Music at Yale | Fall 2019/Winter 2020

Music at Yale Fall/Winter 2020

CELEBRATING

the legacy of women at Y Sm

Photo by Matt Fried

Fall/Winter 2020 3

from the dean

Dear alumni and friends, It is an extraordinary privilege to walk these halls and absorb the soundscapes of hope that emanate from practice rooms and teaching studios. The world beyond these walls is exhaustingly complex and anxious, and we all carry our own concerns about the future. Here, it is easy to remember that today and all tomorrows are shared experiences. Nothing reminds us of that more than music.

In September, we launched a yearlong celebration of the Yale School of Music’s 125-year history with a focus on the inspiring women who have called this place home since its establishment in 1894. Indeed, the School would not exist without the vision and determination of women like Ellen Battell Stoeckel, who saw the inestimable value of a music curriculum at Yale.

This past fall, we invited nearly 5,000 alumni to help us mark this moment in the School’s life. For the first time in more than a decade, we hosted an alumni reunion, one that offered opportunities not just for reflection but for looking ahead to the future of music at Yale. What a pleasure it was to see alumni who graduated decades ago engage with those who earned degrees just months ago and with current students who have already begun to share their music-making with the wider world!

As you read this, our superb orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia, is on an East Coast tour with the Yale Schola Cantorum and The Bach Choir, London in further celebration of the School’s quasquicentennial. These outstanding ensembles, conducted by David Hill, are performing for audiences in New Haven, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. That our students are making music on some of the nation’s most prestigious stages is reason enough for celebration, though the world’s iconic concert halls are hardly unfamiliar to musicians from Yale.

I am continually impressed by the consideration our students and faculty give to the influence their work might have on our troubled world. They earnestly believe their art can play a part in shaping a more just society. This summer, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music will welcome composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, whose work is an important and inimitable example of music’s unquantifiable strength. It is our honor to work with DBR and to amplify his voice.

Each day, I look forward to the sounds created in this place, and each evening I leave more hopeful.

Warmest regards,

Robert Blocker Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music

4 Music at Yale

04 From the Dean 06 Retirement 07 Coming Up: Norfolk Festival

Music at Yale is a publication of the Yale School of Music P.O. Box 208246 New Haven, CT 06520-8246 music.yale.edu musicnews@yale.edu

builds “Musical Bridges”

08 School Events 10 Concert News 12 Faculty News 14 Alumni Profile 16 Student Profile 18 Feature: Alumni Reunion 22 Feature: Profiles in

Persistence–Women of YSM

34 Class Notes 43 Recordings and Publications 46 Staff Appointments 47 In Memoriam 48 Giving Spotlight 50 Honor Roll of Donors

Editor David Brensilver Art Direction Katie Kelley Design Jenny Reed Contributors David Brensilver Katie Darr Megan Doran Adrienne Lotto Sean McAvoy Donna Yoo Send us your news musicnews@yale.edu Follow us yalemusic @yalemusic YaleSchoolofMusicOfficial

Fall/Winter 2020 5

Retirement

Professor Michael Friedmann to retire describing himself as a “very performance-oriented theorist.”

He is also an accomplished pianist whose repertoire includes the complete piano music of Schoenberg—about whose work Friedmann has written extensively—and works

by Beethoven and Schumann, among plenty of others. In retirement, Friedmann plans to “play the piano a lot.”

Michael Friedmann

Since joining the Yale School of Music faculty in 1985, Professor of Music Michael Friedmann has taught a course based on his method book Ear Training for Twentieth-Century Music (Yale University Press, 1990) and classes focused on chamber music analysis and performance. He has also led the School’s DMA seminar.

“I felt I had an effect, whatever it was,” Friedmann recently said, in his inimitably matter-of-fact way.

Friedmann, who is on leave this spring and will retire at the end of the academic year, has contributed more to Yale’s music community than understatement will allow.

“I teach interconnections between different facets of music,” he said, explaining that he sought in the classroom to “broaden the framework of awareness, which could potentially motivate what (students) perform or compose,” with the “intellectual becoming the intuitive.”

Friedmann’s analysis and performance courses at the School culminated in concerts

6 Music at Yale

featuring the students who’d successfully auditioned and interviewed to participate in those classes. Most recently, Friedmann presented two performances of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire featuring students from the School and the University’s Department of Music, where he has taught undergraduates “model composition”—the practice of writing in a particular style of music.

Friedmann came to Yale in 1978 and taught at the Department for two years before taking a position at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford. After three years there, he returned to Yale where he has since taught at the School and the Department. Friedmann earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in composition from Harvard University, though after graduate school he largely stopped writing music, finding relief in not labeling himself a composer.

“I just never internalized it as a daily necessity,” he said,

“Maybe I’ll really be able to put in the time to practice,” he said, giving that some thought.

He also plans to engage in a lot of score study—saying, “I really feel I haven’t done enough”—and “might reengage with composition.”

Whatever he does with his newfound time, Prof. Friedmann will likely not surrender his title in the minds of those who’ve come to value his thoughts on music and so much more.

“Michael Friedmann, for so many of us at the School of Music and at Yale, epitomizes the ideal musician: teacher, performer, scholar, coach, conductor, collaborator, and composer,” School of Music Dean Robert Blocker said. “But it is his passion for music that infects all of us who are the beneficiaries of his extraordinary talent and intellect. Michael’s presence here has helped us rediscover our sense of wonder. q

Coming up

Norfolk Festival builds “Musical Bridges”

By Adrienne Lotto When Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music Director Melvin Chen sat down with a donor last summer to consider the future of the festival, he did so with several priorities in mind. It is the “responsibility of a chamber music festival to add new repertoire to the literature,” he conveyed first. Chen, who is the deputy dean and a faculty pianist at the School of Music, is committed to using the festival as a vehicle for fighting against the insular nature of the classical music world by connecting traditional classical music with other genres, cultures, and relevant societal issues. Those convictions, along with a generous donation from the Desai Foundation, have led to the creation of Musical Bridges, a program through which the festival, over the next three summers, will commission new works from composers who strive to connect their music to the wider world.

The program’s first commission, to be premiered in summer 2020, will come from composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain.

DBR, as he’s known, is widely appreciated for using his music to advance social causes. He recently scored Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s The Just and the Blind, “a short film series and an evening length multimedia performance,” the project’s website explains, that “illuminates the unseen and under-heard experiences of incarcerated youth and the realities their families face.”

Chen believes in putting music in context and involving the community in the experience of a new piece, and Norfolk audiences can expect a series of public events concerning the relevant issues leading up to the premiere of the new work DBR writes for the Norfolk Festival. Chen also hopes the Musical Bridges program will eventually connect the Norfolk festival to other

A presentation of The Just and the Blind at Carnegie Hall. Photo by Fadi Kheir

festivals around the country and new audiences to new music.

“The idea is not just to bring a new piece into the repertoire,” Chen, who hopes to find co-commissioners for future works, said, “but to have the piece take on a life of its own outside Norfolk, so that it’s not just played once and never heard again, but performed around the country.”

A new work by composer and YSM alumna Reena Esmail ’11MM ’14MMA ’18DMA has already been commissioned and will be premiered in summer 2021.

Soprano Adrienne Lotto ’20MM is a student in the early music, oratorio, and chamber ensemble program at the Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. q

Daniel Bernard Roumain. Photo courtesy of the artist Fall/Winter 2020 7

school events

Convocation launches yearlong celebration of School’s history Convocation 2019, during which the incoming class was formally installed, marked the beginning of a yearlong celebration of the School’s 125-year history and featured performances by faculty, students, and alumni and remarks by Dean Robert Blocker, Yale University President Peter Salovey, and University President Emeritus Richard Levin. The ceremony also featured the presentation of the Samuel Simons Sanford Medal, the School’s highest honor.

“Throughout the 2019-2020 academic year and concert season, the Yale School of Music community will reflect on the School’s 125-year history and look forward to the future of music at Yale,” Blocker said at the September 5 event. Blocker’s speech, Beyond Beginnings, explored the limits of time. “Most of this entering class will spend fewer than 700 days here,” he said. “The excitement of a purposeful life comes from what we do with our time. The wonder of your Yale experience can be that here you will make sense of your artistic, intellectual, spiritual, and social impulses by discovering your unique musical voices and human capacities. I implore you to embark fully on this Yale journey. Not to do so would amount to the heinous crime of stealing from yourself.”

The presentation of the Sanford Medal recognized the work of faculty composer Martin Bresnick, among whose former students are several current faculty colleagues. “I know of no one who is truer to his own belief and truer to his own heart than Martin,” Blocker said, referring to Bresnick as a “master teacher.”

“When the student is ready,” Bresnick said, “the teacher appears. I was happy to appear.”

Salovey and Levin, celebrating the history of music at Yale with the School of Music community, shared their perspectives on the moment. Salovey, a musician by avocation, asked rhetorically, “How many of us have felt this power in our own lives?”

“The School of Music,” Levin said, “is the soul of the University.”

While the above-mentioned remarks contextualized the School’s work and music’s transformative potential, the evening’s performances spoke even more directly. Faculty tenor James Taylor, faculty trumpeter Kevin Cobb, and faculty pianist Wei-Yi Yang performed “Sound the Trumpet,” from Purcell’s Come, ye Sons of Art Away. Other performers included soprano Annie Rosen ’08BA ’12MM and pianist Hilda Huang ’17BS ’19MM ’20MMA, and marimbist Ji Su Jung ’19MM ’20AD. As is tradition, attendees sang Schubert’s An die Musik (Schober). That performance was led by Associate Professor of Choral Conducting Marguerite Brooks and faculty clarinetist David Shifrin. q

8 Music at Yale

“I know of no one who is truer to his own belief and truer to his own heart than Martin.”

–Robert Blocker, YSM Dean

Clockwise from top: current members of the Yale Percussion Group and alumni perform a slow agbekor; Ji Su Jung ’19MM ’20AD performs Leigh Howard Stevens’ Rhythmic Caprice; faculty composer Martin Bresnick receives the Samuel Simons Sanford Medal; soprano Annie Rosen ’08BA ’12MM sings La vie en rose by Piaf and Guglielmi. Photos by Harold Shapiro

Concert news

Fall concert review Shifrin-Wiley Trio, which includes faculty clarinetist (and series artistic director) David Shifrin, and the Horszowski Trio.

Yale Opera Scenes. Photo by Matt Fried

In the first semester, the Yale Philharmonia once again made good on its mission to give students a chance to perform big and important pieces from the orchestral canon. Principal Conductor Peter Oundjian and the orchestra opened the 2019-2020 season with a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and ended the fall semester with a performance of RimskyKorsakov’s evocative orchestral suite Scheherazade.

In between those concerts, the orchestra performed Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony under the baton of guest conductor Ludovic Morlot. What’s worth noting is that the Yale Philharmonia is an outstanding and musically mature group despite being an ensemble that loses half its members each year to graduation.

That’s a credit to each musician in the orchestra.

The Brentano String Quartet, the School’s ensemblein-residence, opened this year’s Oneppo Chamber Music Series with a program that featured faculty composer Martin Bresnick’s Wallace Stevens-inspired The Planet on the Table and Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132. The series’ first-semester lineup also included performances by the Akropolis Reed Quintet, whose members include oboist and alumnus Timothy Gocklin ’14MM ’15AD and which performed with percussionist and alumnus Jeffery Stern ’16AD, the newly formed Polonsky-

10 Music at Yale

The Horowitz Piano Series presented recitals by guest artist Sofya Gulyak and faculty pianists Robert Blocker, Boris Berman (the series’ artistic director), and Boris Slutsky, who joined the School’s faculty this year. Blocker’s recital celebrated Bach’s Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme and included faculty composer Christopher Theofanidis’ Wake Up, Called the Voice, which borrows from and reimagines the opening chorus from Bach’s cantata of the same name, and the Modern Jazz Quartet’s arrangement of the chorus, “Rise Up in the Morning.” Berman performed music by Chopin and Schubert, and Slutsky performed an all-Schumann program.

Two drummers were featured on the Ellington Jazz Series during the first semester: Ignacio Berroa, whose career was launched by a gig with Dizzy Gillespie and has included performances with McCoy Tyner and Chick Corea, and Louis Hayes, who paid tribute to the music of hard-bop pioneer Horace Silver, whose band Hayes joined as a teenager in 1956 before working with Cannonball Adderley, Freddie Hubbard, Oscar Peterson, and others.

The Yale Opera began the season, as is tradition, with back-to-back Fall Opera Scenes performances.

This year’s fully staged program with piano accompaniment included excerpts from operas by Mozart, Bellini, Berlioz, Rachmaninoff, Britten, Puccini, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Catán, whose opera Florencia en el Amazonas the Yale Opera performed with the Yale Philharmonia at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre in February. q

Yale Philharmonia tours with Yale Schola Cantorum and The Bach Choir, London “Old 104th” Psalm Tune, and William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. The works were all composed during the first half of the 20th century.

Belshazzar’s Feast, Hill said, “is now one of the most performed English choral works with the sharp, rhythmic drive, jazz-infused writing making it a roller-coaster for all performing and listening.” Upon the work’s 1931 premiere, Hill said, “it was an instant success and propelled Walton to national fame.”

In March, the Yale Philharmonia joined the Yale Schola Cantorum and The Bach Choir, London for a tour that visited Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Pianist and School of Music Dean Robert Blocker and baritone and School of Music alumnus David Pershall ’10MM ’11AD were the program’s soloists.

