Music at Yale—Spring 2014

Music at Yale SPRING 2014

Brentano String Quartet Brentano appointed new faculty quartet in residence Music complex to be named for Denise & Stephen Adams Technology resources today Remembering Mitch Leigh (1928–2014) Exclusive to Online Edition: Collection of Musical Instruments

Contents

Message from the Dean

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Concert News

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Convocation 5 Adams Center for Musical Arts

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A Musical Inauguration

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Collection of Musical Instruments

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Yale and Naxos

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Faculty News

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Faculty Profile: David Lang

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Brentano String Quartet

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Historical Sound Recordings at Yale

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Serious Music / Digital Music

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Music In Schools Initiative

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A Musician’s Role in Society

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Board of Advisors Profile: Anne-Marie Soulliere

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Student and Alumni News

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Alumni Profile: Richard & John Contiguglia

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Recordings and Publications

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In Memoriam

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Contributors 45

Yale School of Music Robert Blocker, Dean

Message from the Dean

Dear YSM Alumni, In my conversations and correspondence with YSM alumni throughout the world, one theme recurs. It is the transformational influence of faculty members in the professional and personal lives of their students. Experiences vary, but the commitment of YSM faculty resounds in the hearts of our graduates.

The faculty are the foundation of our community. They bring to us more than their artistic, creative, and scholarly distinction, for they humanize the musical learning environment at YSM. Many memories show a compassionate humanity, such as: My professor loaned me his personal instrument for an audition. He knew I needed it to be competitive.

The extra lessons she gave me were the difference in winning the position.

My teacher took me to Naples Pizza, bought my lunch, and ate with me for a week. He seemed to know I had no money and with this kindness made sure I kept my dignity.

Yale was the turning point in my life because my teacher believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

The stories are endless, and the mutual affection runs deep. Most YSM faculty members have served here for many years. They have invested their lives not only in Yale but in New Haven. Students are invited into their families, and these worldclass artists are seen also as parents, grandparents, and community volunteers.

Indeed, the compassionate humanity of faculty gives emotional truth to the work they are performing.

Faculty transitions are inevitable. Next fall the Brentano Quartet (cover story) begins their tenure at YSM. It is a new chapter for the School, one that will be written in a radically different era for western music. But together, we engage the challenges of this time by drawing on the strengths of the past decades with the Tokyo and Yale Quartets. Such strengths are simply the inherent values we have for YSM and for ourselves.

The YSM faculty is the foundation of the School, but the alumni build the house.

We are so very proud of your accomplishments. In this edition you will read about your colleagues and possibly yourself! Let us hear from you, and come home and see the professors that inspired you.

Warmest regards,

Robert Blocker The Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music

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Concert News

Yale Philharmonia The Yale Philharmonia opened the 2013–14 season with a concert featuring Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in the 100th-anniversary year of its composition. The concert also inaugurated the Beethoven Concerto Project (see below), with Boris Berman playing the “Emperor” Concerto.

Guest conductor James Conlon, a specialist in the music of Benjamin Britten, conducted Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. While on campus, Conlon also gave a symposium on “Reading and Hearing

Classical Music: A Conductor’s View.”

Parts of his talk focused on music of Benjamin Britten, in honor of the centennial of Britten’s birth this year.

On November 1, former YSM faculty member Krzyzstof Penderecki conducted his own Symphony No. 2 and Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. In the second half of the concert, Toshiyuki Shimada led the Philharmonia in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Henry Kramer, a winner of the Woolsey Competition. The annual New Music for Orchestra concert took place on

James Conlon

December 12, with music by Bálint Karosi, Brendon Randall-Myers, James Rubino, and Benjamin Wallace.

The second semester opened on January 24 with Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” alongside Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, played by Peter Frankl. On February 8, the Yale Choral Artists and Yale Baroque Ensemble joined the Philharmonia to perform Mozart’s Mass in C minor. Jeffrey Douma conducted the performance, which filled Morse Recital Hall to capacity.

Krzysztof Penderecki 2

William Purvis conducts Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 1 in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall

Yale in New York On Friday, November 22, Yale in New York held a concert celebrating “The Legacy of Paul Hindemith” at Carnegie Hall. Hindemith was a member of the YSM faculty 1940–1953, and the concert featured music by the professor and several of his Yale students. Mitch Leigh ’51BMus, ’52MM was present to hear “Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha, and Yehudi Wyner ’50BA, ’52BM, ’53MM played the piano in the New York premiere of his piano quartet Concordance. The program also included pieces by Alvin Etler, Lukas Foss, and Mel Powell.

The spring will feature the series’ first collaboration with Yale School of Drama. David Shifrin, artistic director of the Yale in New York Series, and Liz Diamond, chair of the directing department at YSD, are leading the collaboration on a new production of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale.

Diamond created a new translation of the original Ramuz libretto. The project brings together YSM faculty and student musicians, including clarinetist Shifrin and violinist Ani Kavafian, as well as School of Drama faculty, student, and alumni designers, actors, and technicians. Tony Award-winning actor Michael Cerveris ’83BA leads the ensemble in the role of the Reader.

Beethoven Concerto Project The School of Music set out to present the complete cycle of Beethoven’s concertos for piano and orchestra over four concerts in the 2013–14 season. The project got underway on September 20 with the Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, “Emperor,” performed

by Boris Berman.

Yale Opera Yale Opera presented its annual performances of opera scenes on Saturday, November 2nd and Sunday, November 3rd. The two performances included selections from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, and Bizet’s Le pêcheurs de perles, among several others.

On December 11, the Horowitz Piano Series presented an evening of three more concertos: Wei-Yi Yang was the soloist in the Concerto No. 1 in C major, and Hung-Kuan Chen played the Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major.

The concert concluded with Beethoven’s own piano arrangement of the Violin Concerto in D major, performed by soloist Melvin Chen. This performance took place in the more intimate venue of Morse Recital Hall; the others were in Woolsey Hall.

For its annual February production at the Shubert Theater, Yale Opera presented a new production of Puccini’s La Bohème. Giuseppe Grazioli conducted, and Michael Gieleta was the stage director.

Peter Frankl joined the Philharmonia on January 24 to perform the Concerto No. 4 in G major. The last performance in the cycle is April 4, when Dean Robert Blocker will perform the Concerto No. 3 in C minor.

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Yale Opera’s spring production will be Rossini’s La Cenerentola, presented May 2–3 in Morse Recital Hall.

New Music New Haven Hannah Lash stepped into the role of co-artistic director of New Music New Haven, alongside Christopher Theofanidis. The season’s first guest composer was Donnacha Dennehy, who was featured on the November 14 concert. Guest composer Andrew Ford will visit in April. For the second year, the series collaborated with the Yale Baroque Ensemble, which performed a series of student works on the February program.

Willie Ruff at the “Home Grown on Common Ground” concert

Special Events On Saturday, October 19, the festivities in honor of the Beinecke Library’s 50th anniversary continued with a gala concert featuring Yale musicians, faculty, and alumni performing works drawn from and based on Beinecke collections. The program included Saint-Saëns Piano Trio and Poulenc’s orchestral suite Les biches, as well as numerous vocal works.

Krzysztof Penderecki celebrated his 80th birthday in 2013, and in addition to conducting the Yale Philharmonia, he also enjoyed an event at Symphony Space in New York City on October 25.

