Music at Yale SPRING 2013
President Levin’s Musical Legacy at Yale Hendrie Hall Renovations in Sight Tokyo String Quartet Gives Final Yale Concert
PAUL Hindemith c o m m e m o r a t i n g
f i f t y
y e a r s
s i n c e
h i s
d e a t h
Contents
Concert News
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Richard Levin: A Musical Legacy at Yale
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Faculty Profile
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Faculty News
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History, Function Harmonize in Hendrie Hall Renovation
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Hindemith At Yale
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Tokyo String Quartet
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Student and Alumni News
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Recordings + Publications
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In Memoriam
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Contributors 28 Why I Give
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The Gilmore Music Library, one of Richard Levin’s first projects as President of Yale University
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Concert News
Ellington Jazz Series The 2012–2013 concert season opened on September 14, when the Ellington Jazz Series presented the Mingus Big Band. Celebrating the music of composer/ bassist Charles Mingus (1922–1979), the Mingus Big Band tours extensively under the artistic direction of Sue Mingus (the widow of Charles). This is the 40th anniversary gala season of the Duke Ellington Fellowship, which is directed by Willie Ruff ’53BM, ’54MM. The second concert in the series took place on October 5, when saxophonist Lou Donaldson performed with his quartet. The octogenarian Donaldson had recently been named a Jazz Master by the N.E.A. Special Event Piano prodigy Niu Niu performed a special recital on September 23. The 15-year-old pianist, hailed not only for his virtuosity but for the elegance and sensitivity of his playing, performed music of Scarlatti, Beethoven, and Liszt. Niu Niu studies at the New England Conservatory with Hung-Kuan Chen, who is a faculty member of both NEC and the Yale School of Music.
Saxophonist Lou Donaldson on the Ellington Jazz Series
Oneppo Chamber Music Series For the last time, the Tokyo String Quartet opened the Oneppo Chamber Music Series. The quartet performed on October 2, playing with a fellow faculty colleague – violist Ettore Causa – and their former students, the Jasper String Quartet. They gave their last concert on the series on January 22, performing string quartets by Haydn, Bartók, and Mendelssohn, as well as an encore of Mozart. At that concert, Dean Blocker awarded the Sanford Medal, the School of Music’s highest honor, to the quartet’s members. Faculty member Peter Oundjian, who was the quartet’s first violinist for 14 years, also received the Sanford Medal. (See pg. 16 for story.)
Yale Opera’s Fall Scenes
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The Jasper Quartet, which was the Fellowship Quartet-in-Residence at YSM from 2008 to 2010, performed its own concert on the Oneppo Series in December, performing two quartets as well as joining with faculty pianist Wei-Yi Yang ’04DMA in the Schumann Piano Quintet. The series also presented the classical music comedy duo Igudesman and Joo, who offered their program A Little Nightmare Music on November 13.
Pianist Emanuel Ax on the Horowitz Piano Series
New Music New Haven George Crumb, one of today’s mostperformed composers, visited the School of Music in November to work with composition students and oversee the performance of two of his works on the New Music New Haven series. Crumb is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, and numerous other honors. The concert included his early work Vox Balenae (Voice of the Whale) for amplified flute, amplified cello, and amplified piano; and selections from the more recent American Songbook III, sung by faculty soprano Janna Baty ’93MM and led by conducting fellow Paolo Bortolameolli ’13MM. Yale Opera Yale Opera presented its annual Fall Scenes production on November 2 and 3 in Morse Recital Hall. Each night featured a different program of scenes, with selections by Bellini, Bizet, Donizetti, Massenet, Puccini, Rossini, and Sullivan. Hans Nieuwenhuis was the stage director; Douglas Dickson ’88MM, ’89MMA and Timothy Shaindlin provided music direction and accompaniment. As in recent years, students of the projection design program at the Yale School of Drama created the projections.
For its winter production at the Shubert Theater, Yale Opera presented a new production of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi February 15–17. Speranza Scappucci, who last year became the first woman to conduct a Yale Opera production, returned to conduct Capuleti. Marc Verzatt, who has directed numerous Yale Opera productions including The Magic Flute, Die Fledermaus, and La bohème, was the stage director. The creative team also included Tony nominee Riccardo Hernandez, set designer; John Carver Sullivan, costume designer; and William Warfel, lighting designer. Horowitz Piano Series Romanian pianist Radu Lupu performed to a sold-out house on January 17 as part of the Horowitz Piano Series, and Emanuel Ax followed on February 6. The fall season featured faculty performers, including Wei-Yi Yang, Boris Berman, Hung-Kuan Chen, and Peter Frankl. Collection of Musical Instruments The Yale Collection of Musical Instruments presented clarinetist Charles Neidich ’75BA and pianist Robert Levin in performances and master classes December 2 and 3. The duo performed a program of music by Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Mr. Levin brought his own historic piano, made in 3
1869 by Johann Baptist Streicher – the same type that Brahms himself owned and played during the last twenty-four years of his life. During their miniature residency, Neidich and Levin also gave lectures and master classes. Levin gave a lecturedemonstration called “Improvising Mozart,” explicating the style and techniques of Classical-era improvisation on the Collection’s Könnicke piano (ca. 1795). Neidich offered a short lecture and master class on early clarinets, called “Old is New, New is Old.” The session examined on the ways in which early instrument performance can illuminate the radical nature of older works, making them more understandable within their historical context. Both also worked with students in master classes. The Collection opened it season with the trio of Wieland Kuijken, viola da gamba; Eva Legêne, recorder; and Arthur Haas, harpsichord, in a program of eighteenth-century music from France and Germany called “Crossing the Rhine.” The pianist Yves Henry performed music of Chopin and Debussy on two of the Collection’s pianos. Guitar duo Claudio Maccari and Paolo Pugliese offered a concert and master class called “Guitar Music of the Nineteenth Century: Interpretation and Performance.”
Yale Philharmonia The Yale Philharmonia opened its season on September 21, performing a Rossini overture alongside works by Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky. Esther Park ’12AD, a Woolsey Competition winner, was the piano soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, and the concert concluded with Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Principal guest conductor Peter Oundjian led the orchestra on October 19. Woolsey Competition winner Suzana Bartal ’13MM performed Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in E major. The concert also included a Verdi overture and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 12 in D minor, “The Year 1917.” The third winner of last year’s Woolsey Competition was the Handsome Dans Trombone Quartet, whose members are Timothy Hilgert ’13MM, Hana Beloglavec ’13MM, Benjamin Firer ’12MM, and Jeffrey Arredondo ’13MM. The quartet performed Jan Koetsier’s Concertino for four trombones and string orchestra on January 25. That concert, which was conducted by Shinik Hahm, also included Respighi’s The Pines of Rome and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor. December’s annual New Music for Orchestra concert featured pieces by Stephen Feigenbaum ’12BA, ’13MM, William Gardiner ’13MM, Michael Gilbertson ’13MM, Daniel Schlosberg ’10BA, ’13MM, and Matthew Welch ’13MM. Yale in New York The Yale in New York concert series, directed by David Shifrin, had planned to present the Tokyo String Quartet on October 28 in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. However, Hurricane Sandy shut down New York, and the concert – along with many others scheduled for New York City that week – was cancelled. The series opened instead on January 27, celebrating Mozart on his actual birthday. Faculty performers Ani Kavafian, violin; Ettore Causa, viola; Ole Akahoshi, cello; Peter Frankl, piano; and Melvin Chen, piano joined with student performers in the concert of music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and faculty composer Aaron Jay Kernis ’83MM.
The Yale Philharmonia in Woolsey Hall
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First Yale International Choral Festival Held in June Renowned choirs from four continents came together on the Yale campus June 19–23, 2012 for the first Yale International Choral Festival: five days of singing, learning, and celebrating the transcendent power of choral music to connect and inspire people from all cultures and all walks of life. Participating ensembles include the Central Conservatory of Music Chorus, Beijing; the Cambridge University Consort of Voices, U.K.; Manado State University Choir, Indonesia; the Imilonji Kantu Choral Society, South Africa; and two Yale choral groups: the renowned Yale Alumni Chorus and the recently formed professional ensemble Yale Choral Artists. Each evening featured a formal concert by individual choirs in Morse Recital Hall, and each day was be filled with lectures, workshops, and master classes led by visiting conductors, guests, and Yale faculty. The culminating Choral
Festival concert featured the Yale Alumni Chorus and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
and recent MacArthur grant recipient Francisco Núñez of the Young People’s Chorus of New York, among others.
Sponsored by the Yale Glee Club (Jeffrey Douma, director), the School of Music, and the Yale Alumni Chorus, the event was also part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, which takes place in New Haven each June.
