that musically.”

Concerts, she said, often provide evidence that audiences get her intention. “One of the biggest compliments to me is when a musician or audience member is moved by something I have written,” Stölzel said. “The fourth movement, The Little Sentences, from the Emily Dickinson setting, is kind of humorous, and I love it when the audience gets it! They chuckle at the end."

The last of the Whitman songs, Dearest Thou Now, O Soul, is “a deeper, spiritual piece — a soul journey,” Stölzel said, concerning “the last chapter in your life, when you are getting

“There is a core of articles that have been in it since the first edition, some of which have been updated more than others,” Laird said. “But we’ve had to keep expanding the later coverage, so each volume has had two or three new chapters, and we’ve had a couple of chapters recast because of later scholarship.

“The book has been well-received.

It has sold well. There are Cambridge companions in a lot of different fields, but in the whole list of Cambridge companions having to do with music, there is no other with a second edition, let alone a third.”

Laird called the book a history of the Anglo-American musical, divided into chapters about important creators and particular periods. Laird himself wrote “two-and-a-half” chapters, he said, including a new opening chapter that is a case study of the musical Wicked, which opened on Broadway in 2003.

“It’s tearing the creation of that show apart; showing people what goes into writing a musical,” Laird said.

His other chapters are lightly

reworked for the third edition: one on choreographers who are also directors and the other (half) chapter on Leonard Bernstein.

“As for new chapters, we had somebody write on the television musical.

We also had a chapter on the British musicals of the last 50 years, which really had not been covered in previous editions,” Laird said. “Then there were four chapters substantially updated, like 'Recent Developments in the Rock Musical,' and there’s a chapter called the 'Musical at the Dawn of the 21st Century,' the latter being where the Hamilton phenomenon is mainly covered."

Also in the past year, Laird wrote a book chapter about the 2007 Disney musical film Enchanted, for which Stephen Schwartz served as lyricist. The book’s editor, George Rodosthenous, invited him to write about Enchanted for The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen: Critical Approaches from Snow White to Frozen (Bloomsbury, 2017).

■ Rick Hellman

FACULTY RESEARCH

SCHOLARSHIP SHOWS

closer to transitioning, and I have had older people come up to me with tears in their eyes after hearing it. It’s the Whitman text. I am not claiming it’s all me, but I hope my music helps to underscore the emotion …”

Stölzel has previously been awarded several competition prizes for her compositions, while The Gorgeous Nothings won the 2018 Suzanne and Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award given by Composers Inc.

Performers on The Gorgeous Nothings include fellow School of Music faculty members Margaret Marco, professor of oboe, and Ellen Sommer, lecturer of piano; as well as KU alumna mezzo-soprano Phyllis Pancella.

■ Rick Hellman

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aving performed on over 500 Hollywood movie soundtracks and with hundreds of classical, jazz, and mixed-genre orchestras, Gary Foster, BM and BME ’60, is among the most successful musicians ever associated with the University of Kansas. He has performed with a Who’s Who of celebrated entertainers and jazz performers of our time. As a clarinetist, saxophonist and flutist Foster has garnered numerous honors and accolades, including being recognized with the coveted Most Valuable Player Award for woodwind doubling by The Recording Academy. His live television broadcasts have included those for the Grammys, Emmys, Golden Globes, and for over 35 years the Academy Awards.

A Dream Well-Lived a conversation with a KU legend, Gary Foster

By Dean Robert Walzel

Near the end of his study at KU, a conversation with renowned big band leader Stan Kenton changed Foster's life forever. Kenton was well known for encouraging talented aspiring jazz musicians. Having heard a recording of Foster’s KU combo, Kenton took a keen interest in the gifted young saxophonist, even offering him a spot in his acclaimed orchestra. When considering whether or not to pursue advanced graduate studies in music, Foster reached out to Kenton for advice. Kenton responded, “Don’t you want to live your dream?

Well, then it has got to be New York or Los Angeles!” The choice was LA, and the rest has been nothing short of an amazing dream come true.

Here is an excerpt from a recent conversation Dean Robert Walzel had with Foster in his home in Alhambra, California.

RW: Please talk a bit about how you decided to attend KU. GF: Having attended Central Methodist College in Missouri for two years out of high school, but not having a clarinet teacher there, John Watts, a friend from high school who was studying clarinet at KU, told me about his wonderful clarinet teacher. In April 1956, I auditioned, was accepted, and Peg and I moved to Lawrence. Peg and I

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were high school sweethearts and have been happily married for 63 years.

RW: Describe your experiences at KU. GF: In my first year at KU, the study of music really began for me, largely because of my clarinet teacher Don Scheid and woodwind chairman Austin Ledwith, a wonderful bassoonist. Never before having had a clarinet teacher and starting my studies as a music education major, Don Scheid helped me solve an array of bad habits I had developed as a youngster playing mostly by instinct. During that first year, I made more progress on the clarinet than ever before. This first year, Murphy Hall was under construction so we had most musical activities in spaces at Hoch Auditorium. I played in the Symphonic Band with Russell Wiley, who was a very supportive mentor for all of us. He was really all about the students.