Four YSM students — Eric Anderson, clarinet; Nathan Lesser, violin; Colin Brookes, viola; and Alan Ohkubo, cello — played his Clarinet Quartet. The program also featured other chamber works, as well as a conversation with the composer. Penderecki also worked with the student quartet in an open master class in Morse Recital Hall.

Tiffany Jackson, soprano, on stage at “Home Grown on Common Ground”

Ellington Jazz Series This season, the Ellington Jazz Series teamed up with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which has been celebrating its fiftieth anniversary.

On Friday, October 4, the Ellington season opened with “Home Grown on Common Ground.” The program featured selections from the James Weldon Johnson collection, which is housed at the Beinecke, performed by musicians with ties to New Haven.

On November 8, legendary jazz drummer Roy Haynes performed with his Fountain of Youth Band. The winner of a 2011 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Haynes received another honor: the Ellington Medal, which Willie Ruff presented to him at the concert.

The last two events in this season’s Ellington Jazz Series featured pianists: the Bill Charlap Trio on December 6 and the David Hazeltine Trio on January 16.

Oneppo Chamber Music Series The Oneppo Chamber Music Series features several string quartets in its first season without the Tokyo String Quartet. The 2013–14 season opened on October 15 with the Takács String Quartet and also included the Hagen Quartet (November 12), Emerson 4

String Quartet (December 10), Artis String Quartet (February 18), and Miró String Quartet (March 25). The November 15 concert featured the David Finckel–Wu Han–Philip Setzer Trio.

The Brentano String Quartet, whose appointment as quartet-in-residence begins in the fall of 2014, will perform April 8.

Horowitz Piano Series The first guest artist on this year’s Horowitz Series was Leon Fleisher, who performed November 13. Fleisher played a variety of pieces for the left hand, as well as piano duets with his wife, Katherine Jacobson Fleisher.

Pascal Rogé played a program of Poulenc and Debussy on January 29.

This season has been characterized by numerous collaborations. Peter Frankl played an all-Schubert program October 2, with baritone Randall Scarlata joining him for the song cycle Winterreise. Dean Robert Blocker’s recital October 23 featured the Brahms Four Serious Songs and Liebeslieder Waltzes with fellow pianist Wei-Yi Yang and YSM singers. The February recital brought togethr Boris Berman, Peter Frankl, and Wei-Yi Yang for a program of Brahms works for piano four-hands and two pianos. ||

Convocation

Welcomes New Students Honored guests include Denise and Stephen Adams, Peter Gelb, Frederick Iseman

Above left: L to R, Edson Scheid, Sean Chen, Jonathan Allen, Garrett Arney, and Mari Yoshinaga take a bow. Above right: Peter Gelb, center, with President Salovey and Dean Blocker.

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“I want to think about wonder with you — acknowledging its presence, reclaiming its power, and sharing its joy.”

Dean Robert Blocker

At the School of Music’s annual Convocation on September 9, 2013, Dean Robert Blocker announced that the music complex centered around the renovated and expanded Hendrie Hall will be known as the Adams Center for Musical Arts when it opens in 2016. Stephen ’59BA and Denise Adams, benefactors of the School, were present to receive a framed architectural rendering of the future music center.

(See story on following page.)

Convocation opens the academic year with the matriculation of the new students. Peter Salovey, in his first year as Yale’s president, installed the incoming class.

Peter Gelb, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, received the Samuel Simons Sanford Award, the School of Music’s most prestigious honor. Under Gelb’s leadership, the Met in 2006 began broadcasting selected performances live in high definition around the world; these

broadcasts came to the Yale campus in 2010, thanks to a gift from Frederick Iseman ’74BA. It was also announced at Convocation that Iseman has expanded his gift to include Met Opera On Demand, an online streaming library of past Met performances. (See story on pg. 8.)

Gelb quoted Dmitri Shostakovich telling a young Rostropovich to be a “soldier of music” and said, “I have spent my life attempting to connect music with a broader audience. In this, I consider myself to be a soldier of music, and I hope that you will think of yourselves as soldiers of music, too, since the struggle to keep classical music popular can only be won with new generations of musical soldiers joining the battle.”

Dean Blocker gave an address titled “Rediscovering Wonder,” saying to the assembled students, “I want to think about wonder with you — acknowledging its presence, reclaiming

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its power, and sharing its joy. In some measure and fashion, a sense of wonder binds us to art, and we are called to ensure the birthright of wonder for a troubled world that so desperately needs artistic bridges of understanding.”

The evening concluded with performances by Yale School of Music students, faculty, and alumni. Recent graduate Edson Scheid ’13CERT performed a selection of Paganini Caprices for solo violin. Three members of the Yale Percussion Group—Jonathan Allen ’13MM, Garrett Arney ’14AD, and Mari Yoshinaga ’14MM—performed Glockenliebe, a piece for three glockenspiels by new faculty member Hannah Lash. Pianist Sean Chen ’14AD closed the evening with a performance of Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp major, Op. 30.

As is the School’s tradition, the entire YSM community sang Schubert’s ode to music, “An die Musik.” ||

Music complex to be named for Denise and Stephen Adams Renovated Hendrie Hall will become part of the new Adams Center for Musical Arts

Stephen and Denise Adams, center, with Dean Blocker and President Salovey

At Convocation on September 9, 2013, Dean Robert Blocker and Yale President Peter Salovey announced that the music complex centered around the renovated and expanded Hendrie Hall will be known as the Adams Center for Musical Arts when it opens in 2016.

was then the largest contribution the school had ever received. Their $100 million gift followed six years later, though their identity wasn’t revealed until 2008. The Adams have also made a $10 million pledge toward the renovation of Hendrie Hall.

In 2006, Stephen Adams ’59BA and his wife, Denise Adams, donated $100 million to the School of Music. The gift, which Mr. and Mrs. Adams originally made anonymously, allowed all School of Music students from that point onward to attend tuition-free; it also enriched the educational experience through enhanced programs at the School.

Dean Blocker said, “The extraordinary gifts of Denise and Stephen Adams have transformed the School of Music and Yale University. Their philanthropy has enabled us to make our dreams realities, and to advance the cause of music and cultural leadership throughout the world.”

Stephen Adams’ interest in music began not at Yale but later in life. When he turned 55, he began playing the piano as a hobby. “That sparked my interest in music, and I made the decision soon after to give the [first] gift,” Mr. Adams told the Yale Daily News in a 2009 interview.

2013 marks ten years since Sprague Hall reopened after extensive renovations.

Leigh Hall was renovated in 2006, and Stoeckel Hall in 2009. At Convocation, Yale President Peter Salovey noted, “On the tenth anniversary of the reopening of Sprague Hall, we announce the creation of something else.” That something else is the Adams Center for Musical Arts.

In 1999, in honor of his 40th reunion, Mr. and Mrs. Adams donated $10 million to the School of Music, which

Beginning this May, Hendrie Hall will close for renovation and expansion. The work is scheduled to take two years, 7

during which activities that usually take place in Hendrie will be moved temporarily to other locations.

When the complex reopens in 2016 as the Adams Center for Musical Arts, students will enjoy state-of-the-art rehearsal facilities, faculty studios, and practice rooms, as well as a student commons space. A covered loggia will connect the center to Leigh Hall.