Student and Alumni Pianists Perform in Ankara, Turkey
A two-day symposium (June 22–23), sponsored by the two leading professional organizations for choir directors, was also part of the festival. Titled “Choirs Transforming Our World,” the symposium explored innovative programs for empowering individuals and building communities through song. The presenters at symposium panel discussions included Kate Munger, founder of the Threshold Choir, which performs in prisons, hospitals, and hospices; Allison Fromm ’85BA, director of Joyful Noise Choir, a choral group for singers with developmental disabilities;
Piano students Lee Dionne ’13MM, Henry Kramer ’13AD, and Esther Park ’12AD, ’13MMA performed with the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra in Ankara, Turkey last May. The concert was conducted by the orchestra’s music director, Maestro Isin Metin. Boris Berman, the chair of the piano program at the School of Music, noted that the concert received “great public acclaim.” The performance was a conclusion of a week-long piano course given by Berman in Ankara. The program included movements of piano concerti by Beethoven, Saint-Saens, Schumann, Liszt, Ravel, Rachmaninov, and Tchaikovsky. Along with the pianists from the Yale School of Music, four students from Bilkent University also participated. ||
Clockwise, from top left: Dean Robert Blocker introduces the Chorus of the Central Conservatory of Music (China); the Imilonji Kantu Choral Society from South Africa; a group photo of all festival participants; and the Manado State University Choir from Indonesia. 5
Richard Levin A MUSICAL LEGACY AT YALE
“There’s no way the School of Music would have made the gains it has without President Levin’s support,” says Dean Robert Blocker. In 1993, when Levin became the president of Yale, the School of Music was operating with sparse budgets and aging facilities. Little financial aid was available to students, leaving young alumni struggling with student loan debt as they tried to establish careers. The music library was crammed into the damp basement of a run-down Sprague Hall. Stoeckel Hall, too, was aging, and Leigh Hall wasn’t even yet part of the music campus. One of President Levin’s first projects was to build a new home for the music library. Even while serving as
dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, he had noticed that the music collection needed more space. “I remember thinking that this was just grotesquely irresponsible,” Levin told the Yale Daily News. “We had… manuscripts sitting in wet boxes. I got to be president, and one of the first things I did was I said, ‘What are the plans for the music library?’ ” An open-air courtyard within Sterling Memorial Library was transformed into a contemporary yet Gothic-inspired “building within a building,” named the Gilmore Music Library after its 6
reopening in 1998. The airy, lightfilled space houses the library’s diverse collections, as well as facilities such as the Rare Books Reading Room and a soundproof workroom for Historic Sound Recordings. This was just the start of the plan to upgrade the university’s music facilities. A few years after the Gilmore Music Library opened, Sprague Hall received a complete renovation to the recital hall plus the Center for Studies in Music Technology, Fred Plaut Recording Studio, new practice rooms, the high-tech “Smart Classroom,” and administrative offices. Next, the University renovated the building at 435 College Street and transformed it into a state-of-the-art teaching facility. Leigh Hall – named in honor of Mitch Leigh ’51BM, ’52MM and Abby Leigh – reopened in 2006 and now houses faculty studios, classrooms, and administrative offices as well as a small recital hall, Parker Hall. Most recent was the renovation and addition to Stoeckel Hall, home to the Department
“I think Rick Levin will be remembered as one of Yale’s great presidents.” Dean Robert Blocker
of Music. Now the University is poised to renovate Hendrie Hall, a critical rehearsal space for Yale Opera and the percussion studio, as well as major undergraduate ensembles including the Yale Bands and the Yale Glee Club. (See pg. 10 for the story on Hendrie Hall.) These building projects depended on financial stability, which President Levin was steadily building. But with limited scholarship funds, students and young alumni were left to struggle with student loan debt as they tried to establish careers. In 2005, a gift from Stephen Adams ’59BA and Denise Adams transformed the financial landscape. The unprecedented gift of $100 million – the largest single contribution in the School’s history – expanded academic programs significantly and enabled all current and future School of Music students to attend tuition-free. Admission immediately became more competitive, and yields soared as the School attracted a greater depth of top students. Yale Tomorrow, the University’s capital campaign of 2006–2011, included the arts as one of its four priorities. In launching the campaign, Levin noted: “Yale is fortunate to have within its midst four superlative schools of fine arts and two world-class art museums. No other university has a comparable array of cultural treasures.” He continued: “Our schools of art, architecture, music, and drama not only help to define the standards of their respective crafts, they and our great museums enrich the campus for all of us.” The largest fundraising campaign in the university’s history, Yale Tomorrow exceeded even its ambitious goal of $3.5 billion. Numerous other donations cultivated by President Levin and Dean Blocker The Gilmore Music Library
Continued on page 32
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F A C U L T Y
P R O F I L E
Christopher Theofanidis
“There’s so much energy here,” says Christopher Theofanidis ’94MM about the composition program today. “And the energy is created communally.” Theofanidis recalls that when he was a student, the faculty consisted of Martin Bresnick (now the chair of composition program) and Jacob Druckman. Since then, the community has grown to six composition faculty, including Ezra Laderman, who served as Dean 1989–1995; Aaron Jay Kernis ’83MM, David Lang ’89DMA, Ingram Marshall (visiting faculty), and Hannah Lash ’12AD. And all, say Theofanidis, “are joined together in optimism for the field.” Theofanidis is working on a diverse set of projects, from solo piano to opera. For the first time since 1997, the Cliburn Competition is commissioning a new work for its required piece. Theofanidis’s “Birichino,” which in Italian means “trouble-maker” or “prankster,” will be performed by all semifinalists in the competition. In announcing the commission, the Cliburn’s interim president and CEO Alann Bedford Sampson noted, “Christopher’s body of work has made a meaningful impact on the American cultural landscape and is celebrated worldwide.”
Projects for YSM faculty colleagues include pieces for clarinetist David Shifrin and percussionist Robert van Sice. His piece for two clarinets and string quartet will be performed at Chamber Music Northwest, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and other festivals this summer and fall. A concerto for marimba with wind sinfonietta will premiere this April at the University of Illinois. He will use his upcoming sabbatical in the fall of 2013 to work on the opera Siddhartha, based on Herman Hesse book, which is scheduled to premiere at Houston Grand Opera in 2015. His last opera, Heart of a Soldier, premiered at San Francisco Opera for the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. And The Gift, a large-scale piece for tenor, chorus, and orchestra, will be premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Mendelssohn Chorus. A new piano quintet, At the Still Point, is part of QU4RTETS, an interdisciplinary project responding to T.S. Eliot’s poem “Four Quartets.” Two painters, Bruce Herman and Makoto Fujimura, each created two new canvases inspired by “Four Quartets,” thus creating a collaborative quartet of visual works. The paintings and the piano quintet are about the themes and 8
ideas in Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” rather than mimicking the work itself. It’s about “how ideas resonate artistically,” says Theofanidis. The paintings were displayed at the Institute of Sacred Music, and the artwork “has added to the experience,” Theofanidis says, citing “the idea of collaboration.” Written for the Henschel Quartet Munich and pianist Donald Berman, the piano quintet premiered at Baylor University in February, with additional performances in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and in Boston, the U.K., Hong Kong, and Tokyo. The lively conversations at the School of Music, says Theofanidis, “keeps you thinking editorially about your own work.” He cites “the interaction with the students, and the delight in what they are discovering along their own journeys. You can’t help but be influenced by that.” “That environment is really important for us as faculty members, as it is for the students, because we see a lot of different points of view from a stylistic perspective that we might not have entertained upon our own… It’s a community, it’s not just a studentteacher relationship.” ||
Faculty News David Lang ’83MMA, ’89DMA Is Composer of the Year and Carnegie’s Composer in Residence Faculty composer David Lang ’83MMA, ’89DMA was named Composer of the Year for 2013 by Musical America. The annual Musical America Awards, which recognize artistic excellence and achievement, were presented in a ceremony at Lincoln Center on December 6. The announcement coincided with the publication of the 2013 Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts, which honors the selected artists in its editorial pages. In addition, David Lang will hold the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for the 2013–2014 season at Carnegie Hall. Multiple performances of Lang’s work will take place
David Hill Joins Choral Conducting Faculty David Hill has been appointed Professor (Adjunct) of Choral Conducting in the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale School of Music and as Principal Conductor of the Yale Schola Cantorum. The three-year term begins July 1, 2013. David Hill will be on campus for several extended residencies each semester, leading Schola Cantorum in major projects. He will also participate in the training of choral conducting majors with fellow faculty members Marguerite L. Brooks and Jeffrey Douma, and with Masaaki Suzuki, who will remain affiliated with Schola Cantorum as Principal Guest Conductor. One of the leading conductors in Europe, David Hill has served as chief conductor of the BBC Singers, musical director of the Bach Choir, chief conductor of the Southern
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throughout the season-long residency. In addition, Lang will lead—along with flutist Claire Chase, the head of the International Contemporary Ensemble—a collaborative workshop in November 2013 called “Creating New Music.” Composers and ensembles have applied jointly for the workshop, and each accepted group will create a work commissioned by Carnegie, to be premiered in Zankel Hall. Lang is the winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 1987, he co-founded Bang on a Can with fellow composers Julia Wolfe ’86MM and Michael Gordon ’82MM. He joined the YSM faculty in 2008. Past holders of the Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall include Osvaldo Golijov, Kaija Saariaho, Brad Mehldau, Louis Andriessen, and Thomas Adès.
Sinfonia, music director of the Leeds Philharmonic Society, and associate guest conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In 2002, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Southampton. In 2007 he was named an honorary member of the Royal School of Church Music and in 2010 an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. Prior to his current posts, Hill was Master of Music at Winchester and Westminster Cathedrals, Music Director of the Waynflete Singers, Artistic Director of the Philharmonia Chorus, and Director of Music at St. John’s College, Cambridge. With over seventy recordings to his credit, Hill has performed virtually every style and period in the choral repertoire. He has commissioned dozens of works from leading composers of today, including Judith Bingham, Francis Pott, Patrick Gowers, Sir John Taverner, and Philip Wilby. ||
History, Function Harmonize in Hendrie Hall Renovation by Colleen Shaddox
If walls could talk, the ones in Hendrie Hall might be asking, “When will it be our turn?” The answer is: Now. The past decade saw major renovations to Sprague (2003), Leigh (2006), and Stoeckel (2008) halls that combined respect for their distinctive architecture with state-of-the-art design to support music. Planned renovations to Hendrie had to be put on hold for four years because of the financial crisis. Meanwhile, the students and faculty who use Hendrie struggled to move instruments in a building with no elevator and sometimes dodged drops from ceiling leaks. The project is now being moved forward by several major gifts, including a $5 million anonymous donation, says Dean Robert Blocker. A groundbreaking in May, 2014 is planned for the $45 million renovation, which will take approximately two years to complete.
That support is indicative of an abiding affection for Hendrie—where generations of Yale graduate and undergraduate students have made great music—and of a desire for a unified music campus at the University. Hendrie Hall was built to house the Law School in 1885 and has also been used by the schools of Drama and Divinity. Hendrie was never designed as a space for musicians, yet it has become home to the School of Music’s opera, brass, and percussion departments, as well as to the major undergraduate performing ensembles, including the Yale Bands, Symphony Orchestra, and Glee Club. The building houses administrative offices and rehearsal space for these ensembles, faculty studios, and modest practice facilities for undergraduate musicians. 10
In addition to the Hendrie renovation, a new building, which will blend in style with Old Campus, will be erected adjacent to Hendrie as part of the project. The additional building will relieve the considerable practice space crunch that the School of Music is facing. The new space, Hendrie, and Leigh Hall will be connected by loggias, creating a unified music campus. For the first time, the School of Music will have a student commons, which will open onto a courtyard. Director of Bands Thomas C. Duffy loves his office, water-stained ceilings and all. He points out where Aaron Copland took a nap during intermission when the composer was rehearsing with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. He’s fond of his big windows overlooking the New Haven Green.