RW: So, were you in the first class of students to attend classes in Murphy Hall?

GF: Yes, it was an exciting time for all of us. Even more important to me that year was the arrival of Robert Baustian as a member of the faculty. He was profoundly influential for me, as he was for so many other students. His ability to play an orchestral score on the piano was astounding. With Baustian

as the conductor of the KU Symphony, we played multiple symphonies by Brahms, Beethoven, and Sibelius, as well as several tone poems by other master composers. One of my fondest memories was performing Richard Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration at the Music Educators National Conference convention in Kansas City.

In our preparations, Baustian never allowed us to play the musical climax, saving the experience for us until the performance. At the concert, the entire orchestra was overcome by the emotional impact of the moment. It was amazing, and is something I have never forgotten! Of course, Baustian was very well-known, in part because of his work in the summer at the Santa Fe Opera.

He offered me the opportunity to play second clarinet there one summer, but I had already committed to teach at the KU summer music camps and uprooting my family for the summer would have been difficult.

RW: Although the performance of jazz music was not encouraged during your time at KU, you were able to develop your skills as an improviser and play with some very accomplished jazz musicians. What are some of your memories of these experiences?

GF: I was a regular member of a jazz quintet that played Wednesday

Gary Foster, right, with Carmell Jones taken during Foster's time at KU

Gary Foster graciously honored Don Scheid, Austin Ledwith, Robert Baustian, and Ronald Barnes, four of his KU faculty mentors, by purchasing seats in their names in Swarthout Recital Hall. Seats remain available for anyone to honor a former faculty member or other individual who has been special in some way. For more information visit the School of Music website: http://swarthout.kuendowment.org/

evenings at the old Student Union on campus. I have vivid memories of Wilt Chamberlain coming in from time to time to listen to us, pulling up two chairs, one to sit on and another to drape his very long legs over. Playing with us was the first musician I ever met that I considered to be a savant, trumpeter Carmell Jones. Carmell had the uncanny ability to hear a musical line for the first time and be able to play it back exactly as he had heard it.

Before moving to Europe in 1965, he played with Horace Silver, including performances on the important album Song for My Father. Drummer Ron Allerton and pianist Jay Fisher, both students majoring in other fields, were also great players in our group. There was no formal training in jazz at that time at KU, but Bill Hardy, a graduate student in ornithology, encouraged us as our de facto mentor. Not a musician himself, he was a passionate aficionado for jazz and a natural musical producer. He was so enthusiastic and kept us on task. When he finished his studies at KU, he moved to LA and founded Revelation Records. This label published 28 LP recordings, the first one was mine and the last one, Kansas City Connections, was one we recorded with KC local players during the years I held the endowed professorship in jazz studies at UMKC (1984-2000).

RW: We recently lost a KU alumnus Nathan Davis, who had a successful

career as a tenor saxophonist and founder of the jazz program at the University of Pittsburgh. Were you and Nathan classmates at KU? GF: Nathan was at KU the same time I was, and we played together in the KU Band. I do remember jamming with him on a number of occasions at a building shaped like a teepee north of town out near the airport (Tee Pee Junction). He was always a very good player, but my focus outside of school was the group Carmell and I had put together. Because we were not allowed to play jazz in Murphy Hall, we rehearsed in an old country schoolhouse outside of town that the Lawrence Musicians Union had purchased. I’ve lost touch with Ron Allerton, Jay Fisher and the others who played with us, and unfortunately Carmell passed away much too young in 1996, but I have such fond memories of those times.

RW: Talk a little bit about your performance at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival.

GF: In 1960 our combo was accepted to perform at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival, one of the first ever collegiate jazz festivals in the country. In addition to Carmell and me, the group included Kermit Mowbray (piano), Don Farrar (bass), and Steve Hall (drums). We loaded up a Volkswagen bus, made our way to South Bend, Indiana, and played a fine performance. In our desire to be hip and play music others would

possibly not play, we included Miles Davis’ Dig and Ornette Coleman’s When Will the Blues Leave?. This was likely the first performance by a KU ensemble at a national jazz festival. It was also the first time that most of us had seen our names in print when we were mentioned in a nice review of the festival by DownBeat Magazine.

RW: And then you moved to California.

GF: After being encouraged by my faculty mentors at KU to consider graduate study at the University of Iowa with the renowned pedagogue Himie Voxman, I went to see Stan Kenton for advice. Stan was encouraging for so many people like me, and I still have three personal letters he wrote me. At Stan’s urging, and after talking things over with Peg, we made the move to Los Angeles in August 1961. Bill Hardy graciously invited Peg and me to live in his spare bedroom until we could find our own place, so we joined Bill and Carmell, who also was living in the basement at the time. We have been in California for the last 57 years. In 1970, we moved into our current home, paying the price of about what an automobile costs now. Times have sure changed!