Stanford’s Song to the Soul is based on a poem by Walt Whitman, whose papers, like Walton’s, are housed in Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Bax’s Mater ora filium, Hill said, is “ideal for demonstrating Schola’s choral skills, with its rich harmonic language and intricate part-writing.” And Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia, he said, “has similar relationships between the piano soloist, orchestra, and voices to Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy,” which the Yale Philharmonia performed in January.

David Hill, principal conductor of the Schola Cantorum and music director of The Bach Choir, led the performances. The program, English Musical Splendor, included Charles Villiers Stanford’s (Stanford was born in Dublin and studied and taught in England) Song to the Soul, Op. 97b, Arnold Bax’s Mater ora filium, GP 246, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on the

The tour celebrated the Yale School of Music’s 125th anniversary with a performance on March 8 in Woolsey Hall and continued with concerts at Symphony Hall in Boston, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and Washington National Cathedral in the District of Columbia. q

Yale Philharmonia. Photo by Ian Christmann

Yale Schola Cantorum. Photo by Robert A. Lisak

The Bach Choir, London Fall/Winter 2020 11

faculty news Boris Berman, the Sylvia and Leonard Marx Professor in the Practice of Piano and artistic director of YSM’s Horowitz Piano Series, performed, taught, and judged competitions in Austria, China, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United States.

Lecturer in Musicianship and Analysis Richard Gard’s ’02MM ’04MMA ’07DMA music-education app, Music Prodigy, recorded its millionth “performance” of a student test in November. The millionth student is an eighthgrade chorister who is studying sight-singing near Atlanta, Ga.

Associate Professor of Choral Conducting Marguerite Brooks received the Helen Kemp Award from the Eastern Region of the American Choral Directors Association. The award recognizes an individual who, “through teaching, performing, and sharing, exhibits a lifelong passion and commitment to the choral art.” Brooks plans to retire at the end of the academic year.

In October 2019, Professor Emeritus of Music Paul Hawkshaw presented a paper on the early history of Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony at a conference in Vienna celebrating the 90th anniversary of the founding of the International Bruckner Society. Hawkshaw is currently writing a book for the Austrian Academy of Sciences about the composer's copyists.

Professor of Choral Conducting Jeffrey Douma appeared as a guest conductor for the Bach Vespers at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church’s (New York) annual Lessons and Carols service in December. He also led members of the Yale Glee Club and the Yale Camerata in a performance of music by Charles Ives for a new documentary, The Unanswered Ives—Pioneer of American Music, which was produced by Accentus Music and first screened in September.

In February, jazz saxophonist and Lecturer in Jazz Improvisation Wayne Escoffery and Yosvany Terry, senior lecturer and director of jazz ensembles at Harvard University’s Department of Music, joined the Yale Jazz Ensemble (led by Yale School of Music Professor of Music and Director of University Bands Thomas C. Duffy) and the Harvard Big Band at the third annual YaleHarvard Battle of the Bands.

Faculty composer Aaron Jay Kernis ’83 had his Venit Illuminatio (Toward the Illumination of Colored Light) premiered by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Music Director Stéphane Denève.

Faculty composer Martin Bresnick’s The Planet on the Table, was premiered by the Brentano String Quartet, the Yale School of Music’s ensemblein-residence, at the 92nd St. Y in New York. Bresnick’s Ishi’s Song was given its European premiere by pianist Lisa Moore at Olavsfest in Trondheim, Norway; his Bundists was given its Australian premiere by Moore in Melbourne; his Prayers Remain Forever was given its European premiere by cellist Ashley Bathgate and pianist Reines Zarins in Cesis, Latvia; and his Every Thing Must Go was given its South American premiere by the Prism Saxophone Quartet in Riohacha, Colombia.

In January, Lecturer in Applied Saxophone Carrie Koffman gave the world-premiere performance of Supreme, by composer and School of Music alumna Tawnie Olson ’99MM ’00AD, at the 42nd United States Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium in Fairfax, Va. The piece, Olson explained in a program note, “was composed as a tribute to three of the justices currently sitting on the Supreme

Marguerite Brooks

Wayne Escoffery

Carrie Koffman 12 Music at Yale

Court” and “was commissioned and inspired by Carrie Koffman, and is dedicated to her.”

Markus Rathey, the Robert S. Tangeman Professor in the Practice of Music History, published an article on “Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and the Catholic Tradition” in the spring issue of Sacred Music, a journal that serves Catholic church musicians. The article

Sebastian Ruth

Benjamin Verdery

explores Bach’s indebtedness to medieval mysticism and its revival in the 17th century.

Another article, “Redefining Wartburg and Elizabeth: The Struggle over a Cultural Myth and National Identity in the Nineteenth Century,” appeared in the most recent issue of the Journal of the American Liszt Society. Rathey gave a lecture on “Music and Spirituality” at New York University and gave a preconcert-lecture at a performance of Telemann’s Day of Judgment by the Yale Schola Cantorum.

Visiting Lecturer in Community Engagement Sebastian Ruth was invited by the RISD Museum to contribute to an exhibit titled Raid the Icebox Now, which is on view through July 2020. The exhibit includes two original compositions, one of which Ruth composed and recorded, and another that was created in collaboration with violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery.

Ruth’s TEDx talk, “Music, Community, and Creating Space for Unexpected Possibilities,” is now online. Community MusicWorks, the organization Ruth leads, is in its 23rd season and is planning to create a new music performance and education space in Providence, R.I. In January, Ruth won an inaugural Lewis Prize for Music, which came with a $500,000 grant that the organization said “will support a new alumni fellowship and leadership of the MusicWorks network.”

celebrates the achievements of and expresses gratitude to artists or arts organizations who have significantly changed the landscape of chamber music through their passionate commitment and exceptional vision. Shifrin was the artistic director of the Chamber Music Society from 1992 to 2004 and has been the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest since 1992.

Faculty guitarist Benjamin Verdery hosted the 10th Yale Guitar Extravaganza in February.

The event featured performances and master classes by legendary guitarist David Russell and Yale School of Music alumni.

An installation of Verdery’s recorded piece Scenes from Ellis Island was mounted at the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media. The installation included a video by Aaron Peirano Garrison and sound elements created by Yale School of Music Media Production Manager Matthew LeFevre. In January, Verdery performed and taught at festivals in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra, Australia.

An artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and music director of the Redlands Symphony, faculty flutist Ransom Wilson was appointed director of orchestral programs at the Idyllwild Arts Academy and Summer Session. q

On opening night of its 50th anniversary season, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented faculty clarinetist David Shifrin with its Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. The award David Shifrin Fall/Winter 2020 13

alumni profile

A practice broadened, a path discovered

Meera Gudipati. Photo by Ron Cohen Mann

Flutist Meera Gudipati ’17MM arrived at the Yale School of Music to further refine her playing and left with a broader understanding of what she has to contribute to the world of music and beyond. Raised in Düsseldorf, Germany, Gudipati relocated with her family to the United States in 2006 when her father, an astrobiophysicist, got a job in Los Angeles. Despite growing up in a scientific environment—her mother is a chemist who teaches at California State University, Northridge, and her sisters, too, work in the sciences—Gudipati gravitated early in life toward music. She played in a recorder quartet as a child and took up the flute at age 8, later attending the Colburn Music Academy and then earning an undergraduate degree

14 Music at Yale

from the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin. At the Yale School of Music, Gudipati studied with faculty flutist Ransom Wilson, who “taught me to be really independent,” she said.

Since graduating in 2017 with a master of music degree, Gudipati has secured a job in the U.S. Coast Guard Band, in New London, Conn., where, in addition to working with the full ensemble, she makes up one half of a flute-harp duo with band colleague Megan Sesma.

In fall 2019, Gudipati spent 10 days playing with the South Asian Symphony Orchestra in Bangalore, India, where she’d visited 12 years ago. While that

trip was about connecting with her grandmother, who lived there, Gudipati’s recent visit was about making music with an ensemble that was built by the South Asian Symphony Foundation to foster “peace and mutual understanding in South Asia through the medium of music,” the organization’s website explains. As a temporary member of the ensemble, Gudipati felt the privilege that comes with the resources so many classically trained musicians have enjoyed in the United States and Europe.

“Oftentimes, in Western classical music, everyone focuses on perfection,” she said. The experience with an ensemble of musicians of South Asian heritages, she said, was

marked primarily by “the meaning and communication we had through music.”

In New Haven, where she has settled, Gudipati continues to play orchestral gigs as the Coast Guard Band’s schedule allows.

She has also started composing music, having been inspired to do so in Yale School of Music faculty composer David Lang’s Composition for Performers course. Gudipati’s foray into composition was further encouraged by her chamber music coach, School of Music faculty guitarist Benjamin Verdery, who programmed her piece Kusuma, for flute, guitar, and electric tanpura, on a May 2017 Guitar Chamber Music concert. Gudipati premiered the piece with guitarists Christopher Garwood ’17MM and Tyler Rhodes ’18MM ’19MMA. Composing, Gudipati said, “was never one of my intentions.” Still, it’s become part of her musical practice. Oboist Lauren Williams

’18MMA commissioned Gudipati to write Ashakiran (Ray of Hope), a piece for solo English horn.

Williams recorded the piece, as will oboist Jacqueline Leclair, associate professor of oboe at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. Bassoonist Ethan Lippert ’19MM, the postgraduate teaching artist fellow in the School of Music’s Music in Schools Initiative, commissioned a piece for wind quintet to be performed by a teaching artist and students from the program. During her time at Yale, Gudipati was a teaching artist in the Music in Schools Initiative.

“I feel like I have no expectations,” Gudipati said of her composition practice. “I can take my time and do what I want to do.” That has included organizing a house concert to raise money for CitySeed’s Sanctuary Kitchen.

“I’ve always had the urge to do something meaningful with music,” she said. q

Meera Gudipati performs with the U.S. Coast Guard Band. Photo by Lisa Ferdinando

Student Profile

An ascendant composer, music for healing

Left to right: Composer Joel Thompson, stage director Omer ben Seadia, librettist Andrea Davis Pinkney, workshop conductor Tyson Deaton, and HGO dramaturg Jeremy Johnson

In January, the Houston Grand Opera workshopped The Snowy Day, an operatic adaptation of Ezra Jack Keats’ illustrated children’s story that the company commissioned from composer Joel Thompson ’20MMA in 2017.

The workshops took place at the Yale School of Music, with members of the Yale Opera program singing the work’s various roles. The HGO will premiere Thompson’s new opera in a production that will run from December 10 through December 20, 2020. Thompson

16 Music at Yale

said in a recent interview that he’s nearly done with the writing.

Yale Opera Manager Erika Niemi Heltzel said there was a “really positive atmosphere in the room” during the weeklong workshop, an opportunity that was “huge for Joel and his career” and “an opportunity for our singers, as well.”

“Getting to be part of a new work ... is exciting,” Heltzel said. “The chance to work with the composer” is unique, given

that singers in the Yale Opera program typically learn and perform works that have been in their final form for many years.

Soprano Madeline Ehlinger ’20MM appreciated the “collaborative feeling” in the room and the unique opportunity to help inform a work in progress.

In 2017, Thompson was a student at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he was awarded the Hermitage Prize, an honor bestowed by the Hermitage

Artist Retreat (Florida) and the AMFS. Patrick Summers, HGO’s artistic and music director, sat on the Hermitage jury that year and approached Thompson about creating a piece of work for the company.

Thompson’s The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, a 2015 piece for men’s voices, strings, and piano that was premiered by the University of Michigan’s Men’s Glee Club, won him the Hermitage Prize. In a December 2019 interview with Chicago’s WFMT, Thompson said, “The emotional impetus for the work was the decision of the Staten Island grand jury not to indict the officer whose actions led to the death of Eric Garner. It was in response to that ... that I decided to create a work that would ‘exorcise’ my feelings in response to that decision. I used the liturgical format in Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ in an effort to humanize these men and to reckon with my identity as a black man in this country in relation to this specific scourge of police brutality.” The men whose last words are shared through Thompson’s choral piece are Kenneth Chamberlain, Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, John Crawford, and Garner.

“A lot of my music is connected to social issues,” Thompson said. He’s interested in his music being a vehicle for healing.

Thompson, whose family is Jamaican, was born in the Bahamas and moved with his family to Houston at age 10, then a few years later to Atlanta, where he grew up. Thompson’s interest in healing goes back to his pre-college days, when

Joel Thompson

he contemplated a career in medicine. Children of immigrant parents, he said, don’t go into an occupation that lacks security or in which successes are “ephemeral.” Thompson enrolled at Emory University to study piano, which he’d been playing since childhood, having grown up in a musical family, and to pursue the premed track. Eventually, music won out. Thompson earned an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in choral conducting from Emory.

Thompson served as director of choral studies and assistant professor of music at Andrew College, in Cuthbert, Ga., for two years, then taught for a few more years at the Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Atlanta, before enrolling at the Yale School of Music.

“It was really meeting [faculty composer] Christopher Theofanidis at Aspen,” Thompson said, that attracted him to the School of Music’s composition program. He’d grown up hearing Theofanidis’ music in Atlanta, where it has been championed by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Andrea Davis Pinkney and Joel Thompson

Music Director Robert Spano.

Theofanidis’ colleagues in the School’s composition program were also an attraction for Thompson.