Left: An illustration of plans for the new orchestra room
On September 11, 2001, he hung an enormous old American flag out those windows, one that had flown over Capt. Glenn Miller’s band when it rehearsed on the Green. But he does not love hearing ambulances go by or coping with a practice room with acoustics that are nothing like Woolsey Hall’s, where the Yale Bands perform. Rooms in the new complex will feature individually controlled acoustics. With the right amenities, “it would just be a lot easier to be better musicians,” Duffy says. “Dear old Hendrie,” says Krista Johnson, Manager of Concert Programs, with a wry smile, as she climbs Hendrie’s grand staircase. It was in her former post as manager of the Yale Philharmonia that Johnson truly did battle with those stairs. Orchestra members must carry their instruments up and down stairs because the building lacks an elevator. Though the staircase and other historic features will be preserved, the Renaissance Revival building will be completely reworked to feature state-of-the-art digital rooms and two elevators. The renovation will include an orchestral rehearsal space, something Yale has never had. “The walls shake when the Philharmonia practices,” says Johnson. The Yale Philharmonia and Yale Symphony Orchestra usually practice in the Glee Club room. “When the Philharmonia is rehearsing here, it’s literally hard to get to my office,” says Jeffrey Douma, director of the Yale Glee Club. The space is too tight to accommodate certain rehearsals, such as orchestral-choral collaborations. Hendrie and the new building will be equipped with “smart rooms” that have state-of-the-art digital capabilities and extensive soundproofing. Musicians will not be disturbed by road noise,
The Renaissance Revival building will be completely reworked to feature state-of-the-art rooms and two elevators. or by each other. They will have the connectivity to collaborate with artists literally anywhere in the world. That is especially meaningful in a school that has been international since the 1970s, notes Blocker, as roughly 40 percent of the School of Music’s students were born outside the United States. Yale Opera Artistic Director Doris Yarick Cross calls her spacious firstfloor office “just wonderful to teach in.” Opera performances are rehearsed in a second-floor space before they debut either at Sprague Hall or the Schubert Theatre. Because both stages are much bigger than the rehearsal hall, an extra day is needed in the performance venue to adjust movements. Yale Opera’s new home will be large enough that staging can be rehearsed in the practice area, with no adjustments necessary. “We’re the lucky ones,” says Douma of the Glee Club. “All we need are chairs and a piano.” Air conditioning would be nice, he adds. The renovation, which includes a plan for energy efficiency, will provide all-season climate control. While the building definitely needs upgrades, Douma is sensitive to the need to preserve it as well. When the Glee Club celebrated its 150th anniversary two years ago, members from Yale classes stretching back to 11
the 1930s returned to Hendrie to sing together again. “I remember how much it meant to them to be back in their space,” says Douma. “Making do” with Hendrie’s shortcomings has often encouraged students and faculty to work together creatively, says Blocker, but he added that the time to revive the building is now. “It will become so tired that it will not be able to sustain our work,” he says. “This is about one’s ability to learn and one’s ability to teach. You have to have a proper place to do that.” Students and faculty who call Hendrie home today will be out of the space for two years during construction. “The relocation process is a daunting challenge,” says Blocker. Planning is already underway to make the transition as smooth as possible, with Associate Dean Michael Yaffe leading the relocation planning. Ultimately, students and faculty will be rewarded with a new Hendrie, one that will be an ideal home for music for a long time to come. “We have to refurbish and restore significant places so that future generations can use them,” says Blocker. “This is our responsibility.” ||
Paul Hindemith was in his early forties, a prominent composer and an international celebrity, when he and his wife left Hitler’s Germany for Switzerland and then the United States. After brief stints as a visiting lecturer at Yale and at Wells College, Cornell, the University of Buffalo, and Tanglewood, the composer signed on in 1941 as a regular faculty member of the Yale School of Music, where he would remain, as Battell Professor of Music Theory, until his return to Switzerland in the summer of 1953.
Hindemith AT YALE by David J. Baker Paul Hindemith on the steps of Sprague Hall.
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he hindemith years mark a watershed in the history of the School. Growth in numbers was part of the change. In 1939, before he was hired, YSM awarded a total of seven degrees. By 1953, his final year on the faculty, the School listed nineteen Master of Music graduates and twentyseven Bachelors of Music. The preWorld War II course catalogs give the impression of YSM as a regional school, focused on applied music for part-time students and schoolteachers, basically a five-year undergraduate curriculum with a small master’s program as an annex. The 1940s started the trend toward greater professionalization of the School, which would become an entirely graduate-level institution in 1957.
“He was energetic, fast-moving, fasttalking,” Emma Lou Diemer ’49bm recalls. “I remember him vividly, at the blackboard writing a line of music and adding other, contrapuntal, lines to it – demonstrating, really, his composing method and practice.” Hindemith served as a catalyst in the major overhaul of the YSM curriculum, a process that had been stalled since 1939. His demands for sweeping revisions frightened some faculty members but led to action – the naming of a new dean, the progressiveminded Bruce Simonds, and the creation of an ad hoc committee that reportedly honored the spirit, if not all the particulars, of Hindemith’s
Composition students were sometimes puzzled or frustrated by their teacher’s methods. As Franklin Morris ’49BM, ’51MM recalls, “The students brought their compositions to class each week as works in progress, and had them criticized by the teacher. In the Paul Hindemith method, students showed their manuscripts, and he took over, as if saying ‘I’ll finish it for you.’ …He enlightened you in the way the music might have gone anyway. I showed him lots of pieces, but rarely finished them myself. Yet you used the enlightenment he provided. It was not wrong as a method; I felt I had to learn somehow.” Wyner said: “I didn’t give a damn about theory. I wanted him to get right to us, how do you write a piece of music, inflect it, make a form, develop it? The background he provided was beyond my adolescent capacity to absorb. Others were smarter about it.”
The Hindemith years mark a watershed in the history of the School.
Growing enrollments were fueled in part by the G.I. Bill for returning veterans and in part by the presence of Hindemith. Interviews with YSM graduates of the period confirm his drawing power; every one cites the same reason for their choice of school. “My children went to Yale,” remarks Mitch Leigh ’51bm, ’52mm; “I went to Hindemith. If he’d been teaching in Brooklyn, I’d have gone there.” Leigh recalls hearing Hindemith’s Mathis der Mahler symphony on the Armed Forces radio station and deciding immediately to study with the composer.
Another young war veteran, Willie Ruff ’53bm, ’54mm (a YSM faculty member since 1971), applied to Yale after he read an interview with Charlie Parker in Downbeat magazine. “Parker said, if I had the opportunity I would go to Yale where this German cat is teaching. I’d sit at his feet and learn some music. His name is Paul Hindemith.” Yehudi Wyner ’50ba, ’52bm, ’53mm (a member of the YSM faculty 1964–1977) came to Yale as an undergraduate because of Hindemith, but had to wait years to study with him since only master’s students were eligible for the privilege. “Hindemith impressed you right away,” Wyner says, “with his extraordinary charisma and his explosive energy.”
proposals. The School’s 1941–42 course catalog reflects the new curriculum, with its considerable expansion of the teaching of theory. Two years later, Hindemith was offering three different theory courses in addition to his classes in ensemble and composition, teaching sixteen hours a week. Though budding composers came here expressly to study with him, few were accepted into his composition major curriculum and even fewer survived it. Of the thirty students he accepted as composition majors between 1941 and 1951, only twelve completed their Master of Music degrees in composition. In one year, according to a note in the archives, both candidates for a master’s in composition under Hindemith were denied the degree in that specialty and “demoted” to theory majors. In interviews today, his former students mention another factor besides his rigorous selectivity. While invariably drawn to YSM to study with Hindemith, they sometimes changed their minds. Diemer’s comment is typical: “I didn’t want to study composition with him, knowing that almost every composer at YSM wrote music that sounded like Hindemith.”
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In the composition course, Wyner says, “we would show him what we’d been writing. We crowded around the piano, although he did not play our scores. He would conceive the music fluently and accurately in his head. He wouldn’t ask why you had written this or that, or point out that something did not work very well or could be improved. He would just say, ‘Continue like this,’ and write out a follow-up with blinding speed… His fluency was astounding, but there were problems. He focused on his own idea of continuity, even if not related to your idea. You might begin in the style of Schoenberg, let’s say, or some earlier style, and it would continue in the style of Paul Hindemith. There was no analytical explanation that would help you to understand what the fundamental idea was here. He never explained why he thought something you did was good and why it was not good. He would say of Bartók, ‘Clever fellow,’ but not what was clever about him.” “As a teacher,” Donald Keats ’49mm comments, “I would say [he was] quite good, but rather inflexible about his beliefs, and with unshakeable confidence that he was right. Things
Hindemith at the piano. If you are able to help identify the others in either of these photographs, please send us a note at musicnews@yale.edu.