RW: Delores Stevens, who was KU’s outstanding music major for each of her four years in school (1949-52), was the first KU music alumnus to stake out a successful music career in LA. Jon Lewis, who was first trumpet on continued pg. 24

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Photo by Christine Metz Howard

Photo by Jon Robichaud

41 Years of the Nebraska Hog Call

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hen Lee “Fritz” Whitman, as a freshman tuba player in the 1977 KU Marching Jayhawks, launched into a rendition of Hog Calling Time in Nebraska, he had no idea he was about to unleash a band tradition that would last more than 40 years.

Whitman and two other tuba players, Gordon Lankenau and John Clyatt, along with drum major Steve Gordon, were killing time before they ran down the stadium stairs onto the football field for the KU vs. Nebraska pregame show.

The group was singing classic barber shop quartet songs and with time for one more, Whitman began Hog Calling Time in Nebraska, a number he had learned at Boy Scout camp in Nebraska.

“I told them, ‘it’s easy and to follow my lead, hum and throw in some harmonies,’” Whitman said.

With the seven simple words “when it’s hog calling time in Nebraska,” repeated to the tune of Red River Valley, the others quickly picked it up.

“Everyone thought it was really funny. We had a good time doing it and the next week, someone asked, ‘hey, are going to do that Hog Calling song again,’” Whitman said.

They did. And, soon the entire run-in line was singing it, and then band members of other run-in lines joined until by the end of Whitman’s time at KU most of the band was part of the pregame ritual. More than 40 years later, the band carries on the tradition, singing it even after Nebraska left the Big 12 Conference.

“I tell people I never thought it would continue. After I graduated, I figured everyone would quit because I was leading it. I can’t believe it is still going on,” Whitman said.

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The version done 41 years ago was pretty close to the one heard today with the band singing a verse, then humming while a player from the sousaphone section delivers a dramatic speech — in the early days it was the spoken second verse; now band members give a short pep talk — and then a third verse followed by a rousing amen.

Gordon, who joined in with Whitman for the first rendition, also can’t believe the song has continued.

“I heard the band doing it and (Whitman) had to remind me that we started it, because it was just a one-time thing.

It was just silliness,” Gordon said. “Be careful what you do in silliness, because it could become a tradition. You never know."

After more than 40 years, Whitman would like to clear one thing up. The Nebraska native said the song was never meant to be an insult to the Cornhuskers.

“Nebraska fans say ‘hey, why are you dissing Nebraska?’ and I would say ‘I’m from Nebraska and I learned it in Nebraska. It has nothing to do with Nebraska.’ The point is, it was a group of people who were family. We got together, we sang, we got our game faces on and we went out and did the run-in,” he said.

■ Christine Metz Howard Photos above left: KU Marching Jayhawks performing the Hog Call ritual prior to a football game in 2016.

Above right: Lee Whitman and Steve Gordon, who sang the first version of the Hog Call in 1977, pictured at a KU Homecoming Game in 2017.

Below: A group photo of the KU Band's senior members from 1980 (submitted by Lee Whitman).

Photo by Christine Metz Howard

Debra Burns, left, and Sheri Robb, right.

KU Grads Advance Music Therapy Research in New Directions researchers to earn a postdoctoral fellowship in music therapy. Several years later, Robb earned one as well.

“We both have had these really extraordinary opportunities that have been rare, and we don’t think they should be rare,” Burns said. “We are dedicated to finding ways to create similar opportunities for other music therapists.”

After earning her PhD in 1999, Burns returned to her hometown of Indianapolis. Following a presentation on research pulled from her dissertation, Burns was encouraged to apply for a post doc fellowship at the IU School of Nursing. At the time, only one other post doc had been given to a music therapist. Burns did two years of research under that fellowship and then received another three-year post doc fellowship through National Institutes of Health.

Toward the end of her post doc work, Burns saw a potential connection between research being done by Joan Haase, a professor of pediatric oncology nursing, and Robb, who was in a tenured music therapy position at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. So the three collaborated by combining Robb’s work on music therapy intervention with Haase’s theoretical model on resilience in cancer patients.

“Deb is the ultimate networker. But she doesn’t just network. She creates these collaborations that end up doing remarkable work,” Robb said.

The group landed a $2-million NIH grant for a pilot program that used theapeutic song writing and video production as a way for adolescents and young adults who were going through high-risk cancer treatment to improve the use of positive coping strategies and communication with family members and friends. The project received an additional $2.5-million NIH grant to expand. In 2014 their research findings that their therapeutic music video intervention helped young cancer patients develop better coping skills and supportive relationships were published in the American Cancer Society’s peer-reviewed journal Cancer and were covered by international media.