Thompson is writing music for the present, he said, music that’s “intellectually appealing and stimulating to me.” With each piece, he’s “creating an experience that can lead someone to want more.” q Photos by Matt Fried

Fall/Winter 2020 17

Feature

Alumni reunion welcomes grads from seven decades

I

n October, as the School began a yearlong celebration of its 125th anniversary, all 5,000 living alumni were invited back to campus to connect and reconnect with one another. Around 130 alumni returned to New Haven for two days of events, with one person traveling from France to participate in a gathering the likes of which hadn’t been organized in more than a decade. Graduates from seven decades attended the reunion.

Double-bassist Samuel Suggs ’14MM ’20DMA completed his doctoral exams a week before the reunion. The event gave him an opportunity to spend time with musicians he’d missed by a year or two as a student but with whom he travels in the same professional circles. “A lot of the performers I work with in the freelance world are Yale alums,” he said. Whether or not they were in school at the same time, having a shared history provides context for friendships and networking. “Yale’s been such an organizing force,” he said. “I tend to still collaborate with people I’ve been in school with.”

While people eventually disperse geographically— Suggs teaches at James Madison University— that shared experience makes the world just a little bit smaller. “Most places I go for a gig,” Suggs said, “there’s someone from YSM.” Clarinetist Seunghee “Sunny” Lee ’92MM ’94AD, treasurer of the Yale Alumni Association of New York and a member of the School of Music’s Board of Advisors, understands firsthand the value of connecting graduates to one another.

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“My first attendance at a Yale alumni social gathering was soon after graduating from Yale School of Music, in the early ’90s,” Lee said. “I landed a principal clarinet position in Seoul Korea. I was born there but my parents immigrated to the United States when I was 9 years old and I had not been back since. So, I had no childhood friends or social connections. In those days, there were no emails or social media platforms to see who was around. I remember feeling lonely and missed home. Luckily, I got connected with a few local Yale School of Music colleagues and got invited to a Yale alumni Christmas event hosted by the vibrant Yale Club of Seoul. I was so relieved and happy to meet some more familiar YSM friends, some whom I didn’t even know were living in Seoul, and made new friends with alums of various professions and degrees.”

The School of Music’s alumni-reunion activities in October included a concert that featured performances by alumni and current students. Of particular note, Kimberly Foster ’04CERT performed a movement from Rebecca Clarke’s 1919 Viola Sonata, which Clarke composed for a competition sponsored by musician and philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who, along with her mother, Nancy Atwood, provided Yale with the funding to build Albert Arnold Sprague Memorial Hall, which is named after Coolidge’s father, an 1859 Yale graduate.

The reunion was about more than making music. It was, in part, about examining the field and the place School of Music alumni and others have in it. To that end, the reunion programming featured two panel discussions, Women in Composition: Experience in

Left to right: Composers Tawnie Olson ’99MM ’00ad, Missy Mazzoli ’06MM, Loren Loiacono ’10BA ’12MM, Jane Ira Bloom ’76BA ’77MM with faculty composers Hannah Lash ’12ad and Martin Bresnick

a Cultural Microcosm and Chamber Music at Yale and Beyond: Tradition and Evolution. The first, whose panelists included composers Jane Ira Bloom ’76BA ’77MM, Loren Loiacono ’10BA ’12MM, Missy Mazzoli ’06MM, and Tawnie Olson ’99MM ’00AD, was moderated by faculty composers Martin Bresnick and Hannah Lash ’12AD. “It’s important to acknowledge that … the canon did not unfold simply because these were the best composers,” Loiacono said during the discussion. “There were social forces at play.”

The chamber music panel featured faculty violinist Ani Kavafian, faculty horn player William Purvis, and faculty clarinetist David Shifrin in a conversation moderated by deputy dean, faculty pianist, and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music Director Melvin Chen.

In addition to attending those compelling conversations, reunion attendees gathered in shared interest groups to discuss career navigation, arts administration and unrelated fields, and other areas.

When they weren’t performing or engaging in conversation, reunion attendees could be found listening to a rehearsal or hearing a performance by the Yale Philharmonia. Reunion attendees also

enjoyed guided tours of the campus, which has changed dramatically since many were students at the School of Music. Alumni were particularly interested in visiting the Adams Center for Musical Arts, which opened in January 2017. Naturally, many visited their favorite old haunts around town and visited with familiar faculty and staff.

Baritone Richard Steen ’72MMA ’78DMA sat in on a rehearsal for Yale Opera’s 2019 Fall Opera Scenes program and listened to “the superb final staging run-through of the extended scene from Britten’s Billy Budd.”

“What conservatory can claim that many really fine male voices?” Steen asked, rhetorically, in an email.

He also spent time with an alum who graduated more recently than he did, and with several current students. “We had a wonderful conversation about their experiences at the School and in learning about their future plans,” Steen said. “I mention this as an example of the inclusive close-knit community Yale School of Music students seem to inhabit and their obvious joy in being able to make music at such a high level with talented colleagues. Speaking for myself, my three years on campus attending YSM (plus two summers at Norfolk) offered transformative

Fall/Winter 2020 19

YSM alumni and members of the Omer Quartet, the School’s ensemble-in-residence, perform Mendelssohn’s String Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20

Alumni from the classes of 2016-2019 gathered to perform L’Histoire du soldat

Peter Kolkay ’02MMA ’05dMA (left) with current YSM students

20 Music at Yale

Kim Foster ’04CERT performs Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata, a piece commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge 100 years ago, with pianist Nenad Ivovic ’19MMA

Music in Schools Initiative–New Haven Director Rubén Rodríguez Ferreira ’11MM (left) leads a conversation about community programs and their impact

will be organized for each performance.

In New Haven, those activities will be open to the public.

Alumni reconnect over lunch at the Graduate Club

performing and educational opportunities that have richly returned dividends throughout my life.”

Katherine Darr, the School’s development director, pointed out that alumni “are some of our best ambassadors”—especially those who are teachers and might think, “I’m seeing where the School’s going (and) I want my student to apply there.”

In October, before the reunion in New Haven, the School held a gathering at the Metropolitan Club of the City of Washington, in the District of Columbia. Pianist Po-Wei Ger ’20MM performed for those in attendance. In January, an alumni event was held at the Line LA. These gatherings presented an opportunity for alumni, University-affiliated individuals, and friends of Yale’s music programs to think and talk about the past, present, and future of music at Yale.

If the School of Music’s 125th anniversary was reason enough to hold reunion events in New Haven and elsewhere, a short, East Coast tour featuring the Yale Philharmonia, Yale Schola Cantorum, and The Bach Choir, London offers another opportunity to reach out to alumni in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and (again) Washington, D.C. A pre-concert talk and reception, open to all Yale University alumni,

While the School has been active in reconnecting alumni to one another and to their alma mater through reunion activities and outreach, alumni are finding one another wherever they are, thanks to the technologies that have helped facilitate those connections. Still, there is no substitute for face-toface interaction of the kind students enjoy while in school, composing, learning, and performing music with and for one another. Time and again, School of Music Dean Robert Blocker has said this place is about people—those who’ve been here, those who are here now, and those who in the future will make the School home for a few short but life-shaping years.

“Right after school, everyone settles” wherever early opportunity takes them, Director of Admissions and Alumni Affairs Donna Yoo, ’09mm said. Comfort comes with knowing there’s a community of people who’ve shared that same experience. q Photos by Harold Shapiro

women

PROFILES IN PERSISTENCE:

of YSM

W

hen the newly established Yale School of Music conferred its first bachelor of music degrees in

1894, one of those four degrees was awarded to a woman,

Virginia Brisac Moore. While little is known about Moore’s life, particularly in terms of what she did after earning her degree, we honor and pay respect to her memory— in part by celebrating just a handful of alumni who are hereby singled out not because their accomplishments are uniquely extraordinary, but because they reflect the lofty achievements of so many other women of YSM.

22 Music at Yale

ce: women of YSM Profiles i n persiste n

Syoko Aki: Longest-serving faculty member Violinist Syoko Aki ’69MM is the School’s longestserving faculty member, having arrived at Yale in 1962 to study with Broadus Erle and join him in the Yale String Quartet then on the faculty in 1968. She completed a master of music degree at the School the following year, supplementing the education she’d received at the Toho Academy of Music in Tokyo, Japan, and at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford. Over the course of her career at Yale, Aki has appeared regularly in performances in New Haven and at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music in Norfolk, Conn. For years, Aki collaborated with pianist, composer, and School of Music Professor Emerita Joan Panetti, with whom she gave a complete performance, over two seasons, of Mozart’s violin sonatas as part of Yale’s celebration

24 Music at Yale

of the composer’s 250th birthday. She has also collaborated with faculty composer Martin Bresnick, recording his music for the Composers Recordings label. In 2010, Aki was the soloist in two performances of Penderecki’s Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra, with the composer conducting the Yale Philharmonia in Yale’s Woolsey Hall and at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In addition to her work at the School of Music, where, since 2009, she’s been the coordinator of the strings area, Aki has taught at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and at Purchase College in the State University of New York system.

She is a founding member and the concertmaster of the Saito Kinen Orchestra, led by Seiji Ozawa, served the New York Chamber Symphony, under Gerard Schwartz, in the same capacity, and has worked with the Mito Chamber Symphony, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, and Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. Aki teaches undergraduate and graduate students at Yale.

Tanya Bannister: Artist-as-humanitarian After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the surrounding area in 2005, pianist Tanya Bannister ’01CERT, who’d recently won the New Orleans International Piano Competition, got together with three past winners of the competition to form Pianists for New Orleans, a group whose mission has been to raise money for the city’s classical music community. After a tsunami ravaged Japan in 2011, Bannister performed and recorded a Concert for Oshima to raise funds for disaster survivors on that island. Such is the impulse that moves Bannister, whose Roadmaps Festival in New York City has connected music to crisis relief work. Bannister, who was a winner of the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition in 2003, is now the organization’s president, a reflection of the spirit of entrepreneurship that informs her career, one in which she’s championed the work of the composers who’re creating new music today. Among those whose works she’s premiered are School of Music alumnus and faculty composer Christopher Theofanidis ’94MMA ’97DMA and alumna Suzanne Farrin ’00MM ’03MMA ’08DMA. Bannister’s devotion to chamber music led her to establish Alpenkammermusik, a festival in the Austrian Alps, with several other like-minded musicians. Her career has been marked by appearances with such noteworthy ensembles as

the Parker, Enso, and Daedalus string quartets and with individual acclaimed artists, on the world’s most celebrated stages. Bannister studied at the Yale School of Music with Claude Frank and has earned degrees from the Royal Academy of Music and the Mannes School of Music at The New School.

Sharon Isbin: Six-string superstar Any conversation about classical guitarists necessarily must include Sharon Isbin ’78BA ’79MM. She is as close to a household name as anyone in that field can possibly be, and for good reason. Isbin earned degrees from Yale College and the Yale School of Music and today teaches at The Juilliard School, having established the guitar department there in 1989, and at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Her career is the stuff of classical music superstardom. The hourlong documentary film Sharon Isbin: Troubadour contextualizes her career through interviews with many of the extraordinary artists and leaders with whom she’s worked and for whom she’s performed.

These include John Corigliano, Tan Dun, Christopher Rouse, Joan Tower, Joan Baez, Stanley Jordan, Paul Winter, and Barack and Michelle Obama. Boston magazine has called Isbin “the pre-eminent guitarist of our time,” further acknowledging Isbin’s place in the field. She has appeared with more than 200 of the world’s finest orchestras and has sold nearly a million copies of her recordings, which showcase her stylistic versatility as much as her remarkable virtuosity. A Grammy Award-winning artist whose appeal has been reflected on the Billboard charts, Isbin has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, and CBS’s Sunday Morning, and in the pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, People, and Elle, to name just a handful. Isbin is an artist for whom many contemporary composers have written, including Yale School of Music faculty composer Aaron Jay Kernis ’83, virtuoso rock guitarist Steve Vai, and Chris Brubeck, and with whom the giants of music, from the Emerson String Quartet to Sting, have sought to collaborate.

Facing page, clockwise from top left: Syoko Aki, Sharon Isbin (photo by J. Henry Fair), and Tanya Bannister Fall/Winter 2020 25

Carol Colburn Grigor: Philanthropist extraordinaire In 2017, upon presenting her with the Samuel Simons Sanford Award, the Yale School of Music’s highest honor, Dean Robert Blocker described Carol Colburn Grigor CBE ’69MMA as “one of America’s most generous ... most thoughtful philanthropists.”

In addition to her accomplishments at the piano, including performances in Europe and the United States and a number of recordings, Grigor has indeed established herself as an uncommonly supportive champion of the arts. “Our hobby,” she has said of her family, “is giving.” Grigor’s father, Richard Colburn, played the viola and, thanks to his success in business, gave generously to the music school in Los Angeles that bears his name. Just as Grigor helps direct her family’s businesses, she directs funding to the arts in the UK and beyond, with a particular focus on the arts sector in Scotland, including the Edinburgh International Festival, of which she was named honorary vice president in 2013. Sir Jonathan Mills, who led the Edinburgh International Festival until 2014 and is a visiting professor of music at the Yale School of Music, has said, “The depth of Mrs. Grigor’s contribution to the visual and performing arts, and particularly to music and opera, throughout the UK but especially in Scotland, is simply astonishing.”

Grigor is a longtime expat resident of Scotland whose ties to institutions in her native United States remain strong. She has been named a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and has received the Prince of Wales Medal for Philanthropy and the French Ministry of Culture’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. While generous, Grigor avoids attention, quietly serving on several cultural institutions’ boards, including the Yale School of Music’s Board of Advisors.