weren’t discussed; rather, he told you. I admired the fact that he seemed to have original theories on almost every aspect of music – except (as he himself pointed out) rhythm.” Hindemith’s greatest impact at YSM was felt not in the composition curriculum, but rather in his teaching of courses in music theory, which were attended by the majority of the estimated total of 250 graduate-level students he taught during his years at Yale. He did not separate theory or history from performance; on the contrary, theory students were required to participate in the Collegium Musicum, a class that had begun under Professor Leo Schrade in 1939–40, aiming (in the words of the published description) “to acquaint students with compositions of older periods through the medium of historically accurate performances.” As revised under Hindemith and Schrade in 1941, the course description took on a more active emphasis: “Exercises in the performance of medieval compositions. Required of all majoring in Theory and History.” Composition students were also required to enroll in the Collegium
“I addressed my request to Dean Paul Hindemith, Yale School of Music – he had to be the dean, didn’t he? Well, do you know he kept that card on his desk and he used to hold it up in class and say ‘Ja, I am dean. It says so right here.’” Mitch Leigh
Musicum, which now became an active music ensemble. In his autobiography and in numerous interviews, Willie Ruff has described the impact of that experience of playing and singing music as old as the thirteenth century, which, following a dry introductory theory course, “thrilled me to my roots.” Today he recalls Hindemith as “a superb choral conductor… and the most complete musician I ever encountered, a man who could sing this music and play these instruments – appropriate instruments, from places like Yale’s collections and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.” Hindemith played (early violas) and sang with the students, using scores copied in his own hand. He
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also conducted Collegium Musicum concerts by these students at Sprague Hall, and in New York locations including the grand staircase of the Metropolitan Museum, the Frick Museum, and the Cloisters. In a series of eleven concerts from 1943 to 1953, the Collegium worked its way from the thirteenth century up to the eighteenth, and in his only return visit to Yale, in February 1960, Hindemith led the Collegium Musicum in a program that included music by Gabrieli, Buxtehude, and Stravinsky along with six of his own madrigals. The Collegium Musicum, for Ruff, was the essence of Hindemith’s influence, “his great contribution to my development.” Others had comparable reactions. For Wyner, “My most
Hindemith, at right, with members of Collegium Musicum.
significant educational and cultural gift from Hindemith occurred in the year I was in his chorus, the Collegium Musicum… What was remarkable was the profound impact of Hindemith’s musicality. He was able to imagine and dramatize the essential character of each individual composer – Pérotin, Machaut, Dufay, Monteverdi, Bach... He showed an uncanny ability to penetrate the interior motivation, to get at what the music really meant. No words; there was never any talk about it. That was the great thing: the embodiment of an idea, not talking about it. He was so inspired. He was not what people would think of as an elegant conductor in gesture, but he was more than elegant, he was essential. He went right to the heart of the way the music should go.” It has been pointed out that Hindemith helped introduce Americans to the use of period instruments, which would become common practice by the later decades of the twentieth century. Yale’s Collegium Musicum had already performed and recorded early music on original instruments by the time Noah Greenberg, in 1952, founded the New York Pro Musica Antiqua.
Yale’s applied music students, even those heading for careers in jazz and popular music, shared in the Collegium experience. A particularly close working association developed between Hindemith and Mitch Leigh, who would go on to write advertising jingles and musical comedy, most notably Man of La Mancha. “He was very enthusiastic about jazz,” Leigh says. “He sang baritone when needed in a choir, while I sang tenor. [In addition to horn and other instruments] I played bassoon and got to use his fancy bassoon, a gift from the Heckel company. To my surprise, he treated me like a son… “I had five or six sessions a week with him. I learned my craft from him; he was the best teacher of music I can remember. Not even Rameau was a better theorist. He could write music for everything. We even joked that he could compose music for a trip to the bathroom, or for lunch – Gebrauchsmusik. After working with him, when I left Yale I could write anything, I was very, very secure.” Hindemith was away on leave during Leigh’s final year at the School (1951– 1952), but they had worked together 15
for three years before that. And they would work together once more. “I saw him a few years later – I actually had a record company and we recorded the Hindemith Kammermusik No. 3, with him conducting.” That recording was made during one of the composer’s rare U.S. visits after he resigned from Yale in 1953. Although he and his wife had become U.S. citizens after the war, he returned to Europe to pursue the conducting engagements that were more plentiful there than in the United States. The Hindemiths lived in Switzerland until his death in 1963 at the age of sixty-eight. “I loved him,” Leigh says. “I know that some others didn’t. He did not suffer fools gladly. Some didn’t understand him. But he cared about music, he loved his students – well, not everyone – but he was very positive to all. “I owe my life to him and the Yale School of Music... so whatever I can do for the School, I do. He taught me so much. I always followed my own way, wrote what I wanted to write. This was the Hindemith style, not going about looking for esteem or commercialism or with the critics in mind. It’s a very good life lesson.” ||
Tokyo String Quartet With a career spanning over 40 years, over 40 landmark recordings, and numerous awards and honors, the Tokyo String Quartet decided last year that the 2012–2013 season will be its last.
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currently comprised of martin beaver and kikuei ikeda, violins; kazuhide isomura, viola; and clive greensmith, cello, the quartet has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the Yale School of Music and Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, where they have coached and mentored many respected young string quartets since joining the faculty in 1977. Through their decades of mentorship and teaching, the Tokyo Quartet’s legacy of unity, generosity, and dedication will continue to reverberate in concert halls and music schools around the world long after their final performance. The original members – including violist Kazuhide Isomura, who continues to perform with the group – met under the tutelage of Professor Hideo Saito at the Toho Gakuen School of Music. The Tokyo String Quartet officially formed in 1969 at the Juilliard School, where they received encouragement from and worked with the legendary Juilliard Quartet. Following a series of successful competitions (including first prize at the Coleman Competition, the Munich Competition, and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions) and a contract with Deutsche Grammophon, the young quartet began to make its mark. The quartet demonstrated exhilarating virtuosity balanced with an overall unity of sound and intention that continues to characterize their performances. Members of the Lydian String Quartet worked with the Tokyo Quartet at YSM and the Norfolk Festival from 1978 to 1980, just after the Tokyo Quartet joined the YSM faculty. Rhonda Rider, the founding cellist, was inspired by their seamless virtuosity and characteristic sound. Violinist Judy Eisenberg notes, “These things were evident in their teaching: respectfulness, high standards, the ideal of beauty at all times, flexibility and grace… and above all, unity.” Phillip and David Ying remember hearing the quartet as grade-school students in the 1970s. Phillip recalls the energy of the Tokyo Quartet’s
“Through careful guidance, honest feedback, and their refusal to answer for us tough musical questions that we needed to solve on our own, they led us down a path that we will continue to follow for years to come.” Sam Quintal, Jasper String Quartet
performance, followed by their graciousness in encouraging the young musicians. Two decades later, the Ying Quartet would participate in “lifechanging” intensive seminars with the Tokyo Quartet at the Norfolk Festival to study Bartók and late Beethoven. The Tokyo Quartet displayed “unusual generosity,” says Phillip, both in coaching and performance sessions and in routine life at the Festival. Paul Hawkshaw, director of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival since 2003, says that each summer the Quartet can still be found sharing meals with students and playing outside the studio. For the Tokyo Quartet, he notes, “music making is part of a broad social environment.” The intensive seminars in the 1990s brought together talent from a new generation of chamber musicians, and 17
the veteran group worked to encourage these young artists. Lesley Robertson, violist of the St. Lawrence Quartet, says that the Tokyo Quartet “guided us through the chaos of youthful tumult, helping us to excavate our musical path through these works – always opening doors, encouraging our own discoveries.” Barry Schiffman, a founding violinist of the St. Lawrence Quartet, felt empowered by the experience. “So much of the success for emerging artists depends on their belief in themselves. The importance of support from artists like the Tokyo [Quartet] was so helpful in building our belief in ourselves.” The Jasper Quartet, who worked with the Tokyo Quartet from 2008 to 2010 as the graduate quartet-in-residence at YSM, notes that the Tokyo Quartet carries an incredible history and
2013–2014 Season to Feature Six Visiting String Quartets The Tokyo String Quartet has anchored the School’s chamber music program for over three decades. With the departure of the quartet, the School of Music needed to decide how to move forward. “The Tokyo Quartet is simply irreplaceable,” says faculty member David Shifrin. “Many of us were close to tears at their magnificent final concert on the Yale campus in January.” The members of the quartet will continue to mentor student string quartets through the spring semester. Although the quartet is disbanding, two of its members will remain on the faculty: Kazuhide Isomura and Kikuei Ikeda will continue coaching chamber music next year.
tradition. “You can hear the thousands upon thousands of hours of playing together crystalized in each note,” says violist Sam Quintal ’10AD. “At the same time, there is a tremendous joy and spontaneity that they bring to the music.” Sarita Kwok ’09DMA, now a member of the faculty, is a violinist with the Alianza Quartet, which worked with the Tokyo Quartet at YSM from 2006 to 2008. The veteran quartet, she says, instilled in her “the confidence and determination to explore my musical ideas… and the importance of mutual respect, humility, and humanity in music-making, teaching, and life in general.” This season, the Tokyo Quartet will release two last recordings on Harmonia Mundi and will play its final concerts across the globe. At their final Yale performance on January 22, Dean Robert Blocker awarded the Sanford Medal, the School’s highest honor, to the current members of the quartet as well as to Peter Oundjian.
In conferring the medals, which are awarded for distinguished service in music, Dean Blocker said, “The Tokes have brought their love and wonder of music to us – and to countless others – in this hall. Their passion has always been evident, and during their long and distinguished career at Yale they have coached thousands of students and virtually every major quartet in the country.” The legacy of their teaching will continue to influence the chamber music landscape for years to come. The young quartets that have worked with the Tokyo Quartet represent some of the most celebrated American groups spanning several decades. Many of these groups, in turn, have teaching legacies of their own. It is fitting, then, that the Tokyo Quartet will return to the Music Shed at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival – their summer teaching and performing home – for their final performance on July 6, 2013.
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The plans for the 2013–2014 academic year promise a new and exciting experience. Seven of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles will come to Yale for residencies involving both teaching and performing. “As the artistic director of the Oneppo Chamber Music Society,” said Shifrin, “my inclination was to plan a season that celebrates the Tokyo’s legacy by trying to include as many of the world’s great (remaining) string quartets as possible, and inviting all of them to spend extra time on campus working with our gifted chamber music students.” The resident ensembles in the 2013–2014 season will be the Artis, Brentano, Emerson, Hagen, Miró, and Takács string quartets, as well as the David Finckel-Wu Han-Philip Setzer Trio. Each ensemble will perform a concert on the Oneppo Chamber Music Series, offering what Shifrin calls a “stellar” lineup. In addition, the members of each visiting group will coach student chamber ensembles. The residency allows each visiting musician to work with the same group intensively over a period of time, building deeper relationships than are possible in one-time master classes. ||
Student and Alumni News
Richard Feit ’77MM, a composer, was appointed Dean of Performance Studies at New England Conservatory beginning in the 2011–2012 academic year. Charles “Chip” Kaufmann ’82MM, bassoon, is producing a documentary about the American experience of African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), as part of Kaufmann’s non-profit project The Longfellow Chorus. Last summer, they recreated the premiere of ColeridgeTaylor’s violin concert piece, “Keep Me from Sinkin’ Down,” on the centennial of its premiere. (Soloist Maud Powell premiered the work at the Norfolk Festival on June 4, 1912.) Kaufmann reconstructed the score from the original manuscript score from the Royal College of Music Library, and the original parts from Yale’s Irving S. Gilmore Library. The piece had never before been recorded. The promo video (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tNbSskDT_XQ ) includes scenes filmed in the Norfolk Music Shed and Whitehouse (the original BattellStoeckel home at Norfolk).