Hendrie Hall, which is shared by the Yale School of Music and Yale College, offers Yale’s largest rehearsal spaces.

The building is the home of Yale Opera and the School of Music’s brass and percussion departments, as well as the Yale Philharmonia library. Hendrie also houses offices and practice space for the University’s major undergraduate musical organizations: the Yale Bands, Yale Glee Club, and Yale Symphony Orchestra.

Denise and Stephen Adams are members of the School of Music’s Board of Advisors. ||

Yale Gains Access to Met Opera On Demand with Gift from Frederick Iseman ’74

Left: Peter Gelb, left, applauds Frederick Iseman, right. Right: Iseman, right, with Dean Blocker

The Yale School of Music and the Gilmore Music Library now offer Met Opera on Demand: Student Access.

The access is made possible by Yale alumnus Frederick Iseman ’74BA. Met Opera on Demand includes dozens of productions from the Met’s awardwinning Live in HD series, featuring opera superstars such as Natalie Dessay, Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Juan Diego Flórez, and Deborah Voigt, among many others. Classic Met telecasts from 1977 to 2001 include such productions as Aida starring Leontyne Price, La Bohème starring Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto, and Otello with Jon Vickers in the title role.

There are more than 300 radio broadcast performances dating back to 1936, representing nearly all of the most popular operas as well as many of the Met’s greatest singers including Björling, Callas, Corelli, Horne, Nilsson, Sutherland, Tebaldi, Te Kanawa, and Tucker.

Iseman’s generosity also brought the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD broadcasts to campus. The Iseman Met Opera Broadcasts are presented in Morse Recital Hall free of charge and are open to members of the Yale community.

Dean Robert Blocker commented, “Frederick Iseman’s gift of the Met Opera On Demand: Student Access is a fitting bookend to the Iseman Broadcasts Live in HD at the School of Music. Fred’s philanthropic generosity to Yale and to YSM for these opera programs enriches us all, and we are indeed grateful.”

Suzanne Lovejoy, Assistant Music Librarian for Public Services, noted several ways in which Met Opera On Demand will complement current library holdings. Previously, the library’s Met-related holdings included approximately 450 recordings in various

Iseman’s gift was announced to the School of Music at Convocation on September 9. Peter Gelb, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, was present; Gelb received the Sanford Award, the School of Music’s highest honor, at the event.

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formats, plus about 50 recordings in online databases such as Naxos and Classical Music Library. Those online recordings feature the Met orchestra and/or chorus, but are not likely to be full operas. The library also has approximately 75 videos or DVDs; approximately 200 books and pamphlets (none online); periodicals, including online full-text of Opera News from 1990 forward; and scores and archival collections. The new access to Met Opera On Demand, therefore, greatly increases the library’s Met Opera-related holdings.

All Met Opera on Demand videos include English subtitles, and many recent performances also include subtitles in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

New operas are added every month, and an app allows users to bookmark favorites and return to them anytime. ||

A Musical Inauguration

Jeffrey Douma conducts the combined orchestras, choruses, and soloists

Peter Salovey takes office to the sounds of bluegrass and brass fanfares 9

Benjamin Verdery leads an ensemble of student and alumni guitarists

On Sunday, October 13, 2013, Yale formally installed the University’s twenty-third President, Peter Salovey.

Though Salovey took office on July 1, October marked the campuswide celebrations.

The inauguration weekend celebrated both tradition and innovation, with numerous events open to Yale students, alumni faculty, and staff, as well as the New Haven community. Friends across the world could watch events live on Yale’s YouTube channel.

After a week of events for Yale faculty and staff, the inauguration weekend opened with a musical celebration of all that is Yale, held on Friday, October 11th in Woolsey Hall. The event was hosted by Master of Ceremonies Robert Blocker, the Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music.

In keeping with the theme, the concert featured performances by the major performing ensembles from both the School of Music and the wider University: Yale Concert Band, Yale Philharmonia, Yale Symphony Orchestra, Yale Camerata, and Yale Glee Club.

Other performers included University Organist Thomas Murray; organist Paul Jacobs ’02MM, ’03AD; the Yale Cellos, directed by Aldo Parisot; and an ensemble of Yale guitarists, directed by Benjamin Verdery.

Aldo Parisot conducts the Yale Cellos

Thomas C. Duffy wrote a fanfare for the occasion that brought together the Concert Band and the Philharmonia, with Murray improvising on the organ.

Banjo player Oscar Hills made a surprise guest appearance. Hills, a professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, plays in the Professors of Bluegrass, the band whose bassist is none other than Peter Salovey.

Bluegrass also made an appearance at the University-wide block party on Sunday, October 13. Held on picturesque Hillhouse Avenue, which was closed to traffic for the occasion, the block party featured music, farmfresh apples, food vendors, salsa dancing, games, and pumpkin decorating. All of Yale’s a cappella singing groups performed.

Salovey selected the bluegrass band, the Boston-based quintet The Deadly Gentlemen. The band’s banjo player is Greg Liszt, an alumnus of both Yale and the Professors of Bluegrass.

Even Yale Dining got into the bluegrass spirit, offering a special “bluegrass wrap” on inauguration weekend.

The sandwich featured Kentucky barbecue spread, grilled chicken breast, watercress, and pickled red onion in a flaxseed wrap.

As part of the campus-wide open house on Saturday, October 12, the

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Yale Collection of Musical Instruments opened its doors. The open house was open to all, free of charge, and dozens of people took advantage of the event to visit the museum.

The co-chairs of the Inauguration Planning Committee were Kimberly Goff-Crews, university secretary and vice president for student life, and Daniel Harrison, the Allen Forte Professor of Music Theory.

The official inauguration ceremony took place Sunday, October 13. “With great joy, excitement, and hope, I accept the leadership of this university,” said Salovey in his inauguration address.

Salovey called students the university’s “greatest treasure”and described Yale as “a research university that proudly and unapologetically focuses on our students. That is who we are and what we aspire to be.”

For more coverage of President Salovey’s inauguration, visit inauguration.yale.edu.

Watch the musical celebration of “All That Is Yale” at music.yale.edu/video/ inauguration-celebration. ||

Collection oƒ Musical Instruments Notes from Upstairs

By Jane Mitchell ‘13 MM 11

The Yale Collection of Musical Instruments welcomes visitors to Music at Hand, a new permanent exhibit in its upstairs gallery. The exhibit features twenty-six of the Collection’s keyboard instruments in a varied, visually enticing display.

The instruments assembled in Music at Hand have crossed oceans and survived revolutions; these clavichords, harpsichords, and fortepianos span four centuries and represent major schools of keyboard instrument making throughout Europe and America. The oldest, a double-virginal by Flemish maker Hans Ruckers, dates from 1591.

Across the gallery, a gilded harpsichord built during the reign of Louis XV sits next to a Könnicke fortepiano, a fiveoctave Viennese instrument, similar to those played by Haydn and young Beethoven. Nearby, nestled in a corner, is a Bechstein grand, presented to Wagner in 1864 by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. And all this is free and open to the public, a two-minute walk from Woolsey Hall.

Some visitors, expecting an array of Steinways, are surprised by the shapes and sizes that greet them as they crest the stairs. An imposing 19th-century Austrian “pyramid piano,” 7.5 feet tall and garnished with a black swan, always attracts attention, as do two delicate 18th century epinettes. (“I would love to have this teeny little piano,” exclaimed a recent visitor.)