During this time, another post doc fellowship opened up at the IU School of Nursing that was interdisciplinary, in behavioral oncology, and wasn’t nursing specific. Robb was selected and decided to make the jump to advance her research skills and training.

“Being at the School of Nursing has given me the opportunity to do predominately research,” Robb said.

ALUMNI OF NOTE

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s classmates in KU’s music therapy doctoral program, Debra Burns and Sheri Robb would brainstorm ideas on blackboards on the top floor of Bailey Hall. Nearly 20 years later and just a few city blocks apart, the two continue to come together to change the field of music therapy research.

Burns is a music therapy professor and chair of the Department of Music and Arts Technology within the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at the Indiana UniversityPurdue University Indianapolis campus. She’s created a music therapy master’s program that focuses heavily on research and technology, and has launched an undergraduate program this fall with the hopes of building a PhD program in the coming years.

Just down the street from Burns, Robb conducts research as a professor with the Indiana University School of Nursing. She recently was awarded a $1. 4-million grant from the National Institutes of Nursing Research, Office of End-of-Life and Palliative Care Research for a study that will examine how music-based play can ease the distress of parents and their young children undergoing chemotherapy.

Since graduating from KU, the two have taken music therapy in new directions. Burns was one of the first

continued pg. 24

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F

rom the halls of Congress to small town classrooms, throughout her career KU alumnae Lynn Brinckmeyer has been a passionate advocate for music education.

As the former president of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME, formerly MENC), Brinckmeyer travelled to nearly every state, called upon lawmakers in Washington, D.C and testified before Congress in her work to keep music education in the public schools. As a music educator, she has written books that are valuable resources for classroom teachers.

Brinckmeyer, PhD ‘92 in music education, is a professor of music, associate director of the School of Music and director of choral music education at Texas State University, where she also is the co-founder and artistic director for the Hill Country Youth Chorus in San Marcos, Texas, and director of the Texas State Women’s Choir.

From 2004 to 2010, Brinckmeyer served as president-elect, president and past president for NAfME. Those six years were difficult ones for music education, as different interpretations of the No

Child Left Behind Act disintegrated public school music programs, followed by further budget cuts due to a growing recession. It was also the association’s 100th Anniversary, which Brinckmeyer used as a chance for members to discuss what was working in the organization and what wasn’t. As a result, the association’s mission took a new direction toward advocacy.

“So much of our financial resources were focused on being on Capitol Hill and advocating for music at the national level in D.C. and making sure there was music education in schools, so the states could do more of the professional development. That was a huge change in focus,” Brinckmeyer said.

While the shift to advocacy has taken time, Brinckmeyer pointed to the 2016 success of President Barack Obama’s Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced No Child Left Behind and named music in its definition of a well-rounded education. There has also been an increase in research that measures the value of music education, such as the work being done by Chris Johnson, KU director of music education and music therapy.

An Advocate for Music Photo by Christine Metz Howard

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A Dream Well-Lived continued. the soundtrack for the latest Star Wars movie, is the most recent KU musician to find success in LA. Other than you and Carmell, who are some of the other KU faithful that you have crossed paths with in the music business in LA over the years?

GF: Bill Booth, who is principal trombone of the LA Opera and a top call in the studios, is one that comes to mind. Bill Lane, who recently moved back to his family farm near Kansas City, and occasionally comes back out to do some playing, was principal horn of the LA Phil for over 30 years. And there is Earle Dumler, who has also enjoyed a very nice career as one of the city’s top oboe/English horn players.

KU has certainly been well-represented in the LA music scene for many years.

RW: The School of Music is proud of the achievements of all our graduates, but what you have accomplished in your career is truly extraordinary.

Is there any advice you would pass along to young musicians beginning

relationships. It is helping educate someone who doesn’t have the same perspective so they can see the value of music,” Brinckmeyer said.

In the books Rhythm and Rescue! Musical Activities to Expand Rhythmic Vocabulary and Wander the World with WarmUps, published by Hal Leonard Publishing, Brinckmeyer created a toolkit geared toward pre-service teachers and veteran music teachers who, due to budget cuts, are now tasked with teaching music in areas outside their expertise.

“In rural parts of Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas, someone might be Mr. Music. They are doing it all K thru 12. They may flourish in one area and really struggle in another. They don’t have anyone to call on. And these resources can be helpful for them,” Brinckmeyer said. “When I was teaching public school, sometimes I felt very alone being the only music teacher in the building; and I still had colleagues in the city. Some music teachers don’t even have that.” the journey in pursuing their musical dreams?

GF: Something that has been useful to me is keeping a commonplace book, a collection of words to live by or knowledge that helps one navigate things encountered in their life’s endeavors. Milton is famous for his compilation, but any number of individuals throughout history have assembled their own collections to help keep their own ethic or whatever it is that holds a person together. My book is a bit raggedy, but it has proven useful to me as I have added new bits of wisdom over the years. One of my favorites is Words to Live By: “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them.” [George Bernard Shaw].