Sara Jakubiak: Roles of a lifetime The 2019-2020 season, for soprano Sara Jakubiak ’06MM ’07AD, reflects the kind of career many aspiring opera singers covet. Jakubiak will make her role and house debuts as Chrysothemis in new productions of Strauss’ Elektra at Covent Garden in London and Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain. She’ll also appear in a new production of Weinberger’s Schwanda the Bagpiper at the Komische

Opera Berlin. On the concert stage, Jakubiak will sing Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the Munich Philharmonic, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass with the London Philharmonic, excerpts from Tannhäuser with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and excerpts from Die Walküre at the Verbier Festival. At Oper Frankfurt, where she performed from 2014 to 2018, Jakubiak sang in productions of Ariadne auf Naxos, Die tote Stadt, Stiffelio, The Gambler, Der Diktator, Falstaff, Königskinder, and Das Rhinegold. Appearances in the United States have included performances with the New York City Opera and Minnesota Opera.

She has recorded with the Bergen Philharmonic (Norway) and the Polish Radio Symphony and has worked with such notable conductors as Edward Gardiner, Kirill Petrenko, Zubin Mehta, Andris Nelsons, Gianandrea Noseda, and Dmitri Jurowski, among others. Jakubiak earned a master of music degree and an artist diploma from the Yale School of Music, where she was a member of the Yale Opera.

Carol Lieberman: The first doctorate in violin The first woman in her family to have the opportunity to go to college, violinist Carol Lieberman ’67MM ’70MMA ’74DMA studied at the City College of New York before enrolling at the Yale School of Music where, after earning master of music and master of musical arts degrees, she became the first violinist to earn a doctor of musical arts. Between degree programs, Lieberman auditioned successfully for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, where, for two years, she worked with such luminaries as Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, and Zubin Mehta. In 1985, Lieberman joined the faculty at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mass., where she was an associate professor of music for 34 years and served as director of the Holy Cross Chamber Players before retiring in 2019. Lieberman has also taught at the University of Maine at Orono and Boston University. Over the course of her career, Lieberman has established herself as an authority on Baroque violin performance while also engaging with music composed in the 19th and 20th centuries. At home performing a range of repertoire, from Bach to Elliott Carter, Lierberman has worked extensively with harpsichordist Mark Kroll and with the Boston Pops, Boston Classical Orchestra, and Handel and Haydn Society, and at the Connecticut Early Music Festival and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Facing page, clockwise from top: Carol Colburn Grigor, Carol Lieberman, and Sara Jakubiak (photo by Ashley Plante) 26 Music at Yale

contribution to the visual and performing arts, and particularly to music and opera ... is simply astonishing.”

–Sir Jonathan Mills, on Carol Colburn Grigor

“The Yale experience

ce: wome n of YSM

Mrs. Grigor’s

Profiles i n persiste n

“The depth of

gave me the tools for my development as a singer, as an artist, and as a person. The Yale Opera program challenged me; and the hard work and opportunity bestowed to me bridged that grey area between a student and a blossoming professional.”

–sara jakubiak Fall/Winter 2020 27

Missy Mazzoli: A musical force

Joan Panetti: A transformative figure

The New York Times has described Missy Mazzoli ’06MM as “one of the more consistently inventive ... composers now working in New York.” Mazzoli is also one of the most accomplished, despite still being in the early stages of an already remarkable career.

Her music has been performed by such important artists and ensembles as Emanuel Ax, the Kronos and JACK string quartets, Opera Philadelphia, the LA Opera, Minnesota Orchestra, and the American Composers Orchestra, among many others, and at the Edinburgh International Festival and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 2018, Mazzoli was one of two women, along with Jeanine Tesori, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, a first in the organization’s history. Two years earlier, Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves, which was commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Beth Morrison Projects, was “among the best 21st-century operas yet,” according to Opera News. In addition to composing music for the concert and opera stage, Mazzoli has contributed to movie and television soundtracks, most notably Mozart in the Jungle and A Woman, A Part. A performing pianist and keyboardist, Mazzoli has a band, Victoire, which serves as another vehicle for her music. Mazzoli is the MEAD Composer-inResidence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and has served in a similar capacity at Opera Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera, and the Albany Symphony, where she was composer/educator in residence. She was executive director of the MATA Festival in New York from 2007 to 2011 and, with fellow composer Ellen Reid and in collaboration with the Kaufman Music Center, founded the Luna Composition Lab, which provides mentorship and support to young, female-identifying composers. She studied at the Yale School of Music with Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis ’83, and David Lang ’83MM ’89DMA.

When Joan Panetti ’67MM ’73MMA ’74DMA retired from the Yale School of Music in 2018 after 37 years on the faculty, Dean Robert Blocker said, “Joan’s contagious enthusiasm has touched all who have worked and studied with her.” Panetti’s “widely admired Hearing course,” Blocker said, “transformed the practice of many ascendant musicians and has taught us all how to better appreciate the gift that music is.” She was named the Sylvia and Leonard Marx Jr. Professor of Music at Yale in 2004 and was named professor emerita upon her retirement. In addition to her work at Yale in New Haven, Panetti served for 22 years as director of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music in Norfolk, Conn. A “sterling pianist” in Blocker’s words, and a compelling composer, Panetti performed her music with the legendary Tokyo String Quartet, which was in residence at the School from 1976 until the group’s retirement from the concert stage in 2013, and performed frequently and recorded with faculty violinist Syoko Aki. Panetti earned her master of music, master of musical arts, and doctor of musical arts degrees from the Yale School of Music after earning an undergraduate degree from Smith College. During the 1987 Norfolk season, Panetti conceived a program called “Variations and Transcriptions: An Evening of Lighthearted Entertainment” and explained to a reporter from The New York Times, “I see nothing wrong with being lighthearted and a virtuoso. There’s not enough laughter in this life.” Blocker, in 2018, said, “We have all been immeasurably enriched by Joan’s presence and we are grateful for the joy she has brought us.”

Facing page, clockwise from top left: Missy Mazzoli (photo by Marylene May), Syoko Aki, and Joan Panetti 28 Music at Yale

Fall/Winter 2020 29

Profiles i n persiste nce

: women o f YSM

Kay George Roberts: A leader among us In 1986, after earning a master of music degree and a master of musical arts degree in violin, Kay George Roberts ’75MM ’76MMA ’86DMA became the first woman to earn a doctoral degree in conducting from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Otto-Werner Mueller. Since then, having received further guidance from the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Andre Previn, Edo de Waart, and Denis de Coteau, Roberts has appeared as a guest conductor with such celebrated ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. In 2004, Roberts co-led the Sphinx Inaugural Gala Concert at Carnegie Hall and three years later led the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra in the world-premiere performance of Michael Abels’ Delights and Dances at Symphony Hall in Detroit in an event celebrating the Sphinx Organization’s 10th anniversary. The organization is “dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts,” according to its website. Roberts was named a Presidential Professor by the University of Michigan and has received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition for her service to the Sphinx Organization and the community. Roberts is professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she founded the school’s String Project, a public-school program designed to foster diversity in classical music. She also established and has led the Lowell, Mass.-based New England Orchestra and is principal conductor of Opera North, Inc., which presents “innovative programming including productions, recitals, concerts and an impressive array of education and community engagement performance opportunities,” the organization states.

Yoobin Son: A Philharmonic first In 2012, flutist Yoobin Son ’09MM secured a position in the New York Philharmonic, becoming the first Korean musician to join the orchestra’s woodwind section. Son, who has served as the principal flutist in the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and in the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, is also active as a soloist

and chamber musician. She has appeared with such ensembles as the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico. Awards Son has won include first prize at the National Flute Association’s Soloist Competition, grand prize at the Florida Orchestra’s Young Artist Competition, and the conductor’s award at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artist Auditions. A music-education advocate, Son was a member of Ensemble Connect (formerly Ensemble ACJW), which works closely with the New York City Department of Education, and teaches at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Son studied with faculty flutist Ransom Wilson at the Yale School of Music.

Leelanee Sterrett: Goals (so far) achieved Horn player Leelanee Sterrett ’10MM was encouraged as a young musician by her musically engaged family— her mom played in the local community band—and by her teacher at the Interlochen Arts Academy, Julie Schleif. Today, Sterrett is the acting associate principal horn player in the New York Philharmonic, having joined the orchestra in 2013. She is also sharing expertise and encouragement with new generations of musicians as a faculty member at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts and New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Sterrett’s education included undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and training during summers at the Tanglewood Music Center, Pacific Music Festival, and Sarasota Music Festival, and at the Banff Centre for the Arts and the National Orchestral Institute. She was also a member of The Academy (a partnership between Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, the Weill Music Institute, and the New York City Department of Education) and Ensemble ACJW (now Ensemble Connect). A prizewinner at the International Horn Competition of America and the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Program, Sterrett has stepped out of her orchestral role and appeared as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and at the International Horn Symposium. Sterrett studied with William Purvis at the Yale School of Music.

Facing page, clockwise from top: Kay George Roberts, Leelanee Sterrett, and Yoobin Son 30 Music at Yale

“The Yale School of Music played a pivotal role in my life, both professionally and personally. The training I received while earning my MM (1967), MMA (1969), and DMA degrees (the first violinist to receive it) was priceless and launched me on my performing and recording careers.”

–Carol Lieberman

“My large-scale compositions came out of that ‘can-do’ perspective I learned at Yale. My teacher, Martin Bresnick, taught music in a social/political context.

My recent works are about the American worker. Fire in my mouth, for the New York Philharmonic and women’s choir, tells the story of immigrant women working in New York’s garment industry in the early 1900s. Anthracite Fields, for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and vocal trio, addresses the issues surrounding coal mining. It all began at Yale!”

–Julia Wolfe

32 Music at Yale

Julia Wolfe: Creative trailblazer In 2014, composer Julia Wolfe ’86MM received the Pulitzer Prize for Anthracite Fields, an oratorio about those who’ve lived, worked, and died in and around Pennsylvania’s coal mines. “The music compels without overstatement,” the Los Angeles Times’ Mark Swed wrote. “This is a major, profound work.” Recognition for Wolfe’s work has also earned her a MacArthur Fellowship, an Alpert Award in the Arts, and the honor of being named Musical America’s Composer of the Year.

Ensembles and organizations that have had a hand in commissioning new music from Wolfe include Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the New World Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, and Yale Institute of Sacred Music, among others. Among the artists with whom Wolfe has collaborated are filmmaker Bill Morrison, actress Anna Deavere Smith, choreographer Susan Marshall, projection designer Jeff Sugg, and film director François Girard. In addition to creating some of the most compelling music of our time, Wolfe has been an instrumental champion of the art form. Along with composer and Yale School of Music alumnus Michael Gordon ’82MM and Yale School of Music alumnus and faculty composer David Lang ’83MMA ’89DMA, Wolfe is cofounder and co-artistic director of the New York-based collective Bang on a Can, which the San Francisco Chronicle has called “the country’s most important vehicle for contemporary music.” Wolfe serves as professor and artistic director of composition at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

In April, the Yale Glee Club and Yale Camerata will premiere a new work by Wolfe on a program that celebrates the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.

Facing page: Julia Wolfe. Photo by Peter Sterling

Virginia Brisac Moore: A member of the School’s first graduating class In December of 1783, Yale President Ezra Stiles met Lucinda Foote, a 12-year-old prodigy and University applicant. “Were it not for her sex,” Stiles wrote, reflecting on their interview, “she would be considered fit to be admitted.” While it would take until 1969 for Yale College to open its doors to women, the tides of gender equality began to turn at Yale’s graduate and professional schools in the mid-19th century—and it was the art schools that led the way. The Yale School of Fine Arts became Yale’s first co-educational school when it opened in 1869. And when the newly established Yale School of Music conferred its first Bachelor of Music degrees in 1894, one of those four degrees was awarded to a woman. That woman was Stratford, Conn., resident Virginia Brisac Moore. While the details of her life are largely unknown, Virginia certainly grew up in an environment that valued creativity. Two of her older brothers, Charles Herbert Moore and Howard Berndtson Moore, became successful painters. Virginia’s maternal grandfather, Elof Berndtson (later Anglicized to Benson), was a sea captain who emigrated from Sweden to the United States in the early 19th century, and her mother was a devout member of the Swedenborgian Church.

Virginia, similarly, was a member of the Swedenborgian Church of New Jerusalem.

Perhaps this was one outlet for music making in her early life. Virginia attended the Guy B. Day School in Bridgeport, Conn., a small, co-educational college preparatory “classical school.” Curiously, after a break in her schooling, Virginia entered the Yale School of Music as a 35-year-old student.

It is not known what she studied at Yale or what she did in the years after receiving her degree, but one thing seems certain: Virginia embodied a life of independence that was unorthodox for a woman of her time. She remained unmarried and died at age 73 of appendicitis. Virginia Brisac Moore, unlike Foote, was fortunate to have been born in an era in which co-education was increasingly becoming the norm. q Fall/Winter 2020 33

cl ass not es

Joel Chadabe

1960s Composer Joel Chadabe ’62MM was made an honorary lifetime member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in recognition of his career as a music-technology researcher, entrepreneur, and educator, and the contributions he’s made over the years to the Centre.

MusikTexte recently published Finding Music, a general introduction to the music of composer Tom Johnson ’67MM, along with articles Johnson wrote between 1961 and 2018.

In celebration of the occasion and Johnson’s 80th birthday, the Collège international de philosophie and the Université de Strasbourg in Paris organized an evening of music and lectures.