Other visitors admire the decorative details of the keyboard instruments: the period-furniture cases and stands, pastoral tableaus on some lid interiors, or the mighty Hass harpsichord, whose entire exterior is painted a mottled reddish-brown to resemble tortoiseshell.

Curator Nicholas Renouf ’71MMA designed a self-guided audio tour to accompany the exhibit. Visitors can use their personal smartphones to scan QR codes that link to each instrument, or

can borrow a pre-loaded iPod from the Collection.

Renouf narrates the introductory track: “These instruments have many stories to tell: stories about who made them, who played them…the rooms where they stood, the company they kept as furniture, and finally, and most directly, how they sounded.” As visitors tour the gallery, they are free to discover which instrument’s stories intrigue them the most. And they can hear the instruments speak for themselves. The tour includes samples of period repertoire performed on the instruments in playing condition, so visitors might head downstairs humming Bach, Schubert, Chopin, or even Stephen Foster.

Several times each semester, the staff transforms the Collection’s upstairs gallery into an intimate concert hall.

When the keyboards are wheeled to the back of the gallery, the resulting space, with its high ceilings and waxed hardwood floors, is acoustically ideal for plucked instruments: lute, theorbo, and especially harpsichord.

The Collection’s Sunday Afternoon Concert Series draws a dedicated following, and performances by the Yale Baroque Ensemble, YSM’s postgraduate ensemble, fill the gallery with supportive YSM students and Yale community members. (The 2013–2014 Yale Baroque Ensemble is comprised

of Nayeon Kim and Corin Lee, violins; Caroline Ross, oboe; and Jurrian van der Zanden, violoncello. Graham Elliot Figg serves as the group’s harpsichordist).

William Purvis, the Collection’s director, has worked closely with Yale School of Music staff (particularly recording engineer Eugene Kimball, and video producer Austin Kase) to equip the Collection for live streaming, and now all Collection concerts are broadcast on the Yale School of Music website. In October, live stream viewers might have seen the Yale Baroque Ensemble perform an all-Bach concert using modern baroque instruments and bows on loan from the Collection. In January, viewers might have watched Jeffrey Grossman of Juilliard Baroque perform a Telemann Fantasia on the Collection’s ca. 1740 harpsichord by François Etienne Blanchet, masterfully reading the score off an iPad. ||

The Collection will launch a new website in spring 2014. Viewers will be able to access the Music at Hand audio tour, consult a calendar of upcoming concerts and events, and browse digital photos of the Collection’s nearly 1,000 instruments. Until then, the Music At Hand audio tour can be found at http://musical-instruments.squarespace.com/music-at-hand and a listing of upcoming Collection concerts can be found on the YSM website: music.yale.edu/concerts/collection .

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Yale School of Music and Naxos Records Announce New Collaborative Venture

The Yale School of Music and Naxos are pleased to announce a new collaborative recording project. Robert Blocker, Dean of the Yale School of Music, and Klaus Heymann, CEO of Naxos, have agreed to co-produce 20 compact discs of piano music in the next few years.

The recordings will encompass piano music by Domenico Scarlatti, Muzio Clementi, Franz Liszt, and other Romantic-period composers.

The School of Music is one of several renowned professional music programs engaged with Naxos in this project, which will culminate in approximately 200 new recordings. The objective, according to Mr. Heymann, “is to record a wide range of piano literature that is not frequently performed or recorded. The partnership between Naxos and several elite institutions makes this literature more accessible and commercially viable.”

Dean Blocker and Mr. Heymann are committed to providing these recording opportunities to outstanding students in the Yale piano program. “The selection of YSM pianists recognizes the extraordinary talents of our pianists

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and the distinguished faculty who mentor these young artists,” said Dean Blocker. “Professor Boris Berman, chair of the piano area, will make recommendations for the three or four pianists who will have the opportunity to record each of the CDs. We hope to record a minimum of three programs and possibly four over the next five years.”

The School of Music and Naxos have enjoyed a collaborative partnership for many years, with numerous YSM faculty, alumni, and students featured on the Naxos roster. Their most recent project was the recording and release of all the Charles Ives songs, an endeavor that combined the artistry of Yale Opera students and alumni with the resources of Ives archives in Yale’s renowned libraries. ||

Faculty News

Boris Berman named Honorary Professor of Royal Danish Academy of Music Boris Berman has been named an Honorary Professor of the Royal Danish Academy of Music. The letter from the Academy, which is located in Copenhagen, states: “The nomination is based on your remarkable artistic career as international piano soloist through several decades.” The letter further cites Berman’s “remarkable work as professor at Yale University Music School, your strong commitment, and your deep insight into the education of young piano talents.”

Hannah Lash appointed Assistant Professor (Adjunct) of Composition at YSM Hannah Lash ’12AD was appointed last June as Assistant Professor, adjunct, of Composition. In announcing the appointment, Dean Blocker cited Lash’s acclaimed creative work and teaching ability.

Among Hannah Lash’s prizes are the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Naumberg Prize, the Bernard Rogers Prize, and the Sernoffsky Prize. Throughout her formal education at the Eastman School, the Cleveland Institute, Harvard, and Yale, Lash was the recipient of numerous academic awards including the Charles Ives Scholarship from the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Prestigious commissions from the Fromm and Naumberg Foundations, the Aspen Music Festival, MAYA, and others have led to performances of her compositions at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Center, Le Poisson Rouge, and the Chicago Art Institute.

Her orchestral works have been performed recently by the Minnesota Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

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Christopher Theofanidis selected for Copland House Residency Composer Christopher Theofanidis ’97DMA was selected for a Copland House Residency during the 2013–14 season. Theofanidis is among eight composers selected for the allexpenses-paid residencies at Aaron Copland’s home. The house, a National Historic Landmark, is located in the lower Hudson Valley of New York.

Copland House Residents live and work, one at a time, at Copland’s rustic, hilltop home for stays of three to eight weeks. There, they are able to focus uninterrupted on their creative work in the same bucolic surroundings that Copland enjoyed during the last 30 years of his life. Copland House Residents also become eligible for postresidency awards and performances that advance their work.

Willie Ruff premieres documentary, receives Sanford Medal Willie Ruff ’53BM, ’54MM received the Sanford Medal, the School of Music’s highest honor, last May. Dean Robert Blocker presented the medal at the School’s Commencement ceremonies in Sprague Hall. The award honors Ruff’s contributions to the Yale School of Music and to the field of music.

“A Conjoining of Ancient Song,” a new documentary by Ruff and Gretchen Berland, received its world premiere in April 2013 in Battell Chapel. The halfhour Yale documentary retraces the trajectory of a rapidly eroding form of congregational singing out of Scotland and into both African American and Native American religious song traditions.

A musician and scholar of wide-ranging interests and influence, Willie Ruff plays French horn and bass and is an author, lecturer, and educator. On faculty at the Yale School of Music since 1971, Ruff has also been on faculty at U.C.L.A., Dartmouth, and Duke University. He is the founding director of the Duke Ellington Fellowship program at Yale, and his work in bringing jazz artists to Yale and New Haven public schools earned him the Governor’s Arts Award in 2000.