RW: What great advice for all of us.

Thank you for taking time to share these memories from your time at KU and some of the individuals who made it special.

■ Robert Walzel

Brinckmeyer spent five years in New Mexico teaching K thru eighth grade before she decided to come to KU for her PhD, looking to have a broader influence on music by teaching students how to teach. She picked KU because of its reputation as a leader in music education. During her time at KU, Brinckmeyer studied under professors Alicia Clair, Alice-Ann Darrow and George Duerksen.

She sang in James Ralston’s choirs and had voice lessons with Phyllis Brill. She credits George Heller for her interest in world music and for instilling in her the importance of diversity.

“I came here for music education because the faculty at that time were the stars in our profession and it has stayed that way,” Brinckmeyer said. “I’m so grateful for the doors they have opened for me and the foundation they built for me to think in different ways.”

■ Christine Metz Howard

Music Therapy Research continued.

“But it also gives me a chance to network and work — much as Deb does with her department — with a different group of people who will have constant exposure to music and music therapy. It gives us a chance to have an interdisciplinary impact.”

Throughout their careers, both have pulled from their time in KU’s music therapy doctoral program, which was overseen by Alicia Clair. For Burns, it was the curriculum around navigating academia. For, Robb it was being given the time and space to think about her research.

“How many times in your life do you have all this time just to focus on what you are doing and what you are excited about, where you can just brainstorm?”

Robb said. “Part of it was my peers, but we were also in a program that encouraged that and gave us a lot of opportunities to grow our skills. I’ve treasured that.”

■ Christine Metz Howard

ALUMNI OF NOTE

“Our Congress and state legislators are very data driven.

Research leaders like (Johnson) are creating that data, so it is going to inform decisions down the road.

But it is not going to be a quick fix,” Brinckmeyer said.

Since her time on NAfME’s executive board, she’s continued her work with music advocacy through three books. Advocate for Music! A Guide to User-Friendly Strategies, published by Oxford University Press in 2016, was written to give public school teachers tools to advocate for music and included a 90-plus list on ways to do so. While not everyone can go to Capitol Hill or write research articles, Brinckmeyer said music teachers can invite members of Congress to concerts, include the names of legislators on concert programs so parents can contact them in support of music education, and they can give musical gifts, such as singing Happy Birthday to their administrative staff.

“Advocating is building

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Leaving a Legacy of Music

I

n 1957, after holding first chair in the KU Band horn section for three years, senior Claude T. Smith lost it to an up-and-coming freshman named Johnny Woody.

At the time Smith jokingly told Woody he’d get him back.

A quarter century later Smith, by then a well-known composer, found his opportunity when the U.S. Air Force Band commissioned him in 1982 to write a virtuoso composition for concert band. Among the solos was one for horn, which included two high C’s, the first held for three bars and the second at the end of the piece for two bars.

Woody, who had gone on to be the principal horn player for the U.S. Air Force Band, was the horn soloist who would play the near-impossible part. After the first rehearsal, Woody called up Smith with some not-so nice words. On the other end, Smith laughed and said “I wondered when you would be calling.”

Smith had exacted his revenge.

The commissioned piece was Festival Variations, one of

the most popular of Smith’s works and Woody would play it more than 65 times in the two and half years that followed.

When it premiered in February 1982 at the Music Educators National Conference in San Antonio, the audience wouldn’t stop applauding until Smith came on stage to acknowledge the ovation. The horn part continues to be used as an audition piece for many universities and military bands.

The origin of the wellknown Festival Variations is one of the many stories with KU connections told in the recently published Claude T. Smith: Harmony from Within, a book about Smith’s life written by his daughter and KU alumnae Pam Smith Kelly.

Smith, who died in 1987

Photo above: Left to right - Claude Smith, James Barnes, James Bankhead, Tom Stidham, Merill Jones, Frank Fendorf taken at a U.S. Air Force Band concert. Opposite upper: Bob Foster, left, and Claude Smith, right. Opposite lower: Claude Smith with former KU Band Director Russell Wiley and Johnny Woody. Photos Submitted by Pam Smith Kelly.

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at age 55, composed more than 110 band, 12 orchestra and 15 choral works, including Flight, which was adopted as the official march for the National Air and Space Museum and Eternal Father, Strong to Save, which premiered at a Kennedy Center celebration for the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Navy Band.

In 2015 Smith Kelly retired after 35 years as an elementary and middle school music educator and began the work of documenting her father’s legacy, collecting stories from her mother, Maureen, and her father’s friends and colleagues.

“I really wanted the stories to be correct. So, I began asking people to write their recollections about my dad. They came pouring in. I received ten a day at times. It was really overwhelming,” Smith Kelly said. “It was emotional, yet so rewarding to know that my dad had touched people in so many ways through his life and through his music.”