VoceVista, voice-analysis software developed by Donald Miller ’60MM, continues to be the basis for the Singing Voice Science Workshop, which will hold its sixth annual meeting in June 2020 at Montclair State University.

Fifty years ago, oboist Bernard Rubenstein ’61MM formed a group called Theatre

Sheila Barnes

Integral, which performed Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat in collaboration with Yale University’s Department of French and the School of Drama. The group also staged a performance of the Play of Daniel at one of New Haven’s churches.

1970s Trumpeter David Baldwin ’73MM ’74MMA ’79DMA retired from the University of Minnesota School of Music after 45 years. Baldwin led the Summit Hill Brass Quintet, with which he recorded 12 albums, and was active in the International Trumpet Guild.

He is also a calligrapher and has exhibited his work many times.

Soprano Sheila Barnes ’74MM ’75MMA was a guest vocal coach at the Shenzhen Singing Festival in China in August. Barnes is the vocal consultant to Dutch composer Laureate Willem Jeths and collaborated on Jeths’ Ritratto, which was commissioned by the Dutch National Opera and will be premiered in March 2020.

Pianist Nina Deutsch ’73MM is in the process of forming a Friends of Charles Ives group.

Violinist Gerald Elias ’75MM conducted the Salt Lake

Richard Rosenberg

Antoinette Van Zabner

Ralph Evans

Symphony in November, and, as music director of the Utah Council for Citizen Diplomacy, conducted the 38th annual Vivaldi by Candlelight concert in December. His most recent book, ... an eclectic anthology of 28 short mysteries to chill the warmest heart., was released in October.

Organ,” in November at the International Conference on the Harmonium held at Università di Pavia, in Cremona, Italy.

Distinguished Professor, Cook gave performances throughout South America. She recently performed a recital of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff sonatas with fellow U.S. State Department Artistic Ambassador Carl Blake in San Francisco.

Guitarist Sharon Isbin ’79MM earned Musical America’s 2020 Instrumentalist of the Year Award becoming the first guitarist to receive the honor in its 59-year history. Representing the pinnacle of artistic achievement, past winners have included Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, Beverly Sills, George Balanchine, Itzhak Perlman, Marilyn Horne, Andre Previn, and Yo-Yo Ma. Conductor Richard Rosenberg’s ’77MM recording of his critical edition of Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen, performed by the String Orchestra of the National Music Festival, will be released by Centaur Records in September 2020.

Pianist Artis Wodehouse ’71MM presented a lecture/recital titled “Mason & Hamlin’s Response to the European Harmonium: the Mason & Hamlin Liszt

Antoinette Van Zabner ’74MM ’75MMA is a professor of piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She has taught master classes at institutions in Italy, Spain, and China. She is a member of the Austrian Fulbright Commission, one of the founding members of the Fulbright Women’s Roundtable, and president of the Yale Club of Austria.

1980s Pianist Susan Scheidel Breitung ’86MM teaches music to fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students at a Gemeinschaftsschule in Jena, Germany. Outside her work at the school, Breitung teaches piano lessons and works with singers and instrumentalists in Jena and Weimar, in the German state of Thuringia.

Cellist Kim Cook’s ’81MM Naxos Records release of eight premieres by composer Paul Reale was listed among Fanfare’s top five releases of 2018. Last season, while on sabbatical from Pennsylvania State University, where she is a

Oboist Kathryn Engelhardt’s ’87MM chamber group, the Double Entendre Music Ensemble, presented a program of new music for oboe quartet in September 2019. The program included two works commissioned by the ensemble: Yale School of Music faculty composer Martin Bresnick’s Going Home (Vysoke, My Jerusalem) and the world premiere of Caleb Burhan’s Galveston ’89.

Violinist Ralph Evans ’76MM ’77MMA ’80DMA, a prizewinner at the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, concertized as a soloist throughout Europe and North America before joining the Fine Arts Quartet as the group’s first violinist. Evans, who has toured extensively with the quartet since 1982, has recorded more than 100 works released on more than 40 albums.

Fall/Winter 2020 35

class notes

An-lun Huang

André Raphel

Kenneth Singleton

Guitarist Richard Goering ’86MM has worked for years as a freelance musician throughout the Midwest, New York, Vermont, and South Carolina. He has performed with the Cincinnati Opera, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the Cincinnati Boychoir, and the Lexington Philharmonic.

He has long worked with Suzanne Bona, flutist and host of Sunday Baroque, and has been a Kentucky Arts Council Performing Artist for 20 years.

The Bach Aria Soloists, founded by violinist Elizabeth Suh Lane ’88MM, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The first two concerts of the season were sold out, including a special 20th birthday concert celebration that welcomed alumni and guests of the BAS in a community-wide event.

This season features tenor Kyle Stegall ’14AD as a guest artist.

Evan Rothstein MM has been deputy head of strings at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (London) since 2011.

He served as chairman of the European Chamber Music Teachers Association for two terms (2009-2016) and taught in the musicology department at the University of Paris VIII. He has been professor of chamber music at the Summer String Academy at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington every year since 1997.

Organist Mark Howe ’88MM recently celebrated 20 years as organist and choirmaster of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in Burlington, Vermont, where he has developed a successful choir program for young singers. In 2003, Howe completed a Ph.D. in historical musicology at New York University. He has taught at the University of Vermont and at McGill University.

Composer An-lun Huang’s ’86MM oratorio Patch the Sky was performed by the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia, the State Choir of Russia, and the A-Sharp Chorus, under the baton of Rui Zhang, at the Moscow Conservatory in September.

36 Music at Yale

Vocalist Naomi Lewin ’80MM produced a three-part podcast called Time and Change about how the Yale Glee Club went co-ed 50 years ago, just after Yale College did. The story is told through the voices of Glee Club members from the classes of 1958 through 2022 and features eight decades of Glee Club recordings.

After a nationwide search, the Lake Placid Sinfonietta announced in September that Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra Conductor/Music Director Stuart Malina ’87MM will be the Sinfonietta’s next music director.

Trombonist André Raphel ’86MM was appointed assistant professor of music at the University of Connecticut and music director of the UConn Symphony Orchestra.

Having retired as associate professor of percussion at the University of Memphis in May 2016, Frank Shaffer ’73MM ’75MM ’80DMA continues to serve as principal timpanist of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra.

He also continues his community outreach work as a drum-circle facilitator, working with senior citizens, veterans, at-risk youth, and students with mental and/or physical disabilities.

Tubist Kenneth Singleton ’74MM ’75MMA ’81DMA was named conductor and music director of the Boulder Concert Band, a nonprofit, premier adult community band. Singleton recently retired as director of bands at the University of

Antonio Underwood

Cynthia Watson

Marco Beltrami

Northern Colorado, where his responsibilities included conducting the Wind Ensemble and Concert Band and administering all aspects of the band program.

Cynthia Watson ’88MM performed the Marcello Oboe Concerto with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra in September for the opening concert of the ensemble’s subscription season.

founded the Music for the Planet festival in Galápagos.

The Auditions, a ballet by composer Augusta Read Thomas MM, was premiered at Montclair State University in November. A work by Thomas for large chorus and orchestra will be premiered by the Cathedral Choral Society of Washington, D.C., conducted

by Steven Fox, at the Washington National Cathedral in March.

Tubist Antonio Underwood ’87MM was a Fulbright Scholar in Serbia and the first AfricanAmerican to become a George Lucas Scholar in the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at the University of Southern California. His most recent album is called Underneath the Moonlight Sun. El Colibrí Mágico—A California Story, an opera by composer Joseph Waters ’82MM, was featured on the Indie Opera Podcast (episode 67), which was released in November. The first act was premiered in workshop form with choreography, staging, and projection design, in October.

Forbidden Love, a piece composer Julia Wolfe ’86MM wrote for Sō Percussion, received its New York premiere at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in December. Wolfe’s Flower Power, for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and orchestra, was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in January.

1990s Violinist Alexander Adiarte ’98MM won multiple prizes at the first International Conducting Competition in Almaty, Kazakhstan, including “Best Interpreter.” Adiarte conducted concerts in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain this year.

As artistic director of the Guayaquil Symphony Orchestra in Ecuador, conductor Dante Anzolini ’89MM ’90MMA ’97DMA gave worldpremiere performances of Rodrigo’s La Rosa de Quito and four symphonies by Luis H. Salgado. Anzolini also

Peter Askim ’94MM ’95MMA ’99DMA is active as a composer and conductor and is the founder and artistic director of the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, in New York and Connecticut. He is music director of the Raleigh Civic Symphony and Chamber Orchestra and serves on the faculty of North Carolina State University.

Composer Marco Beltrami ’91MM won a 2019 Emmy Award in the “Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special (Original Dramatic Score)” category for his score for the National Geographic documentary Free Solo.

Conductor Jeffrey Bernstein ’92MM is the founding artistic and executive director of the Pasadena Master Chorale and the artistic director of the Los Angeles Daiku. Bernstein has led a dozen choir tours on four continents and in June 2020 will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth by conducting more than 800 performers in a performance of the composer’s Ninth Symphony in Naruto, Japan. An active composer, Bernstein is the songwriter

Fall/Winter 2020 37

class notes

Lydia Brown

Mesut Özgen

Vincent Carr

for Let’s Go Luna on PBS Kids.

In 2017, his piece The Human Journey was awarded second place in the choral division of the American Prize for Composition.

Touch, a piece by composer Douglas Knehans ’93MMA ’96DMA for piano and electronics, was included as part of the official U.S. submission to the ISCM World Music Days in Tallinn, Estonia. In 2018, Knehans’ operatic monodrama Backwards from Winter was premiered in New York by the Center of Contemporary Opera and then performed in Australia.

York City, including 15 years as the harpist for the Broadway show Wicked, Laura Sherman ’93MM has accepted a full-time lecturer position in harp and music theory at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Sherman was also named artistic co-chair of the American Harp Society’s 2020 National Conference in Orlando, Fla.

Pianist Lydia Brown ’95MM ’96AD has been the chair of the Collaborative Piano Department at The Juilliard School since fall 2017. She also works as an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera and oversees the vocal program at the Marlboro Music Festival and School.

In her role as artistic director of the Nassau Music Society, flutist Christine Gangelhoff ’95AD is leading a campaign to assist in the rebuilding of music programs on the islands devastated by Hurricane Dorian. The nonprofit Nassau Music Society has been promoting music throughout the Bahamas for 51 years.

Guitarist Jeremy Grall ’99MM was promoted to associate professor of musicology and guitar with tenure at Birmingham-Southern College.

In 2017, Grall earned a second doctorate in historical musicology from the University of Memphis.

More recently, Grall performed the premier of William Price’s Crucible at the Concertgebouw in Bruges, Belgium.

38 Music at Yale

Michael Nicolella ’91MM performed the featured guitar parts in two recent Seattle Opera productions, Mason Bates’ The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs and Zach Redler’s The Falling and the Rising. Nicolella performed as the soloist with the Seattle Symphony in its “Final Fantasy” concert, and, in February 2020, he’ll perform Yaron Gottfried’s Concerto for Electric Guitar with Symphony Tacoma.

Pianist Joseph Talleda ’90MM accompanies the Civic Chorale of Greater Miami, the Miami Collegium Musicum, and students at Miami Dade College’s Kendall Campus and is the pianist at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami. In summer 2019, he played harpsichord for the Miami Lyric Opera’s production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola.

Organist Carol Williams ’97AD, formerly the San Diego civic organist, will make her debut on London’s Royal Festival Hall organ in April with a program of hits by B.B. King and Jimmy Smith, demonstrating the organ’s game-changing role in the jazz repertoire.

Guitarist and composer Mesut Özgen ’93MM ’94AD, founder and artistic director of the Miami International GuitART Festival at the Florida International University School of Music, won the James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge award for the second time since 2016.

2000s

After more than 30 years as a professional harpist in New

Organist Vincent Carr ’06MM has been named director of the

Ashley Jackson

Yuan-Chen Li

Mei Rui

American Guild of Organists’ National Committee on Career Development and Support. In this role, he will help guide the best practices in employing church musicians within the guild.

Hunter College, where she teaches harp and chamber music. In the spring, she’ll teach a course on the history of soul music.

Sami Merdinian ’06MM ’07AD, cellist Yves Dharamraj ’04MM, and mezzo-soprano Solange Merdinian, took place in Argentina in August and September. With several public performances, master classes, and nearly 20 community engagement activities taking place in the cities of Buenos Aires and Córdoba, the festival attracted more than 4,000 visitors.

Countertenor Jay Carter ’08MM was recently appointed to the voice faculty at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. He is also the conductor of Westminster Kantorei, the school’s early music ensemble.

Shizuo Kuwahara ’01MM was appointed principal guest conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre in Vladivostok, Russia. He will visit four to five times per year, leading multiple performances of operas, ballets, and orchestral concerts during each visit.

In March 2019, guitarist Thomas Flippin ’07MM ’08AD performed in Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran’s Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration at Carnegie Hall. In November, Flippin performed Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with the Stamford Symphony.

Violist Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti ’08MM has been named curator of music at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At EMPAC, she will be developing music residencies and commissions as well as performances and events.

After 11 years as associate professor of trumpet at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas, Scott Hagarty ’04MM joined the Tennessee Tech University faculty as assistant professor of trumpet.

He has also been appointed to principal positions with the Bryan Symphony Orchestra and the Brass Arts Quintet.