Ruff’s project on congregational line singing began in 2005 at a Yale conference comparing traditions in Alabama, Kentucky, and the Gaelicspeaking Free Church Presbyterians of the Scottish Highlands. This first foray resulted in three television documentaries, a feature story for NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and a 2007 conference in Muscogee Creek Nation, Oklahoma. ||

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F A C U L T Y

P r o f i l e

David Lang “Being a musician is being a citizen,” says faculty member David Lang ’83MMA, ’89DMA. As a composer, educator, and driving force in the music world, Lang is living out that belief.

Named Musical America’s Composer of the Year for 2013, Lang currently holds the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall for the 2013–14 season. The prestigious residency offers numerous ways to participate, and “it’s up to you how much you want to take advantage of it,” Lang says. “I think I shocked them because I said I wanted to do everything.”

That “everything” encompasses concerts, outreach activites, and workshops. Lang has curated a multiconcert festival called Collected Stories, to take place in April, centered around the premise that music has been used throughout time and across cultures to tell stories. Each concert program explores a single topic—such as heroism, love/loss, or spirituality— through works that on the surface are from different worlds. “Beowulf,” for example, is paired with Harry Partch’s “The Wayward.” While the medieval poem may seem far removed from a hobo’s story performed on found objects, they are both tales of wanderers. “The music [in each piece] has the same function,” Lang observes.

The Carnegie Hall residency kicked off with a professional development workshop that brought together young composers, ensembles, and music critics to examine “the entire ecology of how a piece of music gets made.” Lang notes that music, among many other fields today, has become highly specialized, and “what comes with specialization is suspicion.”

The workshop required everyone to participate outside their area of expertise and fostered a continual giveand-take.

Lang grew up at a time “when classical music seemed democratic.”

Public school music programs gave him an essential start. Since then, he laments, “We have lost the sense that classical music offered something for everyone.” Lang’s new piece “crowd out” addresses these feelings: it’s written for “one thousand people yelling in the street,” as he puts it. Lang is drawn to the idea that “people who are not trained musicians can

“Being a musician is being a citizen.”

participate [in the piece] and be part of a community.”

David Lang first came to the Yale School of Music in the 1980s and rejoined the faculty in 2008. “I learned everything I know about the world from this place,” he says. When he was a student here, composition faculty such as Jacob Druckman and Martin Bresnick were “so different from each other… yet both wanted to live in a world where there was a pluralism of ideas.” He muses that this apparent paradox—that these voices were both so divergent and yet so necessary—may explain why the YSM composition program has been so influential. In other words, composers at YSM learn 16

that “success is not determined by style or sound, but by finding the right tool to access the part of ourselves that makes us unique.”

Lang, in turn, tries to instill that same idea in his own students. He describes his lessons as “psychoanalytical,” nudging students to discover what they are looking for. Lang considers teaching “the most moral thing I do.”

“To teach somebody to be so strong that they can ignore you: that’s the goal.” ||

N ew F aculty Q uartet- I n - R esidence

Brentano String Quartet

Appointment begins with the 2014–2015 academic year, follows retirement of Tokyo String Quartet in 2013

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Serena Canin, violin

Dean Robert Blocker announced the appointment of the Brentano String Quartet as the new quartet-inresidence at the Yale School of Music.

The members of the quartet — Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violin; Misha Amory ’89BA, viola; and Nina Lee, cello — will serve as faculty and artistsin-residence at the School.

The appointment will begin in the fall of 2014. They succeed the Tokyo String Quartet, which retired in 2013 after 37 years at YSM. “We are thrilled and honored to become part of the community at the Yale School of Music,” said Amory.

“The Brentano Quartet comes to YSM and the Yale Summer School of Music/ Norfolk Chamber Music Festival with international renown for their exquisite artistry and their musical insights as gifted teachers,” said Dean Robert Blocker when he announced the appointment in October. “They join our distinguished faculty in our commitment to chamber music, a fundamental component of advanced musical study here.”

The Brentano Quartet will anchor the School of Music’s chamber music program, serving as faculty coaches to the many chamber music groups that form a significant part of the School’s curriculum. One of their goals, says Canin, is to “share the joy of what we do, of what string quartets are and can be.”

The ensemble, which has been hailed for its “exceptional insight and

Misha Amory, viola

“We have four distinct personalities and four ways of reacting to music. Everything that we are comes out of many tiny decisions that we make.”

Michael Steinberg, first violin communicative gifts” (Daily Telegraph), as well as its “passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding” performances (London Independent), will perform a concert each semester on the Oneppo Chamber Music Series at the School. They will also spend part of each summer in residence at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, where as artist faculty they will perform and teach.

“The Norfolk Festival is thrilled to welcome an ensemble with the international reputation of the Brentano Quartet — and such wonderful people, too,” says Paul Hawkshaw, director of the Yale Summer School of Music.

“We look forward to many summers of superb concerts and fine teaching with them.”

Peter Oundjian, former first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet and a member of the YSM faculty, noted that the quartet “exudes passion and integrity in everything they do. This appointment is a most exciting development in the history of the Yale School of Music.”

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Like the Tokyo Quartet at the time of its Yale appointment, the Brentano quickly established its place in the international concert scene. Within a few years of its formation in 1992, the Brentano Quartet had already garnered the prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award.

Since then, it has continued to earn accolades, including appointments as inaugural members of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two and a yearlong residency at Wigmore Hall.

The quartet has been in residence at Princeton University since 1999, an appointment that will conclude this May. In a statement from Princeton, Steven Mackey, the chair of the music department there, praised the quartet’s “intellect and talent for teaching” as well as its “collective musicianship [and] humanity.”

In addition to that residency, the quartet’s members serve on the faculties of numerous other institutions: Amory teaches at Juilliard and Curtis, Canin at New York University. Lee teaches at Columbia University, and Steinberg is on the faculty at Mannes.

While attending Yale College, Amory was also involved in the School of Music.

“I treasure my memories of being coached

by Peter Oundjian, Kikuei Ikeda, and Kazuhide Isomura of the Tokyo Quartet,” he said. It is a privilege to have been invited to step into those shoes.”

Yet Amory found himself “disarmed by how accessible they were,” he said, noting that the members of the Tokyo

Michael Steinberg, violin

Quartet were so approachable that one could talk to them almost as if to a colleague. “That was something that I took to heart,” Amory says, when he in turn began teaching.

Other members of the quartet expressed a similarly generous approach to education. Lee says that her own teaching involves “a lot of asking questions.” What she does “depends on the work, it depends on the group.”

Steinberg noted, “We certainly learn as much [from] teaching as anyone ever learns from us.”

“The Brentano String Quartet is a tremendously exciting addition to the faculty,” said Deputy Dean Melvin Chen.

“They will thrill audiences and inspire students, and their commitment to interdisciplinary projects will attract the wider university community.”

In addition to performing the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet explores both very old and very new music. It has performed numerous musical works pre-dating the string quartet as a medium, including music

by Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Purcell, and Josquin. The early music repertoire “really highlights the blend of the four strings,” says Canin.

And the Quartet has collaborated with prominent composers including Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wenchung, Steven Mackey, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. Yet Amory noted that “no matter how far afield [they] roam,” the quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert remain the “core” of their repertoire.

Nina Lee, cello

“[We hope] to share the joy of what we do, of what string quartets are and can be.”