Kirsten Vogelsang ’84MM
John Gilbert ’83MM, violin, was one of the featured soloists on a recording, released on the Sonoluminus label, of three concerti composed between 1923 and 1925 for string instruments with wind orchestra. Along with Gilbert (a student of Syoko Aki), the soloists were cellist George Work and pianist Dmitri Shteinberg. They are joined by the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra led by its music director, Timothy Muffitt, in Kurt Weill’s Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, Op. 12; the Concerto for Cello and Winds by Jaques Ibert; and the Kammerkonzert for Piano, Violin, and 13 Winds by Alban Berg. The recording has received rave reviews. Kirsten Vogelsang ’84MM, cello, is (among other activities) a string/music coach at Murrieta Mesa High School in California. She has created a chamber music program for the students that includes performances of student compositions. David Hagy ’84MM, ’86MMA, ’92DMA celebrates his 25th anniversary as the music director of the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra in Salisbury, NC during the 2012–2013 season. In addition, he is in his 18th year as the orchestra director at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, where he has led Wake’s program at Casa Artom in Venice during three semesters, including this past fall. The Salisbury Symphony will celebrate this 25th-anniversary season by featuring Hagy as a soloist in Bach’s Concerto
David Hagy ’84MM, ’86MMA, ’92DMA
Susan Merdinger ’85MM 19
for Two Violins with the orchestra’s concertmaster Daniel Skidmore on their concert in May, 2013. Susan Merdinger ’85MM won first prize in the 2012 Bradshaw and Buono International Piano Competition. Her Carnegie Hall performance coincided with the 25th anniversary of her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 1987. She is the proud parent of and accompanist to violist Sarah Greene (a student at the Eastman School of Music) and clarinetist Scott Greene (age 16) in their debuts in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall as first prize winners of the American Protegé International Competitions. She has performed on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Music Series, Mostly Music of Chicago, New Music School of Chicago’s STIM.U.LI Series, and on WFMT Chicago. Merdinger joined the faculty of New York’s Summit Music Festival in 2011 and is a founding artist faculty member of the Fine Arts Music Society Festival in Brown County, Indiana. Laura Kobayashi ’87MM, violin, and her duo partner Susan Keith Gray, piano, completed a two-week concert tour of Thailand in July 2012. Sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok and the U.S. State Department, the tour featured the Kobayashi/Gray Duo in numerous recitals and concerts together, as well as master classes and workshops on their respective instruments.
Laura Kobayashi ’87MM
Student and Alumni News
Peter Derheimer ’88MM has been the principal timpani for 22 years at the Teatro Maestranza in Seville, Spain. In December of 2012, the theater mounted a full production of Wagner’s Siegfried with the title role sung by Lance Ryan, who also sings the lead role at Bayreuth this summer. Teatro Maestranza also produced Thaïs this past fall with Placido Domingo. Their live recording of La Bruja was recently released on Deutsche Grammophon. Derek Bermel ’89BA is the Artist-inResidence at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, a historical community of scholars. Since 2009, Derek has been bringing leaders in the arts to IAS for special performances, panel discussions, and other events. As a composer, Bermel collaborated with the chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound on the album Canzonas Americanas, which was released in November, 2012 on Canteloupe Records. Laura Sherman ’93MM recently founded Gotham Harp Publishing. Initial publications include her critical performance editions for solo harp of J.S. Bach’s complete Lute Suites and a contemporary work by Torrie Zito. Last summer, Laura gave a recital and a lecture-masterclass about Bach performance at the American Harp Society’s national conference in New York City. She was featured on the cover of Harp Column magazine in July. She is the harpist with the Broadway show “Wicked,” and this past fall joined Barbra Streisand for the third time on
Peter Derheimer ’88MM
Laura Sherman ’93MM
a tour of North America, including Ms. Streisand’s Brooklyn “homecoming” concerts and a performance at the Hollywood Bowl. Christian Clough ’97MM was appointed Director of Music at the Church of St. Paul and the Redeemer (Episcopal) in the Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. The appointment began in February, 2012. Clough oversees a program with 50 singers, conducts three choirs, leads music for two weekly services, and plays a 2004 Pass tracker organ (Op. 15, II/27). Warren Lee ’99CERT, piano, was selected as one of Ten Outstanding Young Persons by the Junior Chamber International, in recognition of his achievements in the field of performing arts and his contributions to the community of Hong Kong. Calvin Bowman ’99MMA, ’05DMA has been appointed Convenor of Composition, Aural and Theory at the Australian National University. His opera based on Norman Lindsay’s “The Magic Pudding” has been commissioned by Victorian Opera for performance in 2013. Michael Garza ’00MM is the principal bassoonist of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in China, performing around the world for the past ten years. Along with oboist Keri McCarthy ’00MM, Garza is coordinating a music education project focused on double reeds in Myanmar for July, 2013.
Warren Lee ’99CERT 20
Catherine Ramirez ’02MM, flute, won two prizes in the Tenth International Music Competitions’ Città di Padova Prize. The competitions took place in Italy in the summer of 2012. Ramirez won third prize in the Città di Padova Competition (woodwinds category) as well as third prize in the Virtuosity Competition (from all instrumental categories). She was the only American prizewinner in these competitions. Ramirez earned her Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree in May 2012 from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where she also won the 2010 Sallie Shepherd Perkins Prize for Best Achievement. Ramirez has been the assistant professor of flute and theory at St. Olaf College in Minnesota since 2010. In June 2012, she was the featured soloist with the St. Olaf Orchestra during their five-city concert tour of China, which included performances in Xi’an, Zhengzhou, and Beijing. Katherine Lee ’02AD was appointed the chamber music coordinator at the Music Institute of Chicago, ranked as one of the three largest and most respected community music schools in the country. She has been on the piano faculty there since 2003. She is also currently Community Outreach Director for the Beethoven Festival in Chicago, which is organized through the International Beethoven Project.
Michael Garza ’00MM
Andrew Scanlon ’03MM was recently appointed to the National Committee in Professional Certification of the American Guild of Organists. This is a three-year, renewable appointment as a member of a distinguished board dedicated to the advancement of academic and musical standards for Guild members throughout the nation, and one that administers a large program of examinations for organists and choral conductors. Scanlon continues in his position as an organ professor at East Carolina University and Organist-Choirmaster at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, both in Greenville, NC. As a performer, he appears in the 2012–2013 season at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Central Synagogue in New York, Trinity Church Boston, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as well as at venues in Charlottesville, NC; Greenville, NC; Greenville, PA; and Bath, NC. He is the artistic director of the East Carolina Music al Arts Education Foundation. Christopher Jennings ’04MM performed at the East Texas Organ Festival in Kilgore, Texas at First Presbyterian Church, on the famous AeolianSkinner pipe organ designed by G. Donald Harrison and Roy Perry. His program included one of the first known live performances of Clarence Dickinson’s “Storm King” Symphony. His first performance of this program was last winter at St. James’ Church Madison Avenue in New York City. His concerts of this work include a multimedia slideshow that includes
Andrew Scanlon ’03MM
scenes from the Hudson Valley, where the Storm King mountain is located and where Dickinson took inspiration for his work. The program also includes music by twentieth-century New York City composers Alec Wyton, Calvin Hampton, and Gerre Hancock. His new album “The Storm King” was released in 2012. Last fall, he appeared on American Public Media’s “Pipedreams” broadcast playing Gerre Hancock’s Toccata. Naomi Seidman ’04MM has accepted an appointment as assistant professor of flute at Pennsylvania State University, to begin fall 2012. Seidman is a founding member of the Rhapsoidos Trio (soprano, flute, and piano). She has given master classes at the University of Texas at Austin, Oklahoma State University, Texas A&M, University of Texas at Brownsville, and Southeastern Oklahoma State University. She is a co-founder of the annual Coastal Bend Flute Symposium, whose guest artists have included Jill Felber, Kimberly Clarke, and Carol Wincenc. Cellist Dmitri Atapine ’05MMA, ’06AD, ’10DMA and pianist Hyeyeon Park ’05MM, ’06AD released a world-premiere recording of the complete works for cello and piano by Lowell Liebermann worked closely with the composer before recording the CD, which was released on Blue Griffin Recording with distribution through Albany. This year, Park joins Atapine (her husband) in Nevada, as she has been appointed Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Nevada, Reno. She began this full-time tenure-
Dmitri Atapine ’05MMA, ’06AD, ’10DMA Marianna Prjevalskaya ’07MM, ’10AD 21
track appointment in the fall of 2012. Mr. Atapine is an assistant professor of cello at UNR. He also is the founder and artistic director of the Argenta Concert Series, a new concert series at UNR. Mei Rui ’06MM, ’07AD earned Special Recognition and the prize for the best performance of a Classical-era work at the 2012 San Antonio International Piano Competition. Marianna Prjevalskaya ’07MM, ’10AD won Second Prize and the Audience Prize at the Panama International Piano Competition. (The first prize was not awarded.) As the winner of the competition, she performed Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, with the National Symphony Orchestra after the award ceremony. Prjevalskaya became the artistic director of the Open Piano Competition, an international piano competition open to amateurs and professionals. She joined Nerta Artists Management and has performed several recitals across Spain. She also gave an interview and performed on Spanish TV in a program dedicated to classical music, Programa de Mano (on La2 of TVE).