Composer Yuan-Chen Li ’08AD has been based in Portland, Ore., for three years since earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She is working on her seventh symphonic work and a cross-cultural trio and collaborating with director Lukas Hemleb on a new theater work that will be premiered in Taiwan and France in 2021.

Harpist Ashley Jackson ’09MM was appointed assistant professor in the Music Department at

The seventh New Docta Festival, founded by violinist

Oboist Kyle Mustain ’06MM has joined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as principal English horn player for the 2019-20 season.

Mustain has been a member of the band Pink Martini since 2014.

Composer Tawnie Olson ’99MM ’00AD received a 2020 Copland House Residency Award. While in residence in Aaron Copland’s former home, she will work on a concerto grosso for the New York Brass Arts Trio and the New Russia State Symphony Orchestra, and on a new piece for Sandbox Percussion.

Pianist Mei Rui ’06MM ’07AD, lead researcher at the Houston Methodist Center for Performing Arts Medicine, gave a concert in which scans of her brain activity were displayed on a screen as she performed, highlighting the oxygen in the brain. Rui

Fall/Winter 2020 39

class notes

Michael Smith

Derrick Wang

Mindy Heinsohn

studies music as medicine in the treatment of strokes, depression, and Alzheimer’s and believes doctors could one day use music to oxygenate certain parts of the brain.

Brisbane, Australia. He will lead the school for a five-year term.

Giovanni Bertoni ’18MM MMA was named principal clarinetist of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. Bertoni has spent the past two summers at the Tanglewood Music Center.

Margot Schwartz ’07MM will join the Santa Fe Opera orchestra as assistant principal second violinist in the 2020 season.

Organist Michael Smith ’03MM ’05MM has been elected to the board of the Royal School of Church Music in America. He also serves on the board of the Yale Glee Club Associates and the Diocese of Pennsylvania’s Commission on Liturgical Discernment. He is in his third year as minister of music at St. Thomas’ Church, Whitemarsh, in Fort Washington, Pa. Composer Gregory Spears ’02MM delivered the 2019 Walter Harding Lecture, titled “Thoreau and Music,” at SUNY Geneseo in September. Spears’ song cycle Walden premiered in 2018 in a performance The Washington Post called “gripping.”

Pianist Liam Viney ’02MM ’03MMA ’07DMA was recently appointed professor and head of school of the University of Queensland’s School of Music in

40 Music at Yale

Scalia/Ginsburg, a Supreme Court-focused opera by composer Derrick Wang ’08MM, will be performed nationwide in 2020 by such companies as Opera Carolina, Opera Naples, Toledo Opera, Opera Grand Rapids, Opera Las Vegas, and Solo Opera in California.

2010s Composer Krists Auznieks ’16MM ’22DMA received commissions from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra. Cappella Amsterdam premiered Auznieks’ Song of Myself at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, and guitarist Jiyeon “JIJI” Kim ’17MM and Sinfonietta Riga will premiere Auznieks’ Guitar Concerto in March at Riga’s Great Guild Hall.

Pianist Suzana Bartal ’13MM ’14MMA ’18DMA has been appointed artistic director of the Festival Piano à Riom in France. The festival, which is in its 34th year, has long had an important place in the French musical landscape.

After a season with the New World Symphony in Miami, Fla.,

Violinist Alissa Cheung ’13MM is a member of Quatuor Bozzini, which appears regularly at such festivals such as hcmf//, Time:Spans, and Gaudeamus, and has worked with such composers as Jürg Frey, Éliane Radigue, and Christian Wolff. The group is a faculty ensemble at the Banff Centre, soundSCAPE Festival, and Guildhall Chamber Music Festival.

Cellist Samuel DeCaprio ’18MMA made his New York concerto debut in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with the Juilliard Orchestra in January, performing Grażyna Bacewicz’s Cello Concerto No. 2 with conductor Anne Manson.

Joseph Guimaraes ’18MM won the U.S. Navy Concert Band’s most recent tuba audition. The ensemble is based in Washington, D.C. Mindy Heinsohn ’10MM was appointed professor of flute at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. Heinsohn has served as assistant principal flutist

Molly Joyce

Lucas van Lierop

Frances Pollock

of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra since 2017.

Composer Jordan Kuspa ’10MM ’12MMA ’17DMA recently founded the Del Mar International Composers Symposium as a destination where composers can share new music with the public and one another. The first symposium was held in August in Del Mar, Calif., and featured the Hausmann Quartet performing music by six composition fellows.

Countertenor Daniel Moody ’16MM sang the role of Man 1 in the premiere of faculty composer Hannah Lash’s Desire at Columbia University’s Miller Theater in October.

Guitarist Igor Lichtmann ’18MMA, Chris Garwood ’17MM, and Abhi Nayar’s YC ’18 musiceducation startup tonebase has expanded to a team of 10 fulltime employees, a roster of more than 35 pianists, and a library of close to 200 video tutorials.

Aaron Peisner ’16MM was appointed director of choral activities at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He graduated in spring 2019 from the University of Maryland with a doctorate in choral conducting.

Nansong Huang ’18MM is currently a doctoral candidate in piano performance and pedagogy at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. Huang has been appointed to the faculty of the Xi’an Conservatory of Music in China.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation named trombonist Stephen Ivany ’14MM to the 2019 edition of CBC Music’s classical “30 under 30” list.

Breaking and Entering, a collaboration between composer Molly Joyce ’17MM and dancer Jerron Herman, was premiered at Danspace Project in New York.

The work received support from New Music USA, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the National YoungArts Foundation.

The performance run featured guest DJs, including guitarist Jiyeon “JIJI” Kim ’17MM. In 2018, guitarist Jangsoo Jun ’10MM gave recitals at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and at the United Nations. Jun also conducted a performance of his composition Four Seasons of Dodko in Korea.

Jun is a professor at the Brno Conservatory’s Seoul campus.

In March, tenor Lucas van Lierop ’17MMA replaced Paul Appleby for two performances of John Adams’ new opera, The Girls of the Golden West, at the Dutch National Opera. This spring, van Lierop will appear in the premiere of Willem Jeths’ opera Ritratto at the Dutch National Opera.

The Maverick Brass Quintet (Norfolk ’17 ’18), whose members include trumpeter Oscar Mason ’19MM, won third prize at the Jeju International Brass & Percussion Competition in August.

Pianist Michael Namirovsky ’11MM joined the faculty of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China.

Flutist Ginevra Petrucci ’12MM ’13AD was appointed concert manager at the University of California, Berkeley, where she will manage events at Hertz Hall, a celebrated center for new music.

Composer Frances Pollock’s ’19MM ’25DMA children’s opera Earth to Kenzie was premiered by the Lyric Opera of Chicago in October and November. It was performed for more than 40,000 Chicago public-school students over 40 performances.

Seattle Opera will perform the work this spring.

Fall/Winter 2020 41

Emily Switzer

Jay Villella

Amy Yang

Harpsichordist Jonathan Salamon ’17MM ’23DMA was awarded third prize at the Mathieu Duguay Early Music Competition at the 44th edition of the Lamèque International Baroque Music Festival in New Brunswick, Canada, in June. He also presented his DMA thesis, The Leo: A Galant Schema and its Affective Content, at the international conference “Ignacio Jerusalem 250: Galant Musics in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and the New World” in Spain in December.

Violinist David Southorn ’09MM ’10AD, concertmaster of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, performed Arvo Pärt’s Fratres and Yale School of Music faculty composer Aaron Jay Kernis’ ’83 Air with the NHSO in February.

solo debut on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Series this year, is on the chamber music faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music and is the program director of Curtis Summerfest’s Young Artist Summer Program. q

Guitarist Marco Sartor ’13MMA ’18DMA was appointed assistant teaching professor of music at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. Pianist Wenting Shi ’19MMA won second prize at the fifth Hong Kong International Piano Competition in October.

David Simon ’17MM ’23DMA won first prize at the 2019 National Organ Playing Competition of the Royal Canadian College of Organists (RCCO) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the college’s national convention. Simon is the Organist at the Cathedral Church of St. James in Toronto.

Emily Switzer ’19MM ’20MMA joined the Minnesota Orchestra as a section violinist this past fall.

Jay Villella ’13MM was appointed second trumpet of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra in Ohio and adjunct professor of trumpet at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. He continues to perform with many of the regional orchestras and other ensembles in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and western New York.

Lucas Wong ’06MM ’07MMA ’12DMA is the founder and CEO of eMus, an online musical feedback service that offers performers, from students to professionals, a new, 21st century educational tool.

Pianist Amy Yang ’10AD toured with Patricia Kopatchinskaya, Tito Muñoz, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and premiered music

by Michael Hersch at Cal Performances, the Ojai Music Festival, and the Aldeburgh Festival. Yang, who will make her

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42 Music at Yale

recordings & publications

to unlock their creative impulse and enrich their imagination.”

Composer Daniel Asia ’77MM released his 13th album on Summit Records. The latest features his three string quartets, the first of which was written at Yale and performed by the Rymour Quartet. For this album, the first and third quartets were performed by the Amernet String Quartet.

Coordinator of Career Strategies Astrid Baumgardner published a new book titled Creative Success Now: How Creatives Can Thrive in the 21st Century (Indie Books International, Inc., 2019). The book draws on Baumgardner’s experience teaching and coaching musicians and arts leaders and includes stories of successes enjoyed by Yale students, alumni, and faculty. Yale School of Music Dean Robert Blocker has said the book “is an excellent compendium for anyone wishing

The French label Le Palais des Connoisseurs released a double CD recording of faculty pianist Boris Berman performing the short piano pieces of Brahms. Berman also contributed a chapter about Prokofiev’s piano concertos to the collection Rethinking Prokofiev, which Oxford University Press published in January.

Associate Professor of Music and Yale Symphony Orchestra Director William Boughton led the Yale Philharmonia in a recording of Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos, K. 365 and Piano Concertos K. 488 and K. 413. The album, which features Yale School of Music Dean and faculty pianist Robert Blocker, pianist and Yale School of Music Professor Emeritus of Music Peter Frankl, and the Statera Quartet, was scheduled for release by Nimbus Records Worldwide in February 2020.

Spectrum Concerts Berlin, under the artistic direction of cellist Frank Dodge ’81MM recently began its 32nd season. The newly released book Shall We Dance, Spectrum Concerts Berlin 1988-2019 documents the first 31 years of the series. Additionally, Naxos Records will release Spectrum’s 16th, 17th, and 18th albums, which feature chamber music by Korngold.

Jazz saxophonist and Lecturer in Jazz Improvisation Wayne Escoffery recorded his 14th album, which contains reworkings of the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Benedictus from Britten’s Missa Brevis. The album, which is scheduled for release in the spring of 2020 on the Smoke Sessions label, also includes original compositions by Escoffery and members of his band.

Naxos released the latest album by the Fine Arts Quartet, of which violinist Ralph Evans ’76MM ’77MMA ’80DMA is a member. The album features an all-Beethoven program, with the monumental Grosse Fuge as its centerpiece complemented by an intriguing group of rarities: Beethoven’s brilliant-yet-forgotten original versions of Quartets Op.18, No.1 and Op. 131, plus a number of miniatures, including his virtually unknown preludes and fugues.

Fall/Winter 2020 43

recordings & publications The Essex Chamber Music Players, under the artistic direction of flutist Michael Finegold ’68MM ’69MM, will release Local Cultural History Through Music: The Merrimack Valley, the first volume of a recording project, in spring 2020. Finegold also directs the Essex Jazz Ensemble, whose June 2019 concert of his jazz compositions was broadcast by the Internet Native Family radio station. A studio recording was subsequently made for future release.

Trombonist Eliud Garcia ’17MM released his second album, Versitos. The album, recorded at the Yale School of Music and produced by Giovanni Crespo Medina, features trumpeter Theo Van Dyck ’18MM, cellist Eric Adamshick ’17MM ’18MMA, tenor Luis Aguilar ’18MM ’19MMA, soprano Anush Avetisyan ’18MM, and trombonist and Music in Schools Initiative—New Haven Director Rubén Rodríguez ’11MM.

Violinist John Gilbert’s ’83MM recording Youthful Passions, featuring the sonatas of Richard Strauss, Erno Dohnanyi, and Barber, was released on the Fleur de Son Classics label in November. The Barber is a world-premiere recording.

44 Music at Yale

The two-CD set, which also features cello sonatas by the same composers, has received critical acclaim from Fanfare.

Records); and a performance of 100 Greatest Dance Hits by guitarist Jason Vieaux and the Escher Quartet (Azica Records).

The New York City Children's Chorus, under the artistic direction of organist Mary Huff ’01MM, released its second album, Christmas in New York, on MSR Classics. The recording includes the first-ever recording of the chamber orchestra version of Randall Thompson's cantata The Place of the Blest. Organist Andrew Henderson ’01MM accompanies the chorus on this album and on the group’s first recording, Simple Gifts: American and British Art Songs of the 20th Century.

Guitarist Sharon Isbin ’79MM and the Pacifica Quartet released Souvenirs of Spain & Italy in August.