Born in Monroe City, Missouri, Smith started his higher education training at Central Methodist College (now University) from 1950 to 1952. His college plans were interrupted by the Korean Conflict when he decided to enlist in the Army Band at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to avoid the possibility of going overseas. He was assigned to the 371st U.S. Army Band in Fort Leavenworth and served in the Army for three years. After completing his time in the army band, Smith and his wife Maureen moved to Lawrence, where he enrolled in KU to finish his music degree.

It was at KU where Smith Kelly said her father found the opportunity to test his compositional skills. He did arrangements for friends’ small ensembles and concert band charts. The band director at the time, Russell Wiley, programed several of Smith’s works, a rare opportunity.

The works included the premieres of Prelude and Allegro by the KU Sinfonia Brass Choir and World Freedom by the 200-piece band at Midwestern Music and Art Camp, as well as two arrangements that Wiley conducted with the KU Concert Band, Delmas’ Fantaisie Italienne and Guilmant’s Morceau Symphonique.

Throughout his career, Smith would draw on the solid foundation of classic band literature that he acquired at KU, as well as the full and impressive sound from the KU Band, which he later captured in his compositions. He also established an important network of other KU musicians, such as Gary Foster, Charlie Molina, C.L. Snodgrass and KU faculty James Barnes, Robert Foster and Tom Stidham. They were friendships that lasted a lifetime.

“He loved the opportunities he received at KU. He was fortunate to have amazing teachers that nurtured him through the learning process and didn’t limit him to traditional composition,” Smith Kelly said.

After completing his degree, Smith taught music in schools in Nebraska and Missouri. In 1976, he became a faculty member of Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, where he taught music composition and theory and conducted the University Symphony Orchestra.

At first Smith didn’t have success in publishing his music. Smith Kelly has a collection of rejection letters from publishers criticizing his mixed and irregular meters.

While common in today’s compositions, Smith was the first educational band composer to use such compositional traits, revolutionizing band music.

His first published work, Emperata, was with WingertJones Music, Inc. in 1964. Wingert-Jones would go on to publish many more of his works. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Smith received prestigious commissions from U.S. military bands and orchestras and bands throughout the country.

In 1978 Smith left his faculty job at SMS to compose fulltime. He became a staff composer for Jenson Publications and an educational consultant for Wingert-Jones. In the last ten years of his life, Smith composed more than half of his band works and traveled the world as a clinician, conductor and composer.

After her father’s death, Smith Kelly founded Claude T. Smith Publishing with the hopes of keeping her father’s legacy alive and his music available for future musicians. Smith Kelly now attends the same conventions her father did, meeting people who have stories to share about the composer or are just being introduced to his work.

“It’s really exciting when I find a band director who has this deep love for my dad’s music or is discovering it for the first time,” Smith Kelly said. “I want people to realize how teachable his music is and how vibrant and educationally sound it is.”

■ Christine Metz Howard

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KU SCHOOL OF MUSIC DEAN’S CLUB The School of Music Dean’s Club is comprised of donors who give $1,000 or more annually to the School of Music.

For more information about this program please contact Kylie Smith at 785-864-4104 or kyliesmith@ku.edu.

Gwen E. Adams Dennis L. Alexander Robert J. Anderson, Jr. & Marcia F. Anderson William E. Benso & Beverly Runkle Benso Beverly A. Smith Billings Dee Blaser & Chuck Blaser Christopher T. Bradt & Denise White-Bradt Estate of Helen L. Brownson Marc A. Buehler John H. Bushman, PhD John B. Calbeck, MD Joyce Malicky Castle Alicia A. Clair, PhD Dale Ann Clore H. Hurst Coffman Estate of Hal Eugene Cooper & Mary S. Cooper Robert M. Daugherty Jr., MD, PhD Yvonne L. Davidson Kevin C. Downs Beverly S. Duncan & James F. Duncan Evelyn Fearing Dvorak, PhD Delmar D. Falen & Evelyn M. Falen Joelle S. Ford & N. Allen Ford William C. Foshee & Anna Koch Foshee Dorothy Brenner Francis Janice Tande Gaumnitz & Jack E. Gaumnitz Cecilia Romero Godwin & Andrew K. Godwin, PhD Roy J. Guenther, PhD & Eileen Morris Guenther, DMA Kenneth V. Hager & Marilyn J. Hager William J. Hall, PhD & Elaine Thalman Hall Daniel J. Harris David L. Hiebert, MD & Gunda Hiebert Zachary D. Holland & Melissa L. Holland David R. Ice & Diana Double Ice Beth Gibbs Johnson & Preston Ellis Johnson II Jeffrey A. Johnson & Dawn Boyett Johnson David S. Kyner, PhD & Carol J. Kyner Thomas W. Lohmeyer & Joyce A. Lohmeyer Randy Long Margaret M. Luiso & N. A. Luiso Estate of Jane Wofford Malin, PhD