Student and Alumni News
Matthew Barnson ’07MM, ’08MMA, ’12DMA accepted a post as assistant professor of composition at Trinity College, Dublin. Barnson has recently served as the chair of the theory and composition department at the Third Street Music School Settlement and on the faculty of Rocky Ridge Music Center. His music has been featured at the ISCM World New Music Days in Stuttgart, New York’s MATA and Sonic Festivals, and at the Aspen Music Festival, Centre Acanthes, Ostrava Days, and June in Buffalo. Michael Compitello ’09MM, ’12MMA has been appointed Interim Lecturer in Percussion at Cornell University, where he will direct Cornell’s percussion ensembles—the Cornell University Steel Band and the World Drum and Dance Ensemble—and coordinate the school’s percussion department. This past fall, Compitello was also Interim Lecturer in Percussion at UMass Amherst, where he taught private lessons and directed the school’s percussion ensemble. Michael is also active is his duo New Morse Code, striving to present bold, engaging performances of new works while catalyzing collaboration with instrumentalists, actors, dancers, and visual artists.
At the sixth Shanghai International Piano Competition last November, Wenbin Jin ’09CERT and Henry Kramer ’13AD were jointly awarded the second prize. The first prize was not awarded. Jin also won prizes for Best Performance of the Chinese Commissioned Work and Best Chinese Contestant. Doug Lindsey ’10MM was appointed assistant professor of trumpet at Kennesaw State University in northwest Georgia. He will teach applied lessons, conduct masterclasses, run brass-related activites, and perform regularly in recitals and concerts. Lindsey wrote, “I couldn’t have done it without my time at Yale!” In addition, Lindsey was named an Edwards trumpet performing artist. The sponsorship allows for funds for educational outreach and offers a unique opportunity to help to develop the new line of Edwards’ newest instruments. Ian O’Sullivan ’11MM, guitar, was appointed a lecturer in classical guitar at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he also teaches ukulele. He recently completed a CD of new music for guitar by Hawaii-based composers called “Born and Raised.” O’Sullivan successfully raised funds for the recording through kickstarter.com. Yang Jiao ’12MM was awarded the silver medal in the first Li Delun National Conducting Competition, held June 2012 in Qingdao, China. No first prize was awarded. The Li Delun National Conducting Competition was organized
Michael Compitello ’09MM, ’12MMA
Doug Lindsey ’10MM
Mingzhe Wang ’03MM,’06MMA,’12DMA 22
by the Ministry of Culture, the China Symphony Development Foundation, and the local government of Qingdao. Clarinetist Mingzhe Wang ’03MM, ’06MMA, ’12DMA was awarded the 2013 Individual Artist Fellowship grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission. This award, which was given to only two musicians, provides fellowships to outstanding professional artists who live and work in Tennessee. Pianist Lee Dionne ’13MM placed third in the James Mottram International Piano Competition, held in November, 2012 at the Northern Royal College of Music in the U.K. The three finalists in each category performed a concerto accompanied by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Hannu Lintu. Dionne, a a student of Boris Berman, performed Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major. Charles Richard-Hamelin ’13MM, piano, won the second prize in the Class A division of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) Competition. He was also awarded the prize for the best performance of the Canadian work and the Banff Centre for the Arts Prize. The latter is one of three scholarships covering tuition and accommodation for a three-week session in the Music and Sound Department at the Banff Centre for the Arts, in 2013. The OSM Competition for piano and percussion was held last November in Montreal.
Lee Dionne ’13MM
Administrative Appointments
Ashley William Smith ’13MM was awarded the 2012 Freedman Fellowship for Classical Music by the Music Council of Australia. Smith, a clarinetist, studies with David Shifrin. In his project, he will workshop the performance of the clarinet works of Jorg Widmann, Magnus Lindberg, and Jukka Tiensuu alongside the composers and to present a recital tour in Finland, the United States, and Australia. Henry Kramer ’13AD and Wenbin Jin ’09CERT were jointly awarded the second prize in the sixth Shanghai International Piano Competition last November. The first prize was not awarded. Kramer, who studies with Boris Berman, also won the prize for Best Performance of Lieder. Pianist Lo-An Lin ’14MM, a student of Hung-Kuan Chen, took home the Gold Medal and the prize for best performance of a Baroque work at the 2012 San Antonio International Piano Competition. As the Gold Medal winner, Lin’s prizes include a performance with the San Antonio Symphony, a solo recital performance at the Music from St. Marks concert series, a week of chamber music concerts with the Cactus Pear Music Festival, and a performance opportunity with the Fredericksburg Music Club.
Ashley William Smith ’13MM
Thomas Gilmore Masse ’91MM, ’92AD has been named the next Dean of the Stetson University School of Music. Masse will begin work in his new position in June. As Dean and Professor of the School of Music at Stetson, Masse will be responsible for the overall leadership of the school, as well as faculty recruitment, budget management, community and alumni outreach, and institutional advancement. He was selected following a national search led by a broad-based committee of faculty, administrators, alumni, and others. A clarinetist, Masse earned his Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music. The following year, he earned the first Artist Diploma awarded to a clarinetist at Yale. Masse also holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan, where he was a Regents Fellow, and an M.B.A. degree from the University of Connecticut. He has held teaching posts at Yale, the University of Michigan, and the University of Northern Colorado. Masse returned to Yale in 1999 and served as Deputy Dean of the Yale School of Music from 2005 to 2009. He is currently the Deputy Provost for the Arts at Yale University.
Lo-An Lin ’14MM 23
Thomas Novak ’91MM was promoted to Provost at the New England Conservatory. Having served as Dean of the College since 2007, Novak continues to oversee Conservatory faculty, curriculum, admissions, financial aid, student services, entrepreneurship, community partnerships, and relationships with performing groups and other conservatories in the U.S. and abroad. President Tony Woodcock said, “This is a testament to Tom’s tremendous commitment and significant contributions to NEC over the past ten years. Tom is an admired and respected leader and an indispensable member of my team. I look forward to his continued work and involvement in the school.” A member of the NEC administration since 2001, Thomas Novak was hired as Performance Outreach Manager, but within a month, was appointed Acting Director of Admissions and, later that same year, Director of Admissions. In January 2003, his role was expanded to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid and Assistant Provost. Shortly after President Woodcock joined NEC in 2007, Novak was appointed to the position of Dean of the College. He has also continued to coach chamber music, often guiding NEC honors ensembles such as Quintet Royale. ||
Student and Alumni News: Recordings + Publications
Roomful of Teeth
Naxos Laureate Series
Born and Raised
Roomful of Teeth, a new music vocal octet founded and directed by Brad Wells ’98MM, ’05DMA, released its debut album on New Amsterdam Records on October 30, 2012. The ensemble includes a rich cast of Yale alumni: Estelí Gomez ’08BA, Caroline Shaw ’07MM, Eric Dudley ’03MM, ’04MMA, ’11DMA, and Dashon Burton ’11MM as well as current YSM/ISM student Virginia Warnken ’13MM. Alumni composers featured on the album include Rinde Eckert ’75MM, Judd Greenstein ’04MM, Sarah Kirkland Snider ’05MM, ’06AD, and group member Caroline Shaw. In February, the group performed a concert of new works by Yale students and faculty at Yale’s Beinecke Library.
Marianna Prjevalskaya ’07MM released a CD of a piano recital as part of her award for winning the first prize at the Jaén International Piano Competition in Spain in May 2011. The Naxos disc features pieces by Haydn, Scarlatti, Schumann, and José Zarate.
Ian O’Sullivan ’11MM recorded a CD of new Hawaiian music for classical guitar. In addition to recording his own music, O’Sullivan commissioned new pieces from several other Hawaiian composers. His original music was recently used in a Hawaiian Airlines in-flight video.
Weill, Ibert, Berg
Canzonas Americanas
Violinist John Gilbert ’83MM was one of three featured soloists in a recording of 20th-century concerti released on the Sono Luminus label in late September. The disc features the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Timothy Muffitt, in music by Kurt Weill, Jaques Ibert, and Alban Berg.
Derek Bermel ’89BA collaborated with the chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound on the album Canzonas Americanas, which was released in November on Canteloupe Records. Alarm Will Sound includes pianist and composer John Orfe ’02DMA.
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Lowell Liebermann: Cello Sonatas
The Sessions Soundtrack
Hymn to the Dawn
Dmitri Atapine ’05MMA, ’06AD, ’10DMA and Adela Hyeyeon Park ’05MM, ’06AD have released a world-premiere recording of complete music for cello and piano by the American composer Lowell Liebermann. This marks the premiere recording of all but one of the sonatas, and it is the first recording where all the works appear together. The criticallyacclaimed duo worked closely with the composer before recording the CD, which was released on Blue Griffin Recording with distribution through Albany.
Lakeshore Records released the The Sessions – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally in October 16th and on CD last November. The album features original music by Marco Beltrami ’91MM. Beltrami has written the scores for the Scream franchise, Hellboy, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, and more. Beltrami has received two Academy Award nominations for Best Score, first for 3:10 To Yuma, and second for The Hurt Locker. His most recent project is Trouble with the Curve; other recent scores include The Woman in Black, The Thing, and Deadfall.
Etherea Vocal Ensemble released its second CD, Hymn to the Dawn, in January. Containing several world premiere performances, the new album is a mix of mostly uncommon works for treble choir by Gustav Holst, Amy Beach, Josef Rheinberger, Felix Mendelssohn, and Giaochino Rossini. Upon its release, Hymn to the Dawn quickly became a top iTunes Album and a “Hot New Release” on the Amazon list for Modern and Twentieth-Century Music. The recording features Grace Cloutier ’05MM, harp, and Alan Murchie ’85BA, ’07DIV, piano/ organ. Yale alumni in Etherea include conductor Noah Horn ’10MM, ’12MM, and sopranos Arianne Abela ’10MM, Esteli Gomez ’08BA, and Jessica Petrus ’12MM. The ensemble is directed by countertenor Derek Greten-Harrison, a staff member at the Institute of Sacred Music). Rebekah Westphal, Director of International Admissions at Yale College), is also a member of Etherea. || tell us about your recording projects at music.yale.edu/alumni/send-news.html
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In Memoriam
Richard Warren, Jr. ’59BA Richard Warren, Jr. (1937–2012), the curator of the Historical Sound Recordings Collection and the American Musical Theatre Collection at the Gilmore Music Library, died Sunday, October 7, 2012 at Yale New Haven Hospital following a stroke. He was 75.