Recent CD releases of faculty composer Aaron Jay Kernis’ ’83 music include a recording by the Jasper String Quartet of Kernis’ String Quartet No. 3, “River” (Sono Luminus); a performance of his Flute Concerto, Air for flute and orchestra, and his Second Symphony, performed by flutist Marina Piccinini and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra led by Marin Alsop and Leonard Slatkin (Naxos Records); a performance of Remembering the Sea by the San Francisco Girls Chorus and the Knights chamber orchestra led

by Eric Jacobsen (Supertrain

Twentieth century African American composer Margaret Bonds has received longoverdue recognition with the world-premiere recording of her crowning achievement, The Ballad of the Brown King. Released

by AVIE Records, the recording features the Dessoff Choirs, soprano Laquita Mitchell, mezzosoprano Lucia Bradford, and tenor Noah Stewart, under the baton of the groups’ conductor, Malcolm J. Merriweather. Harpist and Bonds authority Ashley Jackson ’09MM contributed the liner notes.

Unfinished Earth, the latest CD of music by composer Douglas Knehans ’93MMa ’96DMA, was hailed by the BBC Music Magazine as “wonderfully orchestrated ... dynamic and endlessly evolving.” The New Yorker said, “The sounds of nature course through the orchestral pieces on his latest album ... with a primitive force and melodic insistence that recall Stravinsky.”

A Place Called Home is Not a Place, an album of music by composer Fay Kueen Wang ’10MM ’12AD, was released in December. Wang composed, arranged, performed, and produced all the songs on the album, working with Guangzhoubased producer Mark Lee to mix and master the recording.

Delos Records has released Perspectives by violinist Dawn Wohn ’08MM ’09AD and pianist Esther Park ’12AD ’13MMA ’17DMA. The album features works by women composers, including Reena Esmail ’11MM ’14MMA ’18DMA, and was selected as a “Featured New Album” by Apple Music and a “Classical Music Pick” by Spotify.

Composer Peter Lewis ’85MM released Home Stretch, a new album of chamber music, in November. The album features violinist Miranda Cuckson, cellist Christopher Gross, and pianist Stephen Gosling.

The publishing company Doberman-Yppan will publish three new works by faculty guitarist Benjamin Verdery, including the songcycle What God Looks Like.

Resonance, an album by pianist Amy Yang ’10AD, features music

by Bach, Schumann, and Caroline Shaw ’07MM. The album was released in 2019 by MSR Classics.

Fall/Winter 2020 45

staff appointments

Financial Assistant JaQuay Black joined the Business Office over the summer. Black comes to the School of Music having worked for two years as a financial assistant for the University. He earned a degree in accounting from Tuskegee University in Alabama and has volunteered for several years mentoring underserved children through the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and other service organizations.

46 Music at Yale

Belinda Conrad began working in the Office of the Deputy Dean, as the School’s new program manager, in December. A familiar face in the Yale community, Conrad has spent the past three summers on the production staff at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music. Conrad graduated summa cum laude in 2018 from Baldwin Wallace University, where she majored in arts management and entrepreneurship.

Jennifer Reed joined the staff as the communications office’s graphic design manager. She previously worked in the same capacity at the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation in New York City. Before that, she worked as a graphic designer at New York University, developing and supporting visual identity systems. Reed graduated with a degree in visual communication from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and studied at the Parsons School of Design at The New School. She spent a year volunteering as a high school English teacher in Thailand.

in memoriam

The Yale School of Music recognizes the passing of these faculty, alumni, colleagues, and friends: Lee L. Goebel ’46BM Pearl J. Keller ’47BM Marjory R. Kimbell ’49BM John L. Strauss ’50BM ’51MM Patricia Livingston ’51BM Norine P. Harris ’52BM Leonard F. Felberg ’53BM ’54MM Edwin H. Holzer ’54BM ’55MM Sonya O. Thompson ’58BM Stephen T. Anderson ’61BM ’64MM Billy L. Hebert ’65MM Jean G. Roberts ’77MM

Fall/Winter 2020 47

48 Music at Yale Photo by Matt Fried

Instruments of Mastery

Preston Athey ’71 funds pianos at the Yale School of Music

By Sean McAvoy ’11MAR

A

t the Yale School of Music, piano notes resound through the halls at nearly every hour of the day. In practice rooms and studios, students perfect their skills with the instrument, while faculty members use pianos in seminars and intensive one-on-one tutorials. Renowned pianists from around the world visit campus to perform recitals and teach master classes. The school’s piano program enrolls twenty-four students—more than 10 percent of the student body—and has seven faculty members.

Beyond the formal piano program, however, the instruments are the basis and foundation for nearly everything that happens at the School. In recitals throughout the year, soloists performing on other instruments are typically accompanied by pianists. Chamber orchestras, full orchestras, and other musical performances at the School often include a piano. Student and faculty composers also require pianos for their work.

In the course of daily use for concerts, recitals, practices, and classes, YSM pianos are frequently moved around the School to accommodate programmatic and classroom needs. This leads to wear and tear on the instruments. Each piano at the School gets played much more than one in a private home, and this heavy use means that the School’s pianos have lifespans of around 25 years. Each year, some of the School’s 120 pianos need to be replaced.

World-class instruments for world-class musicians A recent gift from Preston Athey ’71 has created the Dean’s Piano Fund at YSM, which will be used to purchase approximately a dozen new pianos over the next four years, ensuring that the School’s musicians have access to instruments of the highest quality. The first pianos from Athey’s gift will be placed in faculty studios.

“Our faculty members are among the finest pianists and artist teachers,” said Robert Blocker, the Henry

and Lucy Moses Dean of Music and an accomplished concert pianist. “In addition to teaching, they maintain a rigorous schedule of performing and practicing. Our students come here specifically to study with these esteemed musicians and instructors.

Right now, Preston’s gift is going to provide instruments that rise to the level of our faculty’s talents. Going forward, we will be able to meet our piano needs as they arise, thanks to Preston.”

The Yale School of Music enjoys a special designation as an All-Steinway School. Every piano at the School, from smaller uprights in practice rooms to larger instruments in faculty studios and concert grands in performance spaces, is made by the Steinway & Sons piano manufacturing company. Steinway pianos are renowned for expressing subtle nuances of color and tone with great complexity and richness.

A music lover gives back “Music is such an important part of life at Yale,” said Athey, a former Whiffenpoof who has contributed to the restoration of pianos at Silliman College and made a previous gift to purchase pianos to celebrate the opening of the Adams Center for Musical Arts at YSM. “In the hands of skilled masters like those who teach at Yale, the piano is capable of expressing sublime emotions. I am very happy that my gift will help YSM faculty and students hone the art of playing this instrument.”

“Preston has such a wonderful love for music,” Blocker said. “His gift helps ensure we have the instruments we need to fulfill the School’s mission to educate and inspire students for service to the profession and to society. These high-quality pianos enable us to provide the very best education to our students, who go on to become not just renowned musicians but also cultural leaders.” q

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honor roll The School of Music is grateful for the generous support of its alumni and friends. The following individuals made a contribution between July 1–December 31, 2019. To make your gift, please visit yale.edu/givemusic.

Alumni Fund Kent R. Adams Ole Akahoshi ’95CERT ’97MM Richard E. Andaya ’84MM Gregory N. Anderson ’08MMA ’13DMA Dmitri Atapine ’05MMA ’06AD ’10DMA Laura Catherine Atkinson ’09MM Lenae Wisner Badger ’81MM Eliot T. Bailen ’80MM ’82MMa ’89DMA Amanda Dawn Baker ’00MM Howard N. Bakken ’67MM David B. Baldwin ’73MM ’74MMa ’79DMA Elena G. Bambach ’55BM ’56MM James R. Barry ’83MM Julie Anne Bates ’94MM Janna Margaret Baty ’93MM Alexander Sylvain Bauhart ’99MMa M. Teresa Beaman ’81BA ’82MM Marco E. Beltrami ’91MM Mark E. Bergman ’97MM Amy Feldman Bernon ’91MM Jean S. Bills ’63MM George S. Blackburn, Jr. ’64BA ’67MM Serena and Robert Blocker ’95MAH Michael C. Borschel ’74MMa ’79DMA Thomas Russell Brand ’96BA ’96MM Ryan J. Brandau ’06MM ’07MMa ’11DMA Katherine Brewster ’76MM ’77MMa and Donald Rosenberg ’76MM ’77MMa Anthony Carlisle Brooks ’03MM Jeffrey Evans Brooks ’83MM ’84MMa ’89DMA Susan Chan ’90MM Violeta N. Chan-Scott ’84MM Heejin Chang ’13MM Diana L. Chou ’19MMa David James Chrzanowski ’95MM W. Ritchie Clendenin, Jr. ’67MM Michael Patrick Compitello ’09MM ’12MMa ’16DMA Charlotte M. Corbridge Gary Crow-Willard ’80MM Conrad M. Cummings ’70BA Steven F. Darsey ’85MM ’86MMa ’90DMA Kathie and Richard De Baise ’67MM ’70MMa Preethi I. de Silva ’71MMa ’76DMA Galen H. Deibler ’54BM ’55MM Sharon Dennison ’79MM and Stephen Perry ’81MM Emma Lou Diemer ’49BM ’50MM

50 Music at Yale

Karen DiYanni Peterson ’96MM ’97AD Patrick J. Durbin ’15MM Robert A. Elhai ’86MM ’88MMa ’95DMA Kathryn Lee Engelhardt ’87MM Joan Osborn Epstein ’76MM Helen B. Erickson ’69MM Ethel H. Farny ’66MM Grace Ann Feldman ’63MM Jamie Brooke Forseth ’12MBA Jeff Fuller ’67BA ’69MM Daniel Tran Gien ’94BS ’96MM Michael J. Gilbertson ’13MM Linda W. Glasgal ’56BM ’57MM Renee K. Glaubitz ’51BM Hall N. Goff ’75MM Jie Gong ’07MM Daniel M. Graham ’63MM John M. Graziano ’66MM ’70MPHIL ’75PHD Mary J. Greer ’78BA ’86MA Scott Gregory Hagarty ’04MM Barbara J. Hamilton-Primus ’86MMa ’93DMA Edward Duffield Harsh ’88MM ’92MMa ’95DMA Robert L. Hart ’74MM Eva Marie Heater ’91MM William Lee Hudson ’61MM Mary Huff ’01MM and Andrew Henderson ’01MM Helen K. Hui ’69MM Lauren A. Hunt ’13MM Janne E. Irvine ’74MM Paul Abraham Jacobs ’02MM ’03AD Patrick Hie Young Jee ’99CERT ’03MM Lawrence Jones ’59MM Boyd M. Jones II ’77MM ’78MMa ’84DMA Jennie Eun-Im Jung ’01MM ’02AD Joyce B. Kelley ’56BM ’57MM Hsing-Ay ’01MM and Daniel Kellogg ’01MM ’03MMa ’07DMA Aaron Jay Kernis ’83 Barbara Peterson Kieffer ’81MM Richard E. Killmer ’67MM ’71MMa ’75DMA Nayeon Kim ’12MM ’13AD Jeeyoung Kim ’98MMa ’01DMA John T. King ’85MM Richard A. Konzen ’76MM ’77MMa ’84DMA Ronald H. Krasney, M.D. ’75BA Sarita Kit Yee Kwok ’05MMa ’06AD ’09DMA Christian Mark Lane ’08MM Theresa E. Langdon ’79MM David Lasker ’72BA ’74MM Seunghee Lee ’92MM ’94AD Genevieve Feiwen Lee ’89MM ’90MMa ’94DMA Christopher Matthew Lee ’02MM Hernan Leon Martinez ’16MM Robert H. Levin ’93MM

Stephanie Yu Lim ’00BA Jahja Wang-Chieh Ling ’80MMa ’85DMA Donald Glenn Loach ’53BM ’54MM Vincent F. Luti ’67MM ’70MMa ’78DMA Maija M. Lutz ’63MM Xinhua Ma ’87MM Martha Maas ’68PHD Paige E. Macklin ’69MM Joan M. Mallory ’59BM Robert M. Manthey ’01MM Sheila A. Marks ’60MM Melissa J. Marse ’98MM Katherine Mireille Mason ’04MM Edmund J. Milly ’15MM Chouhei Min ’72MMa Pamela Getnick Mindell ’99MM ’00MMa ’05DMA Robert W. Molison ’60MM James R. Morris ’62MM Grant R. Moss ’82 MM ’83MMa ’91DMA John-Michael Muller ’05MM Hando Nahkur ’06CERT ’08MM Conor R. Nelson ’05MM Patricia Grignet Nott ’66MM ’69MMa ’76DMA Martha ’77MM and Vincent Oneppo ’73MM William A. Owen III ’79MM Hye-Yeon Park ’05MM ’06AD Florence Fowler Peacock ’62MM Sarah Marie Perkins ’07MM David T. Perry ’13AD Gregory M. Peterson ’85MM Kirsten Peterson ’90MM Kevin J. Piccini ’85MM Frances F. Pollock ’19MM Benjamin Carey Poole ’90MM Nigel Charles Potts ’02MM James H. Pyle ’78MM Jan Radzynski ’79MM ’80MMa ’84DMA Robert J. Redvanly ’80MM Dorothy C. Rice Eckhart Richter ’49BA ’52BM ’53MM Gerald M. Rizzer ’65MM Hildred E. Roach ’62MM John Noel Roberts ’77MMa ’81DMA Jody A. Rodgers ’83BA ’84MM Dale Thomas Rogers ’76MM Svend J. Ronning ’91MM ’93MMa ’97DMA Linda L. Rosdeitcher ’59BM Melissa Kay Rose ’85MM David N. Rosen, Esq. ’69LLB Steven L. Rosenberry ’76MM Bernard Rubenstein ’61MM Robert Scott Satterlee ’89MMa ’94DMA