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David E. Mannering, PhD & Linda Wyllie Mannering Linda W. Maxey James W. McCalla Marsha S. McPheeters & Charles E. McPheeters Betty J. Mitscher Andrea F. Mosher Cynthia Brown Munzer & Gary Glaze Mary Ann Murphey Barbara A. Nordling Barbara Jean Ommerle & Enio Minervini Gary W. Padgett & Sue Summerville Padgett Judith Gorton Parkinson Susan Frederick Ralston John J. Reese Terri L. Reicher Nang M. Rives, PhD & James A. Rives, PhD Kari Ryman Dan M. Sabatini & Nicole M. Sabatini Kent P. Saylor & Donna C. Saylor Charlotte S. Simonson John E. Sloan Sally O. Smith Reed & Timothy J. Reed Lee M. Smithyman, Esq. & Nancy B. Smithyman Courtney D. Stalcup Jeanne Peck Staudigel Richard L. Stevenson & Alice R. Stevenson John T. Stewart III & Linda Bliss Stewart Scott N. Storbeck & Kim Sutherland Storbeck Daniel J. Suiter, MD & Marcia G. Suiter Jeanne Chatelain Townsend Jenny S. Wade Jeffery B. Weinberg & Mary Haynes Weinberg Tom Wertz & Anita E. Wertz Daniel E. Wiley & Joan M. Mitchell Delbert L. Williamson & Barbara Ossian Williamson Paul H. Winslow & Mary Ann Klimas Winslow Joseph E. Wise III, MD & Claudia Jacobs Wise Estate of Carol Jean Witter Robert S. Wunsch Carolyn Bryan Young James P. Zakoura

FRIENDS OF THE SCHOOL OF MUSIC The School of Music Friends are a community of alumni, parents, friends and students who are dedicated to providing annual financial and advocacy support to the KU School of Music.

We invite you to join us as a Friend of the KU School of Music by making an unrestricted gift to help students and families discover the wonder of music through our world-class educational programs and hundreds of performances each year. Your investment is essential to our success as we raise the bar of excellence and achievement for our students and faculty.

In addition to a free window decal to show your support for the School of Music Friends Program, your membership also grants you recognition in the programs for the year’s concert series. Plus, if you choose to join at the Patron level or above, you will receive tickets to the annual Collage Concert as our gift.

For more information visit:

www.music.ku.edu/KUMusicFriends

If you have any questions about membership or its benefits, please contact Kylie Smith at (785) 864-4104 or kyliesmith@ku.edu.

KU SCHOOL OF MUSIC CAMERATA: Charles and Dee Blaser Tom and Judy Bowser Jim and Sue Duncan Jack and Jan Gaumnitz Dave and Gunda Hiebert MarLan Construction, LC Barbara A. Nordling Judith Gorton Parkinson Robert Wunsch

DEAN'S CLUB LEVEL ($1000) Mar Lan Construction, LC Mary Ann Murphey Kent P. Saylor & Donna C. Saylor

PATRON LEVEL ($500) Linda W. Maxey Gary Schmeidler Barbara L. Thompson & Willard B. Thompson Gerald J. Throop, PhD

ADVOCATE LEVEL ($250) Steven J. Dillman & Kelly K. Dillman David R. Ice & Diana Double Ice David E. Mannering, PhD & Linda Wyllie Mannering George M. Brenner, PhD & Mary Ann Brenner

SPONSOR LEVEL ($100) David A. Ambler & Mary Kate Ambler Joe B. Buttram, PhD Edwin M. Cooley & Diana D. Cooley Janet Diehl Corwin Peter K. Curran & Virginia Schubert Curran William A. Dann Richard T. DeGeorge Elizabeth A. Gildea Floyd J. Grimes II, DDS & Mary Deschner Grimes Christopher Mark Hahn & Paula M. Hahn

David W. Henry & Jane Stinnett Henry Ken Krehbiel Freeman L. Miller, MD William D. Myers & Becky S. Myers Linda Stormont Newfield Pamela L. Pendergast Diane Beyer Perett, PhD, NCTM & William G. Perett Amy R. Schwamberger Carol J. Shankel & Delbert M. Shankel, PhD Carolyn Voss Shelton & Robert L. Shelton, PhD Katherine Weaver Steele & Steven B. Steele Strecker Family Rev. Trust Mary Ellen Sutton, DMA John E. Bechen Sarah E. Brown & Randy A. Brown Donald A. Johnston & Alice Ann Dowell Johnston Roger A. Reed & Janet M. Reed Marilyn Belton Reznick & Ira L. Reznick, MD Charles W. Salanski Norma Wahl Strecker Carol R. Wylie & Eric D. Wylie

FRIEND LEVEL ($50) Kristi A. Baker, DMA Virginia Royer Blackman John H. Bushman, PhD Lesley T. Ketzel Linda E. Lungstrum & John W. Lungstrum Earl A. Nehring Feryl Cauble Potter & Charles A. Potter Nancy T. Preston & Charles W. Preston Janis Brown Hutchison