Serena Canin, second violin

The ensemble has commissioned works from Wuorinen, Adolphe, Mackey, David Horne, and Gabriela Frank, among several others. One of their recent collaborations is a piano quintet by the pioneering jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, a winner of a 2013 MacArthur “Genius” Grant and a Yale alumnus.

For the critically-acclaimed independent film A Late Quartet, the filmmakers turned to the Brentano String Quartet for the central music, Beethoven’s Op. 131. Last year, the Brentano Quartet served as the collaborative ensemble for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Each member of the quartet expresses enthusiasm for these collaborations. “It’s important, and it’s exciting,” says Canin.

“You don’t know what you’re going to get when you commission a piece.” And, says Lee, ’We love to be challenged.”

Even though the quartet’s residency won’t begin officially until the fall, they’re already speaking with faculty colleagues about upcoming projects.

“We’re almost taken aback, in a good way, by how much we seem to be

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entering into the school” and the community, says Amory. “Already we feel very welcome in terms of the possible collaborations that are coming up on the campus.”

When asked about the Brentano’s style, each member of the quartet demurred to encapsulate something so elusive and abstract. “We don’t start out trying to have a style,” Canin says. Instead, their identity evolves through their work.

“We have four distinct personalities and four ways of reacting to music,” notes Steinberg. “Everything that we are comes out of many tiny decisions that we make.”

The Los Angeles Times has noted the Brentano’s balance of ensemble and individuality: “Its members perfectly meshed in sound while retaining their individual personalities.”

Yet Amory observes that the members share common values. Lee cites an “uncompromising commitment to serving the music.” Steinberg adds, “We try to be honest in all that we do.”

With the resident quartet such a vital part of YSM, the appointment of the Brentano Quartet marks an important moment for the School. “This is a time of great excitement for the future of the resident quartet program at Yale,” noted Deputy Dean Chen.

It is a big moment for the quartet, as well. Amory seems to sum up the Brentano’s feelings when he says that this appointment is a “take-a-deepbreath moment for us.” ||

Historical Sound Recordings at Yale

By Mark Bailey, Director Yale’s collection of Historical Sound Recordings (HSR) is one of the largest sound archives in the world. From nineteenth-century wax cylinders to CDs, from reel-to-reel tapes to digital files, the collection holds nearly 280,000 recordings. Other formats in the collection include 78s and LPs, reel-to-reel-tapes, audio and video cassettes, CDs, and DVDs. HSR was established in 1961 when Laurence C. Witten II ’51BMus and his wife Cora ’54BMus donated their entire early opera collection to Yale. This gave the university thousands of recordings featuring Enrico Caruso, Adelina Patti, Nellie Melba, Lotte Lehmann, Feodor Chaliapin, Francesco Tamango, Victor Maurel, and many other noteworthy singers.

In subsequent years, HSR expanded its holdings to include rare commercial releases, test pressings, and private recordings. These covered diverse areas including jazz, American theater, classical and popular music, international folk music traditions, instructional audio guides, political speeches, and the spoken arts—plays, poetry, etc.

The collection has the complete recordings of Charles Ives and the Cole Porter Collection. Other highlights include the sound archive of Vladimir Horowitz, the early unpublished recordings of Robert Shaw, and Duke Ellington’s radio broadcasts and tour performances, to name a few.

In addition to the Ives (Class of 1898) and Porter (Class of 1913), Yale is also extensively represented at HSR through recordings by faculty, students, staff, and visitors to campus. For instance, HSR preserves the now-rare recordings of Aldo Parisot performing selected works for cello and piano. There are also recordings of Paul Hindemith conducting works by J.S. Bach and various Renaissance composers with Yale Collegium Musicum.

Currently, HSR is in the process of digitizing the entire proceedings of the Ives Centennial Celebration, which took place in 1974 at New Haven’s Center Church on the Green and featured performances and lectures by Yale faculty. In addition, there are historically informed performances, such live recordings of Malcolm Bilson playing the fortepianos at the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments.

HSR’s studio is located in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library.

Those interested in making a listening appointment should contact the head of HSR, Mark Bailey (mark.bailey@yale.edu). HSR is also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/YaleHSR. ||

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once so much rarer and harder to find; and because we can already see the medium influencing the product itself.

Composer Robert Carl ’76BA of the Hartt School, who also teaches composition, has written about the role of technology in music making: “We composers make our scores on laptops, and listen to mockups of pieces long before they ever emerge from acoustic instruments… [T]echnology

Serious Music Digital Music

By David J. Baker

is becoming a partner with us, with programs that allow for the computer to contribute material in response to our input, both in terms of compositional structures and real-time, interactive signal processing.”

The impact of technology on the audience may be more profound and far-reaching yet. Digital technology is also making contemporary music more available, and therefore more democratic.

Cassandras and distopists predict the demise of serious music in the not-too-distant future. But what if technology could offer a more promising scenario?

It would be ironic if the Internet – accused of killing off so many things, from printed books and newspapers to record stores and common courtesy – could prove beneficial to music research, to the dissemination of good music, and even to its creative renewal.

As increasing numbers of consumers and practitioners fully realize, some of those developments are already under way.

Musicophiles have learned to supplement their collections by taking advantage of digital streaming of

great music that can transform a laptop, desktop, or smart phone into a performance space. The availability of music from all eras places today’s pampered listener in an unprecedented position. But it’s the so-called fringe eras of the repertoire – the earliest and newest music – that benefit most from the sudden explosion of digital access.

Most newsworthy in this respect is contemporary music: because it is being created and distributed in real time, often with minimal delay from composer to listener; because it was 21

Alongside familiar settings for contemporary music like academic workshops (New Music New Haven or Columbia Composers, for instance), more casual public venues for new music have developed on the jazzclub model—in downtown locales like Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan or Brooklyn’s Galapagos—and attract a public that’s broader and younger.

The Internet has now multiplied that alternative movement and made it easily, instantly accessible to an unlimited public.

Attention is often focused now on altmusic composers including Brooklynbased YSM alumni like Bryce Dessner ’98BA, ’99MM or Missy Mazzoli ’06MM. Such musicians, along with performance groups like the Now

“Technology is becoming a partner with us, with programs that allow for the computer to contribute material in response to our input, both in terms of compositional structures and real-time, interactive signal processing.”

Ensemble that commission new works, are helping to erase boundaries between classical and rock music, mixing instruments and styles that had once seemed mutually exclusive. Virtually all of their music can be sampled online; as with so many musicstreaming websites, the visitor to composers’ or ensembles’ sites is invited to purchase music via MP3 downloads (or even commercial discs), but also allowed to hear complete works online free of charge.

The effects of digital distribution on new music should not make us forget the untold riches now available – often at no charge – to music lovers of every stripe and of every period.

Specialists in early music can find sites dedicated entirely to their period (such as jsayles.com for guitar music of the Renaissance, or ancientfm. com for medieval and Renaissance repertoire). Recordings can be sampled on the websites of specific groups, like the Waverly Consort, but generally speaking, practitioners of early music tend to offer less free music than contemporary music groups.