Mrs. Evelyn B. Levinson ’39CERT Robert M. Stevenson ’39MM John William Woldt ’42MM Mrs. Jean F. Vezan ’45 Professor Leo B. Reynolds ’47BM, ’48MM Mrs. Elenore T. Iaccarino ’48 Mrs. Helen W. Wriston ’48 Mr. Donald H. Axman ’50BM Professor Michael Mennone, Jr. ’54BM, ’55MM Mr. Lawrence R. Robertson, Jr. ’55BM
Miss Mildred Celia Rosner ’56BM Mr. Ronald E. Wise ’59MM
Dean Robert Blocker said, “The loss of Rich Warren came as a great surprise to us. His devotion to the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings enriched all of the programs at Yale, and will always be a legacy for future generations.”
Dr. Ronald L. Byrnside ’60MM
Mr. Stephen A. Simon ’60BM Mr. Monty N. Carter ’93MM
Richard Warren authored many articles on sound recordings, which were published in the ARSC Journal. His independent work includes a discography on Charles Ives and credit for assistance on many others, but his proudest work was in the reissue of historical recordings. Richard Warren attended the Foote School in New Haven and graduated first in his class from Westminster School in Simsbury. He followed his father’s example, attending Yale College (1959, B.A., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa). He then broke with tradition to attend Yale’s rival, Harvard, and graduated with an Ed.M in 1960. In Cambridge, MA, Rich met Mary-Jo. Their mutual love of choral and vocal music sealed the relationship. They worked in the Cambridge area for seven years before Richard Warren followed his passion for music back to his alma mater to work in the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings (HSR). In 1970 he was promoted to Curator of HSR. He frequently said he never wanted to retire, and served 45 years right up until his illness. All his life, he retained a fascination with cats, trains, trolleys, and electronic gadgets.
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Michael Mennone ’54BM, ’55MM
Stephen Simon ’60BM
The late Professor Michael Mennone Jr. ’54BM, ’55MM, the first flute major to graduate from the Yale School of Music, died Saturday, July 28, 2012 at the age of 81. His lifelong love of music began when his Uncle Rudy, founder of Rudy’s Bar in New Haven, gave him his first flute. The self-taught Mennone went on to earn a scholarship to Yale, where he earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Stephen Simon ’60BM, a conductor who was a leading figure in the modern American revival of George Frideric Handel scholarship and performance, died January 20, 2012 in New York City. He was 75. A skilled organist, Mr. Simon earned his bachelor’s degree in music from Yale and went on to study conducting with the Austrian maestro Josef Krips. His reputation as an advocate for Handel’s music began in the 1960s, when he conducted some of the first recordings of the composer’s operas and oratorios. He earned a Grammy Award nomination in 1969 for his recording of Handel’s “Solomon.”
At Yale, Mennone taught flute to A. Whitney Griswold, Yale’s president at the time. Griswold later called their lessons “one of the most pleasant and most satisfying experiences in my life.” The friendship that grew between them was an important factor in Griswold’s continual support for the School of Music.
After directing the Handel Festival in New York from 1971 to 1974, Mr. Simon moved to Washington, D.C in 1976. There he founded what became the Washington Chamber Symphony, the resident chamber orchestra of the Kennedy Center. The group’s dedication to Handel exposed audiences to Handel’s vast repertoire beyond the “Hallelujah” Chorus.
In his career, Mr. Mennone performed as principal flutist with the Hartford Civic and Hartford Festival Orchestras, the New Haven and Connecticut Symphony Orchestras, and the Bridgeport and Waterbury Symphonies. He taught at Wesleyan University and the Hotchkiss School, and was the chair of the woodwind department at the Hartford Conservatory and New Haven’s Neighborhood Music School. Along with his wife, he founded the Hillingdon Music School in the Berkshires, a summer institute for gifted NMS students. After twenty years at Western Connecticut State University, Mr. Mennone retired as Professor Emeritus.
Simon’s philosophy on Handel was reflected in the way he led his life. “Handel—everything you do of his becomes a continual learning process,” he told The New York Times in 1972. “There is a lift in his style that is wonderful.” ||
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Contributors to the YSM Alumni Fund
SINCE SUMMER 2012 The School of Music is grateful for the generous alumni support of the School’s educational and artistic endeavors. To make your gift, please visit www.yale.edu/giveMusic. Class of 1940 Mr. Philip William Maas, Jr. Class of 1941 Mr. Victor E. Cherven Class of 1943 Mrs. Josephine C. Del Monaco Mrs. Libbe R. Murez Class of 1944 Mrs. Florence G. Smith Class of 1946 Mrs. Eleanore H. Lange Kard Class of 1947 Mrs. Olga B. Johnson Class of 1948 Mrs. Jane S. Lee Mr. Albert C. Sly Class of 1949 Professor Julia Schnebly-Black Professor Emma Lou Diemer Robert B. Hickok Professor Henry N. Lee, Jr. Professor Franklin E. Morris Mrs. Marie B. Nelson Bennett, Ph.D. Ms. Jean Belfanc Northup Mrs. Arleen G. Rowley Professor Eckhart Richter Class of 1950 Mrs. Marjorie J. McClelland Mrs. Anne P. Lieberson Professor William F. Toole Class of 1951 Mr. Thomas B. Jones Ms. Patricia Livingston Mr. William A. Dresden
Class of 1952 Ms. Mary G. George Mrs. Norine P. Harris Mr. Ezra G. Sims, Jr. Mrs. Gwendolyn H. Stevens Mrs. Cynthia T. Stuck Class of 1953 Professor Leonard F. Felberg Mr. Edwin Hymovitz Dr. Donald Glenn Loach Professor Armin J. Watkins Class of 1954 Ms. Jo Ann B. Locke Professor Robert A. Montesi Dean David W. Sweetkind Mrs. Georgene V. Vogt Class of 1955 Mrs. Ellen Powell Bell Mr. Robert C. Hebble Professor G. Truett Hollis Dr. Michael M. Horvit Mrs. Elaine Troostwyk Toscanini Mr. William W. Ulrich, Jr. Class of 1956 Mr. Blaine Butler Mr. Joseph Lawrench Gilman Mrs. Linda W. Glasgal Professor Margaret A. Strahl Mrs. Mary D. Doeringer Class of 1957 Professor Richmond Browne Mrs. Joan F. Popovic Mrs. Dorothy C. Rice Mr. Ronald D. Simone Class of 1958 Professor Richard W. Lottridge Class of 1959 Dr. G. Lawrence Jones Mrs. Joan M. Mallory Mrs. Linda L. Rosdeitcher
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Class of 1960 Dr. Robert W. Molison Mr. Stephen A. Simon Class of 1961 Mr. Stephen T. Anderson Mr. Ernesto Epistola Professor Peter J. Hedrick Professor William Lee Hudson Professor Mary W. Krosnick Mr. Bernard Rubenstein Dr. Carl B. Staplin Mr. Haskell L. Thomson Class of 1962 Mrs. Linda T. Lienhard Mr. Raymond P. Bills Ms. Charlotte M. Corbridge Mr. Ralph P. D’Mello Mrs. Sylvia W. Dowd Professor Eiji Hashimoto Professor James R. Morris Mr. Peter P. D. Olejar Mrs. Florence Fowler Peacock Professor Hildred E. Roach Mr. George R. Schermerhorn Class of 1963 Professor Charles Aschbrenner Mrs. Jean S. Bills Miss Grace Ann Feldman Dr. Daniel M. Graham Mr. W. Marvin Johnson, Jr. Mrs. Joyce M. Ucci Class of 1964 Mr. George S. Blackburn, Jr. Class of 1965 Professor Alvin Shulman Ms. Rheta R. Smith The Reverend Dr. Robert Carpenter
Class of 1966 Ms. Elizabeth Sawyer Parisot Mr. Timothy M. Sullivan Professor Donald F. Wheelock Mr. Joseph L. Wilcox Dr. Lucy E. Cross Mrs. Ethel H. Farny Mr. John M. Graziano Mr. Bryan R. Simms
Class of 1973 Professor Frank Shaffer, Jr. Mr. Frank A Spaccarotella Professor David B. Baldwin Mr. William B. Brice Mr. Vincent P. Oneppo Mrs. Sharon L. Ruchman Professor Gene. J. Collerd Mr. Rodney A. Wynkoop
Class of 1979 Mrs. Theresa E. Langdon Ms. Diane F. Kennedy Weisberg Mr. William A. Owen III Professor Jan Radzynski Mr. Marvin Warshaw Ms. Susan Bell Leon Professor Susan M. Blaustein Ms. Sharon Dennison
Class of 1967 Mr. Howard N. Bakken Mr. W. Ritchie Clendenin, Jr. Professor Richard L. De Baise Mrs. Paula Blank Fearn Mr. Richard E. Killmer Professor Vincent F. Luti Miss Joan Maurine Moss Mrs. Abby N. Wells Mr. Jeff Fuller
Class of 1974 Mr. Robert L. Hart Dr. Janne E. Irvine Ms. Susan Poliacik Mrs. Permelia S. Sears Mr. Kenneth D. Singleton Ms. Antoinette C. Van Zabner
Class 1980 Dr. Eliot T. Bailen Ms. Laura B. Cook Mr. Gary Crow-Willard Mr. Peter M. Marshall
Class of 1968 Professor Frank V. Church Professor Garry E. Clarke Ms. Carol N. Cohen Professor Michael G. Finegold Class of 1969 Ms. Kunie F. DeVorkin Mrs. Helen B. Erickson Ms. Jane P. Logan Ms. Paige E. Macklin Class of 1970 Ms. Jill Shires Ms. Elizabeth Ward Class of 1971 Professor Preethi I. de Silva Ms. Laura E. Jeppesen Mr. Allan D. Vogel Class of 1972 Ms. Nelly Maude Case Mr. David G. Tubergen Dr. David Lasker
Class of 1975 Mr. Hall N. Goff Jacquelyn M. Helin Professor Larry E. Jones Dr. Kay George Roberts Ms. Lori Laitman Rosenblum Professor Michael C. Tusa Class of 1976 Ms. Katherine A. Brewster Ms. M. Susan Brown Professor Joan Osborn Epstein Professor William G. Hoyt, Jr. Mr. Richard A. Konzen Mr. Henry G. Mautner Mr. Dale Thomas Rogers Mr. Robert W. Weirich Ms. Barbara M. Westphal Class of 1977 Mr. Daniel I. Asia Mr. David A. Behnke Professor Boyd M. Jones II Ms. Leslie Van Becker Class of 1978 Mr. Jerrold Pope Mr. John P. Varineau Professor Donald R. Zimmer