OTHER DONORS Christopher L. Atkinson, PhD & Allison M. Atkinson Linda A. Bosse & Anthony E. Bosse Jr. William Boyd Dickinson III Judith W. Failoni Edwin D. Hundley & Zora Belle Hundley Lynn A. Laughlin Thaddeus R. Preisner, PhD & Virginia Kline Preisner

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2018-2019 CONCERTS at the LIED CENTER For times and tickets visit lied.ku.edu

29 Photo Credit:Tim Seley

Sept. 14

19th Annual Collage Concert

Sept. 20

KU Wind Ensemble

Sept. 27

Lied Center Presents: KU Symphony Orchestra with guest Blake Pouliot, violin

Oct. 8

KU Wind Ensemble & Symphonic Band

Nov. 9

KU Wind Ensemble

Dec. 2

94th Annual Vespers

Dec. 6

KU Symphonic Band & University Band

Jan. 31

Lied Center Presents: KU Percussion Group with guest Andy Akiho

Feb. 2

KU Wind Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble I with special guest Jeff Coffin

Feb. 3

Prairie Winds Concert

Feb. 15

Scholarship Concert

Feb. 21

KU Wind Ensemble

March 19

KU Symphonic Band and University Band

March 21

KU Symphony Orchestra

April 4

Lied Center Presents: KU Jazz Ensemble I with guest Renee Rosnes, piano

April 16

KU Wind Ensemble

April 30

KU University Band and Jazz Ensemble II and III

May 2

KU Symphonic Band

PARTNERSHIP FOR THE ARTS

Highlights of the 2018-2019 Concert Series

JULIO ALEXIS MUNOZ ORTEGA, PIANO AND GENARO MENDEZ, TENOR AUG. 24 | 7:30 P.M. | SWARTHOUT RECITAL HALL

COFFEE WITH BEETHOVEN: STEVEN SPOONER, PIANO

SEPT. 16, OCT. 28, DEC. 9 | 2:30 P.M. | SWARTHOUT RECITAL HALL

CRAIG RUTENBERG, PIANO featuring KU VOICE AND OPERA OCT. 5 | 7:30 P.M. | SWARTHOUT RECITAL HALL

KU DAY OF JAZZ IMPROV

NOV. 10 | ALL DAY | MURPHY HALL

A CENTENARY OF CONFLICT:

COMMEMORATING THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF WORLD WAR I

KU SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CONDUCTED BY CAROLYN WATSON

Nov. 11 | 7 p.m. | Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City, MO

KU VESPERS ON THE ROAD

Nov. 30 | 7:30 p.m. | Carlsen Center, Yardley Hall, Overland Park

JED DISTLER, PIANO

Feb. 5 | 7:30 p.m. | Swarthout Recital Hall

KU CHORAL FESTIVAL “JOY OF SINGING”

March 24 | 3 p.m. | Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Kansas City, MO

JULIA BROXHOLM, SOPRANO AND RUSSELL MILLER, PIANO

March 30 | 7:30 p.m. | Swarthout Recital Hall

SERGEI BABAYAN, PIANO, WITH STEVEN SPOONER, PIANO

April 6 | 7:30 p.m. | Swarthout Recital

NICK WEISER, PIANO, WITH KU JAZZ ENSEMBLE I May 3 | 7:30 p.m. | Lawrence Arts Center

PA R T N E R S H I P FOR THE

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1530 Naismith Drive Murphy Hall, Room 460 Lawrence, KS 66045-3103

Before The Met, Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center, they perform here.

SEE WHAT FUTURE STAR IS PERFORMING THIS SEMESTER: 94TH ANNUAL

HOLIDAY VESPERS CONCERT

2:30 and 7:30 p.m. | Sunday, Dec. 2 | Lied Center KU SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND LIED CENTER PRESENT:

KU PERCUSSION GROUP

with Andy Akiho 7:30 p.m. | Thrusday, Jan. 31 | Lied Center

KU WIND ENSEMBLE & JAZZ ENSEMBLE I

with Jeff Coffin 7:30 p.m. | Saturday, Feb. 2 | Lied Center

Experience the exceptional talents of KU School of Music students, faculty and visiting artists at MUSIC.KU.EDU

9TH ANNUAL

SCHOLARSHIP CONCERT

7:30 p.m. | Friday, Feb. 15 | Lied Center

KU CHORAL FESTIVAL: THE JOY OF SINGING

3 p.m. | Sunday, Mar. 24 | KauffmanCenter KU SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND LIED CENTER PRESENT:

KU JAZZ ENSEMBLE I

with Renee Rosnes, piano 7:30 p.m. | Thrusday, April 4 | Lied Center music.ku.edu | music@ku.edu | 785-864-3436