Universities and conservatories often provide feeds of their new compositions, concerts, and master classes. Distance learning can unlock academic resources at institutions here and abroad. “When we think

about the role of technology in the twenty-first century,” said Associate Dean Michael Yaffe, “we think about the opportunities available to the next generation of students. Here at the School of Music, we can live-stream almost any of our concerts, and we retrofitted Morse Recital Hall to be able to show live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. With the renovation and expansion of Hendrie Hall into the Adams Center for Musical Arts, we can create a state-of-the-art facility that’s capable of adapting to the technological opportunities of tomorrow.”

Many other websites offer streaming of classical music—usually audio, sometimes video recordings of performances or excerpts— accompanied by all kinds of ancillary multimedia features. Sinfinimusic.com, for instance, seems geared to young audiences with its breezy style and its filmed sessions, animations, interviews, comic strips, and other features like the “composer of the week” with sample tracks, and various blogs. But it is easy to proceed from the trio “Soave sia il vento,” which is heard as soundtrack to Sinfini’s Così fan tutte comic strip, to a complete Karl Böhm recording of the opera; a link takes you to the music site Spotify (www.spotify.com), which provides free access to a huge library of commercial recordings of classical music, including relatively obscure

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works. Another online radio provider is last.fm, which in addition to playing music also suggests related content and offers links to purchase tracks.

The Internet makes a number of traditional classical music radio stations available beyond their normal broadcast radius—formerly restricted to a single city—and outside customary broadcast schedules. While some stations hew to the familiar (or even overfamiliar) classical staples, an enormous variety of repertoire is available to anyone who searches for it.

A recent comment in a New York Times classical music review may have marked a first of its kind. In his review of a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the writer added this parenthetical comment: “Nothing on the recording of WQXR’s live feed of the concert moves me to revise these opinions substantially….”

He was referring to the broadcast of that same Boston Symphony concert, which was also available on the radio station’s website. Critics now have a chance to check their first impressions against a second hearing of the event, thanks to such broadcasts and online streaming of certain concerts. The critic’s comment draws attention to the remarkable availability of many prominent musical events in playback online, from concert and opera sites all over the world, which is another great benefit for listeners.

“The effects of digital distribution on new music should not make us forget the untold riches now available – often at no charge – to music lovers of every stripe and of every period.”

At the same time, the critic’s assurance that his first opinion did in fact stand up to a second hearing of the performance (via online streaming) may have set a significant precedent.

Will such repeat hearings now be expected of critics, maybe even demanded? Will critics eventually be expected to hear everything twice? Will listeners test reviews against online streaming of a performance? What will become of critics’ traditional authority and stature—another casualty of the democratic (some would say anarchic) effects of the web? Optimists may welcome the demystification of music criticism, just as we enjoy the Internet’s unprecedented offerings, the free access to virtually all the music of the Western canon – and even beyond – and the fusion of genres once considered mutually exclusive.

Another challenge to classical music business-as-usual comes from two performers who promise “to free the world from the constraints of sleepinducing concerts.” In videos accessible on the Internet, clearly influenced by rock clips, the Anderson & Roe Duo – pianists Greg Anderson ’08MMA, ’13DMA and Elizabeth Joy Roe – reflect a strong tendency in digital music performance: the omnipresence online of music videos. This young piano duo hammers out an arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for four hands, as their piano appears to burst into flames at one point and is visited by monstrous caterpillars at another.

Their piano adaptation of Schubert’s Erlkönig becomes a wild rhapsody in which piano timbres assume vocal character.

Another particularly dynamic programming departure—one affecting product, not just presentation—is Tiny Desk Concerts, a series of videos that have been filmed on the desk of producer Bob Boilen of National Public Radio, who founded this series in 2008 as part of the NPR show All Sounds Considered. The office setting, complete with bookshelves, is visible in these mini-concerts (accessible free from the NPR site or on YouTube), which range widely in subject matter and average under fifteen minutes’ running time. While most TDC offerings sample various indie rock musicians and alt-music, programs have also featured organist Paul Jacobs ’02MM, ’03AD, cellist Maya Beiser ’87MM, So Percussion, and the Canadian Brass (whose members include trombonist Achilles Liarmakopoulos ’10MM) performing Bach at Boilen’s desk.

Other video TDC performances, further suggesting openness and an absence of frontiers, featured Vietnamese-born filmtrack composer Van-Anh Vanessa Vo, dissident Iranian musician Mohammad Reza Shajarian, and the Kronos Quartet in its typically adventurous fusion repertoire, such as music by Dessner. Without fanfare, TDC casually incorporate new elements that bring such energy to alt-music and other currents in contemporary music – mixed genres, exotic influences, unorthodox instrumentation, brevity,

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economy, an element of improvisation – that enhance accessibility and experimentation alike.

A striking example of the multimedia approach is Joshua Frankel’s Plan of the City, an animated film combined with live action footage. The film uses music and musicians in an unusually prominent way, suggesting a true audio-visual collaboration rather than relegating the score, a jazz-tinged minimalist work by Judd Greenstein ’04MM entitled Change, to the subservient status of a soundtrack.

Musicians are the main actors, and their performance dominates the action. For a thirteen-minute film like this, the ideal venue is the Internet.

The public may be less aware of another crucial role played by the Internet that has great potential to change the musical landscape. It occurs on an adventurous online station known as Q2, part of the classical station WQXR. Two things set Q2 apart from most streaming sites: the quantity

“Universities and conservatories often provide feeds of their new compositions, concerts, and master classes. Distance learning can unlock academic resources at institutions here and abroad.”

of contemporary music available around the clock and, perhaps most significantly, a note on the site inviting working composers to submit samples of their music for airing.

There are other sites, like Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Grooveshark, that accept uploads of “sounds” of many kinds including music by current composers, so that their creations can be sampled by anyone who is directed to the site. But Q2 functions more like a producer, actually able to air the tracks that young composers submit and able to contact a wider audience online than the modest numbers attending shows in small venues.

This virtual open mike is not yet transformational. But Q2’s invitation could be imitated, to capitalize on the most dynamic promises encountered online: the ongoing activity of living composers, the growth or challenging of the serious music repertoire, an art that’s more than historical. ||

Technology Resources at Yale Yale School of Music:

Library & Web:

Live streaming of selected concerts each year in Morse Recital Hall, Woolsey Hall, the Collection of Musical Instruments, the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and other sites

Audio databases with recordings of complete works, both digital and analog, including collections such as:

Iseman Broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera offered live in HD in Sprague Hall during the season, open to current Yale ID holders On-demand video library featuring YSM performances, profiles, events, and more

DRAM (scholarly resource of online recordings and documents) Naxos Music Library (recordings accessible via new media player) and others Free scores online and free sheet music collections Digital reference tools including Oxford Music Online, Grove Online, and numerous other encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.

Index to periodicals with archival content often available in fulllength text Met Opera on Demand, including audio and video library of performances dating back to 1936

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“It’s funny how we’re always considered extracurricular or exploratory. I like to think of us as co-curricular. We balance students’ lives between home, church and school, as well as in society as a whole.”

William Earvin, Distinguished Music Educator 2013

Left: Percussionists at Morse Summer Music Academy. Right: Ruben Rodriguez ’11MM directs the band at John C. Daniels School.

News from the Music In Schools Initiative

By Kate GonzaleS

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John Miller Instrument Fund Established In the summer of 2013, during the final Morse Summer Music Academy concert, the Music in Schools Initiative awarded brand-new instruments to three students in honor of their hard work and dedication to the program.