S. W. Schwenterly III ’67BS Permelia S. Sears ’74MM Verena Erika Sennekamp ’07MM Frank Shaffer, Jr. ’73MM ’75MMa ’80DMA Jill Shires ’70MMa Alvin Shulman ’65MM Bryan R. Simms ’66BA ’69MM ’70MPHIL ’71PHD Kenneth D. Singleton ’74MM ’75MMa ’81DMA Jennifer Louise Smith ’88MM Rheta R. Smith ’65MM James Austin Smith ’08MM Timothy Dale Spelbring ’05MM Richard S. Steen ’72MMa ’78DMA Thomas Jared Stellmacher ’09MM Brennan Dale Szafron ’00MM Timothy D. Taylor ’85MM Suliman Tekalli ’16AD Haskell L. Thomson ’61MM Michael C. Tusa ’75BA ’76MM Ian Tuski ’15MM Joyce M. Ucci ’63MM William W. Ulrich, Jr. ’55BM ’57MM Leslie Van Becker ’77MM Antoinette C. Van Zabner ’74MM ’75MMa June W. Vangerven ’81BA ’82MM John P. Varineau ’78MM Ferenc Xavier Vegh, Jr. ’92MM Allan D. Vogel ’71MMa ’75DMA Raymond Vun Kannon ’53BA ’54BM ’55MM Cheryl Rita Wadsworth ’95MM Derrick Li Wang ’08MM Carol Kozak Ward ’85MM Elizabeth Ward ’70MMa Marvin Warshaw ’79MM ’80MMa Abby N. Wells ’67MM Donald F. Wheelock ’66MM Joseph L. Wilcox ’66MM Christopher P. Wilkins ’81MM Rodney A. Wynkoop ’73BA ’80MMa ’85DMA Joyce Ship Zaritsky ’63MM

Collection of Musical Instruments Thomas P. Anderson Ann A. Bliss Emile L. Boulpaep ’79 MAH John Burkhalter Guido Calabresi ’53BS ’58LLB ’62 MAH Grace A. Clark Constance Clement Maria V. Coldwell ’74 BA ’76 MPHIL ’79 PHD Linda A. Cunningham

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honor roll Richard G. Fabian ’65BA Grace A. Feldman ’63MM Edward J. Greenberg ’59BA Mary J. Greer ’78BA ’86MA Daniel F. Harkins Robert A. Havlena Joseph F. Hoffman ’65MAH Peter Huvelle Francesco Iachello ’78MAH Boyd M. Jones ’77MM ’78MMa ’84DMA Jeffrey S. Kahn ’70BA Richard D. Kaplan ’66MS ’68MPHIL ’70PHD David A. Keller Elias N. Kulukundis ’54BA Christina Linsenmeyer Robert W. Lyons ’64MD Thomas G. MacCracken ’73BA Harry G. Mairson ’78BA Robert Marra Craig A. Monson ’66BA George P. O’Leary ’64BS ’66MS ’69PHD Leonard Passano ’52PHD Jerome J. Pollitt ’57BA ’73MAH Elizabeth Possidente William Purvis Rodney J. Regier David N. Rosen ’69LLB David F. Rosner Michael Schneider and Laurie Auth J W. Streett John F. Sutton ’55BA ’56MA Sally L. Taylor Susan E. Thompson ’79MM Beverly Woodward Constance and Earl Young

Endowed Scholarship, Support, and Resource Funds Denise and Stephen Adams ’59BA Thomas P. Anderson Preston G. Athey ’71BA Richard S. Auchincloss, Jr. ’64BA Henry P. Becton, Jr. ’65BA Frederick W. Beinecke II ’66BA Nancy Marx Better ’84BA Serena and Robert Blocker ’95MAH Joseph G. Cadolino Steven Citarella Jean and Victor Colasacco Joseph Cornacchio Carole Cowan ’68MM ’69MMa ’80DMA Kimberly A. Crose

52 Music at Yale

Martin Fenton, Jr. ’56Ba Edward Harris Cheryl Hewitt Patrick Hie Young Jee ’99CERT ’03MM David M. Kurtz ’80MM Renee L. Laferriere Kenneth W. Liebman ’56Ba Carla and Guy Maisonet Elvira and Richard Miller Andrea and Stephen Miller James V. Palmiotto John Salvaggio Rose Sasso Laurie and Frank Schiavone Irving Sitnick Myra S. Swallow ’99Ba David J. Zaleske, M.D. ’71BS

Music in Schools Initiative Robert E. Barton ’57BA Serena and Robert Blocker ’95MAH Jay Warren Bright ’71MArch Hope Childs Merrell M. Clark ’57BA ’70MAR Stephen V. Flagg, M.D. ’57BS Andrew J. Glass ’57BA Harold M. Hochman ’57BA ’59MA ’65PhD Stephen A. Hopkins ’57BA Victor Thane Norton, Jr. ’57BS Robert J. Smith ’57BA C. Nicholas Tingley ’57BE Robert S. Walker ’57BA Stephen M. Wittenberg, M.D. ’57BA

Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/ Yale Summer School of Music Emily Aber and Robert Wechsler David H. Abramson Bernard R. Adams, Esq. ’69LLB Robert A. Altbaum Jane and Richard Andrias Vincent D. Andrus ’63BA Alan B. Astrow ’76BA ’80MD Carolyn and Ivan Backer Sharon Baran Sonia and John Batten Astrid and John Baumgardner, Jr. John R. Beecher ’84MPH Frank B. Bell Jonathan Berger Bertha R. Betts

Donald A. Bickford ’66BS Erzsebet and Donald Black Serena and Robert Blocker ’95MAH Les Bluestone Carole and Edward Boehner Elizabeth Bradford Borden ’04MEM Awilda and Bernard Buchholz Cynthia and Burton Budick Jane and David Burgin Margaret E. Burnett Steven B. Callahan, Esq. ’74BA David T. Carey Susan E. Carpenter Sally Carr Bradley Carson Anthony Cefalogli Peter Chaffetz Virginia R. Chalmers Victory and Theodore Chase, Jr. Melvin Chen ’91BS Marlene Childs Hope Childs Marvin L. Chin Charles Chromow Marie T. Civco Marjorie and Roger Clarke Peter Coffeen and Stephen Getz Laura Colangelo Lewis G. Cole, Esq. ’54LLB Suzanne and Edward Colt Allan J. Dean Judith ’58LLB and Paul DeCoster ’55BA ’58LLB Andrew G. DeRocco Katharine and Rohit Desai Dianne Dinnean Martin H. Dodd Judith and Paul Dorphley Elizabeth Dubbs Louise Ducas Roshanak and Dalton Dwyer Daryl W. Eaton Jane Edwards and Humphrey Tonkin Susan and Jon Eisenhandler Bonnie and Clifford Eisler Cornelia and Paul Ellner David H. Elwell ’57BS Michael J. Emont, Esq. ’74JD Angela K. Engle Fleur E. Fairman ’78BA Carole and Michael Fleisher Patricia M. Foston Alison B. Fox

Steven David Fraade ’89MAH Annie and Peter Frankl Gerald M. Freedman Lawrence Freedman Barbara Friedman Susanne and John Funchion Philip Futterman Janice Galloway Anne Garrels John C. Garrels III ’61BA Linda Garrettson Catherine Gevers Francine and Robert Goldfarb George Gottlieb Barbara Gridley Morton E. Grosz June Young Han ’96MM ’97AD William C. Harrop Ann Havemeyer ’75BA ’79MA ’82MPHIL ’12PHD Peter S. Heller Ann Coleen Hellerman John A. Herrmann, Jr. ’57BA Gerald Hess Mary and Peter Hess Tom Hlas and Paul Madore Sallie C. Huber Daphne M. Hurford Colta and Garrison Ives Ken Jacobson Leila Javitch Blair A. Jensen, Ph.D. Douglas B. Johnson Jennie Eun-Im Jung ’01MM ’02AD Doreen and Michael Kelly Marsha D. Keskinen Galene Anita Kessin Larry S. King Robert N. Kitchen Elizabeth Knowles Carlene C. Laughlin Starling Lawrence Nicholas W. Lobenthal ’83BA Robert B. Loper Gerald Lotenberg David N. Low, Jr. ’87MPPM Caitlin Macy ’92BA Richard S. Marcus Craig H. Maynard Stephen Melville Deborah L. Meredith ’81BA ’85MSN Ira D. Mickenberg, M.D. Andrea Seigerman Milstein

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honor roll David E. Moore Deborah and Timothy Moore Michael J. Moran Bethany and Frank Morelli Ingrid and Michael Morley Lester S. Morse, Jr. ’51BA Jeanne and James Moye Ivan Mueller Jacqueline Muschiano and Andrew Ricci Suzanne Myers Valerie Nelson Michael D. Nicastro Roxanne B. Niles Kevin M. O’Connor Maureen and Michael R.J. O’Connor ’56BS Bernard Olender Jennifer Perga Catherine Perga Frank Peterson, Jr. and Roger Mitchell Faye M. Polayes Nancy and James Remis Peter Restler Cristin ’88MEM and David Rich ’83BA Kathy and Curtis Robb Benjamin Rosen Marc Rosen Barbara and John Rutledge Linda and Raleigh Sahl Caroline R. Sands Richard Santasiere Richard Schatzberg Samuel Schestenger Justine and Harvey Schussler Helen E. Scoville Adrian Selby Michael K. Selleck Dee and Stanley Shapiro, M.D. Harriet Shelare and Thomas Shachtman David A. Shifrin Jonathan J. Silbermann Geoffrey Silverstein Frank J. Silvestri, Jr., Esq. ’74JD Shirley U. Skirvin Cornelia and Jonathan Small Gordon W. Smith, M.D. ’65BA Ronald D. Spencer, Esq. ’64LLB Monica Spencer ’91BA Barbara Spiegel Richard Stebbins Bruce Stein ’80BA Joel A. Stein Ronald Stein Roxann Steinberg

54 Music at Yale

Keith Stevenson Paul Stranieri J. W. Streett, D.V.M. Sarah ’98MDIV and Nicholas Thacher ’67BA Jean Thompson Roger Tilles Florence and Sheldon Toder Sandra and Richard Tombaugh David S. Torrey Jack E. Triplett David Troyansky David Van Buren Sally and William Vaun Christopher R. Vernali Nancy R. Wadhams Annick and Eliot Wadsworth II Susan Wagner Mark A. Walker, Esq. ’66LLB Mary-Jo W. Warren Kate Wenner Willard L. Wood Donald G. Workman Gail and Michael Yaffe Henry M. Zachs

Yale Opera Maryan W. Ainsworth ’76MPHIL ’82 PHD Victor A. Altshul ’60MD Douglas A. Black Serena and Robert Blocker ’95MAH Belinda J. Chan ’94MD Auguste H. Fortin VI ’17MAH Alva G. Greenberg Mary J. Greer ’78BA ’86MA Brian Brooks Hughes ’05BA Daniel Kops Daniel R. Kopti ’78BA Richard Lalli ’80MMa ’86DMA Jane ’72MPHIL ’75PHD and Richard Levin ’72MPHIL ’74PHD Maurice J. Mahoney, M.D. ’82MAH Jocelyn S. Malkin ’52MD Marta Moret ’84MPH and Peter Salovey ’83MS ’84MPHIL ’86PHD Timothy A. Niemi Kitt Falk Petersen ’13MAH Michael O. Rigsby ’88MD Gerald I. Shulman, M.D. ’96MAH Damon B. Smith ’56BA Stephanie S. Spangler, M.D. and Robert G. Shulman ’79MAH Elsa L. Stone, M.D.

Patron Programs Cecle and Josef Adler Linda and Roger Astmann Henry E. Auer Donna and William Batsford, M.D. ’89MAH C. Blake Bidwell ’60BA Joan and Henry Binder, M.D. ’78MAH Serena and Robert Blocker ’95MAH Harold D. Bornstein, Jr. ’53MD Jennifer O. and Derek E.G. Briggs ’03MAH Marian and Stanley Brownstein Adrienne Burns Liam Cawley Sebastian Y. Chang Leo Cristofar Cynthia F. Cummiskey ’85BA Victoria K. DePalma Edwin M. Duval ’71MPhil ’73PHD Vic Dvorak Marc Eisenberg, M.D. Terry S. Flagg Paul J. Gacek ’67BA Dolores M. Gall Lindy Lee Gold Sonya and Saul Goldberg Joseph W. Gordon, Ph.D. ’72MA ’75 MPHIL ’78PHD Carolyn P. Gould Eduardo A. Groisman ’11MAH Stephanie Halene Lawrence Handler Peter Hunt John M. Hunt ’18MDiv Francesco Iachello ’78MAH Patricia and Robert Jaeger Ted R. Killiam Daniel Li Judith B. Long Margaret M. Luberda Margaret and Marc Mann James R. Mansfield Ann H. Marlowe Shaj J. Mathew ’17MA ’17MPHIL ’19PHD John Merriman Mary Jane Minkin ’75MD Julia A. Reidhead ’82BA Arthur Rosenfield ’83MAH Richard A. Selzer Izabella Shvartsman Lorraine D. Siggins, M.D. Carolyn Sloan Wilma Stahura Peter T. Uhrynowski

Victor Thang Vu ’02BA ’05MDIV Mary-Jo W. Warren Ransom C. Wilson Elizabeth and Werner Wolf ’65MAH Donna Yoo ’09MM

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P.O. Box 208246 New Haven, ct 06520-8246

Photo56by Harold Music at Shapiro Yale