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Class of 1981 Mr. Alexander S. Walsh-Wilson Ms. Pamela Geannelis Ms. Karen E. Hopkinson Mr. Stephen B. Perry Ms. Susan Rotholz Ms. Rebecca L. Schalk Mr. Regan W. Smith Mr. Christopher P. Wilkins Dr. M. Teresa Beaman Class of 1982 Mr. Grant R. Moss Dr. David Calhoon Ms. Lisa Wiedman Rancich Class of 1983 Mr. James R Barry Dr. Jeffrey Evans Brooks Mr. Wayman L. Chin Mr. Aaron Jay Kernis Mr. Robert J. Straka, Jr. Dr. Jody A. Rodgers Class of 1984 Mr. David L. Loucky Ms. Betsy Adler Brauer Ms. Violeta N. Chan-Scott
Contributors to the YSM Alumni Fund
Class of 1985 Mr. Steven F. Darsey Mr. Gregory M. Peterson Mr. Kevin J. Piccini Dr. Melissa Kay Rose Ms. Sally L. Rubin Dr. Timothy D. Taylor Ms. Carol Kozak Ward Mr. David R. Wiener Dr. John A. Sichel Class of 1986 Mr. Richard H. Goering Mr. Nicholas Robert Smith Dr. Barbara J. Hamilton-Primus Mr. Robert A. Elhai Class of 1987 Ms. Kyung Hak Yu Ms. Kathryn Lee Engelhardt Class of 1989 Ms. Genevieve Feiwen Lee Ms. Gina Marie Serafin Ms. Jo-Ann Sternberg Class of 1990 Ms. Siu-Ying Susan Chan Ms. Tomomi Ohrui Ms. Kirsten Peterson Mr. Stanley James Serafin Class of 1991 Ms. Amy Feldman Bernon Ms. Eva Marie Heater Mr. Thomas G. Masse Mr. D. Thomas Toner Class of 1992 Dr. Carolyn A. Barber Mr. James W. Sherry Mr. Ferenc Xavier Vegh, Jr. Class of 1993 Mr. Jonathan Allen Noel Ms. Jill A. Pellett Levine Ms. Inhbal Segev Brener
Class of 1994 Ms. Julie Anne Bates Mr. Ian R. Warman Class of 1995 Ms. Minhye Clara Kim Mr. Ronald Ling-Fai Lau Ms. Christina Otten Toner Mr. David Henry Nadal Mr. David James Chrzanowski Ms. Cheryl Rita Wadsworth Mr. Anthony Joseph Bancroft Ms. Ayako Tsuruta Class of 1996 Mr. Thomas Russell Brand Ms. Karen D. Peterson Dr. Peter M. Miyamoto Class of 1997 Mr. Mark Elliot Bergman Mr. Harold Yale Meltzer Mr. Stephen Matthew Black Class of 1998 Ms. Melissa J. Marse Mr. William R. Funderburk IV Class of 1999 Ms. Pamela Getnick Mindell Class of 2000 Dr. Sebastian Zubieta Ms. Amanda Dawn Baker Dr. Joan Jooyeon Lee Mr. Alonso Hernandez Dr. Suzanne Marie Farrin Class of 2001 Ms. Hsing-Ay Hsu Kellogg Dr. Daniel Dixon Kellogg Ms. Nora Anderson Lewis Ms. Mary Wannamaker Huff Mr. Andrew Elliot Henderson Mr. Robert M. Manthey Class of 2002 Dr. Richard J. Gard Mr. Paul Abraham Jacobs Mr. Christopher Matthew Lee
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Class of 2003 Dr. Michael David Mizrahi Mr. Austin Peter Glass Dr. Paul Mathew Weber Class of 2004 Ms. Katherine Mireille Mason Class of 2005 Professor Conor R. Nelson Mr. John-Michael Muller Class of 2006 Mr. Paul Daniel Murphy Mr. Colin D. Lynch Mr. Vincent A. Carr Class of 2007 Mr. Eric Bradley Beach Ms. Sarah Marie Perkins The Reverend Timothy R. Weisman Class of 2008 Mr. Christian Mark Lane Mr. Thomas Alfred Bergeron II Mr. James Austin Smith Mr. Derrick Li Wang Mr. Naftali Yitzhak Schindler Ms. Ashley Jennifer Jackson Class of 2009 Ms. Laura Ester Usiskin Mr. Thomas Jared Stellmacher Ms. Donna Yoo Ms. Laura Catherine Atkinson Class of 2011 Ms. Samona Rasheed Bryant Ms. Reena Maria Esmail
Why I Give “Graduating from the Yale School of Music is, and hopefully will always be, the kind of success that family, friends, colleagues, and even chance acquaintances find truly impressive. We work hard to earn it, but the Yale degree gives us a documented level of accomplishment not possible for most musicians. However, we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent. We must ensure that the reputation of our school endures and even improves. We cannot allow the knowledge that current students will receive a tuition-free education to become our excuse for not contributing to the school. My name is James McNeish, Chair of Agents for the Music Alumni, and I am proud and honored to remain faithfully connected, and fully committed to the Yale University School of Music. There is always more to be done. Stay connected and give back to the school you are so proud of so it can continue to give you the pride you feel.”
James McNeish ‘96MM Associate Professor, Connecticut College Executive Director, Thames Valley Music School
“I have vivid memories when I think about my time at Yale’s School of Music. I have always been grateful that I could be involved at school without having to worry about the burden of graduating with debt. Yale’s supportive environment made me feel that I could turn ideas into reality, and for me this meant devoting time to the Outreach program that I ran for three years. Last year I had the privilege of being part of the alumniVentures committee, and it was amazing to read through so many applications full of innovative ideas and projects. It made me proud to be an alum and to have a small part in helping others realize their dreams. This is why I give to Yale—I want other young graduates to feel that they too can have the chance to think big! I love meeting other Yale alumni all around the world, and often they are the ones who are spearheading exciting projects. Yale played an important role in helping me in my own career and I love to contribute to Yale’s commitment of making sure it remains financially accessible to talented students.”
Sharon Wei ’06MM Lecturer in Viola, Stanford University
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Continued from page 7
have enhanced the School. A gift from Frederick Iseman ’74BA enables the School to present broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD, free of charge, to Yale students, faculty, and staff. The Marx Family Foundation has supported the work of the Collection of Musical Instruments as well as the School. The Yale College Class of 1957, in honor of its 50th reunion, supported the Music in Schools Initiative, strengthening the School of Music’s programs in the New Haven Public Schools and beyond. The Morse Summer Music Academy began in 2010 with an endowment established by Lester Morse ’51BA and Dinny Morse. Many of the significant gifts to the music school came from Yale College alumni, reflecting an increased warmth between the School and the broader University. Dean Blocker agrees, noting: “We have achieved a collegial community that is widely appreciated.” Further, the expansion of the Music in Schools Initiative parallels the remarkable improvements in the relationship between Yale and the City of New Haven. “Yale has never been more intricately involved in the city,” noted the New Haven Register in naming Levin the Person of the Year for 2012. The gains extend beyond New Haven. Under President Levin, Yale has nurtured its relationship to the international music world. The Musicathlon, co-presented by the School of Music and Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music in 2008, brought together eleven leading conservatories from around the globe for performances in Beijing before that summer’s Olympic Games. The Yale Philharmonia’s performances there were part of its first tour of Asia, which also brought the orchestra to Seoul and Shanghai. The Yale in New York concert series has brought numerous YSM faculty, student, and alumni performers to the stages of Carnegie Hall. Over the years, the University has awarded numerous honorary degrees to some of the world’s most prominent
“Your professors of literature, music, and art history will not tell you how to live, but they will teach you to read, listen, and see closely, with a keener appreciation for the artistry that makes literature, music, and visual art sublime representations of human emotions, values, and ideas. And they will lead you through great works that present many different models of how, and how not, to lead a good life.” Richard Levin Freshman Address: “The Questions That Matter,” August 31, 2007
musicians, confirming Yale’s place in the music conversation. Classical musicians receiving honorary Doctor of Music degrees under President Levin have included conductors, composers, and performers: Kurt Masur (1994), Robert Shaw (1998), Dawn Upshaw (2001), Krzysztof Penderecki (2003), Emanuel Ax (2007), and Sofia Gubaidulina (2009). Honorary degree recipients also include jazz musician Wynton Marsalis (1995), Paul Simon (1996), Sir Paul McCartney (2008), and Aretha Franklin (2010). Blocker was Levin’s first external decanal hire, coming to Yale in 1995 to serve as The Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music. The dramatic improvements to the University’s music resources and programs are the result of their long and close collaboration. “We’ve had a partnership that, from
my vantage point, has been incredible and inspiring,” says Blocker. “It’s been a remarkable time.” Looking back on Levin’s presidency, the longest in the Ivy League, Dean Blocker said, “I think Rick Levin will be remembered as one of Yale’s great presidents.” Why is that? “Rick had a vision for Yale in a changing world, and it was a vision shaped by his being here as a graduate student and imagining what the University’s greatness really could be.” So why has Levin chosen to leave? “I love this job and I’ve been thriving in it. It’s not that I’ve lost any steam or energy,” Levin told the Yale Alumni Magazine. “But 20 years is a long tenure, a nice round number, and I think that it’s kind of the right moment in the institution to pass the torch.” ||
President Levin awards an honorary Doctor of Music degree to composer Sofia Gubaidulina in 2009 32
Editor
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the Yale School of Music
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