The instruments were paid for by the newly-established John Miller Instrument Fund.

The John Miller Instrument Fund was created to honor the memory of John Miller, who served as the manager of Music in Schools Initiative from 2006 to 2011. The fund was designed to provide better instruments for deserving instrumental performers from the New Haven Public Schools, who have participated in the Music in Schools Initiative and the Morse Summer Music Academy.

all day in private lessons, ensemble rehearsals, and classes in musicianship, theory, composition, and conducting.

Instructors include NHPS music teachers, YSM teaching artists, and YSM faculty members.

Morse Summer Music Academy The annual Morse Summer Music Academy hosted a record number of participants last summer—84 New Haven Public Schools students—and Lead Teacher Rubén Rodríguez ’11mm hopes to have even more for the fifth session this summer.

concerts include a short speech by one of the ensemble members before each performance. Students in the 2013 session talked about and played a total of 93 pieces, accumulating over 420 minutes of performance time.

Highlights included a percussion ensemble performance of Terry Riley’s minimalist composition In C; a large jazz ensemble performance of Tito Puente classics Mambo Birdland and Picadillo; and the orchestra and band joining together to play Crystals, composed and conducted by Thomas C. Duffy.

The academy’s students also perform in two full concerts each week in Sprague Hall. In order to encourage deeper thought about the music, these

A field trip to the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival

All three students who received instruments this year study at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School in New Haven: Katherine Roque, flute; Jocelyn Hernandez, clarinet; and Jesús Cortés, clarinet.

These students began their studies in music with John Miller ’07MM at John C. Daniels School and have continued participating in Music in Schools programs through high school. They all plan to major in music or music education in college, and they may use the instruments through college as long as they stay involved in music. When they finish college, the instruments are officially transferred to their ownership.

The Morse Academy offers NHPS students the opportunity to participate free of charge in an intensive four-week music program. It is made possible through a generous endowment established by Enid and Lester Morse ’51BA. Participants are selected based on essays, auditions, and their school GPAs. During the academy, they spend 26

For the 2014 session, Rodriguez is planning an additional series of concerts

outside of Sprague Hall, in order to promote a sense of community engagement in the students, as well as provide more diverse performance opportunities. In fact, much of the 2014 Morse Academy will take place off-campus, due to construction on the new Adams Center for Musical Arts. Many morning classes will take place at nearby Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, and students

a combination of New Haven Public School music teachers, YSM teaching artists, and special guests, the Honors Ensembles bring over 150 New Haven students to the Yale campus each week to receive high-level ensemble experience.

will participate in field trips to the Collection of Musical Instruments, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Yale University Art Gallery, among other places. music.yale.edu/morse-academy

the Ensembles only met in the spring semester, but now rehearsals more closely follow the academic schedule, starting in October and ending in May.

All-City Honors Ensemble expands season The All-City Honors Ensembles is another rapidly expanding program of the Music in Schools Initiative. The first, established in spring 2010, was the All-City Honors Chorus. The Honors Band soon followed in spring 2011, and the Honors Orchestra in spring 2013. With weekly rehearsals led by

2013–14 is a season of firsts for the AllCity Honors Ensembles. This is the first season to start in the fall; previously

With over 150 students total, the Ensembles will also subdivide for the first time. The Band and Chorus each have enough students, with a wide enough range of skills, to justify splitting into two groups based on skill level. Dividing into smaller groups also allows the instructors to focus more closely on students’ musical development. Thus, there are five ensembles this year: wind ensemble, concert band, two choruses; and orchestra.

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Lead Teacher Rubén Rodríguez, who believes that concerts are the most important kind of musical events, will take advantage of this year’s expansions to increase the number of concerts in the program. In addition to the full-length May concert in Sprague Hall, each ensemble will perform in one of the New Haven schools, often sharing the stage with the school’s own band or chorus. “Concerts

bring together conductors, teachers, teaching artists, schools, students, families, and communities, uniting them in a singular musical experience,” Rodríguez notes. These new concerts will also serve as a powerful reminder of our strong partnership with the New Haven Public School District.

Symposium on Music in Schools The fourth biennial Symposium on Music in Schools took place at the Yale School of Music in June 2013.

Fifty outstanding public school music teachers, selected from over 300 nominations, from 32 states around the country, were invited to spend

three days at the School of Music, all expenses paid, and to receive the Yale Distinguished Music Educator Award.

The primary topic of the 2013 Symposium was “The Role of Music in School Reform.” The program began with a presentation by Richard Deasy on the history of school reform, providing a framework for the discussions to come. This talk was

In the Symposium culminating event, all fifty distinguished educators sat down together on the stage of Morse Recital Hall to share their ideas about how and why music should be included in discussions about school reform in the next five years. On the importance of music, William Earvin from Atlanta said, “It’s funny how we’re always considered extracurricular or exploratory. I like to think of us as co-

Awards. The evening also featured a performance by the All-City Honors Chorus, as well as a keynote address by Anne Midgette ’86BA, chief classical music critic for the Washington Post.

As a writer, she stressed, “The ability to talk well about music is something that more and more of us in this field need…

We can’t underestimate the degree to which talking about music, to which your ability to present your case to your

curricular. We balance students’ lives between home, church and school, as well as in society as a whole.” When prompted about the possible use of music as a tool for reform, Sarah Jones from Iowa responded, “Music connects people. In our ensembles, there is a connection—listening, balancing, blending, and adjusting—that can be a model for our professional development teams.”

administrator and to your students, is something essential to what we’re doing — propagating the love and interest in music.”

“Concerts bring together conductors, teachers, teaching artists, schools, students, families, and communities, uniting them in a singular musical experience.”

Rubén Rodríguez ’11MM

followed by a panel discussion with Garth Harries, now Superintendent of the New Haven Public Schools, and Scott Shuler, Immediate Past President of the National Association for Music Education. With encouragement from YSM Associate Dean Michael Yaffe, the two administrators spoke about current issues in school reform and gave advice for music teachers. The first night ended with a talk and concert with members of the cutting-edge chamber music group Decoda, founded in 2011 by alumni of YSM and The Academy.

That evening, the distinguished educators were joined by New Haven teachers and the Yale College Class of ’57. Associate Dean Michael Yaffe and Dean Robert Blocker presented the Distinguished Music Educator

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Supported by the Yale College Class of ’57, the Symposium is a core program of the Music in Schools Initiative. This biennial conference allows Music in Schools to extend its reach beyond the intensive ongoing programs with the New Haven Public Schools, on to a national level. The next Symposium will take place in June 2015, and nominations will open in September 2014. || music.yale.edu/community/symposium

“…a musician’s output is not for the sake of the art form, but for the sake of humanity.”

What is a Musician’s Role in Society?

By Sebastian Ruth Visiting Lecturer in Community Engagement

My involvement at Yale School of Music this year revolves around two questions: What is a musician’s role in society?

What is it about this art form that holds potential for positive societal change?

These questions have been the basis of my work developing Community MusicWorks in Providence, Rhode Island over the past seventeen years.

Community MusicWorks continues to experiment with different programs within its urban chamber music residency, and similar initiatives such as New Haven’s own Music Haven have begun testing these questions as well.

Through my courses at Yale this semester and last, my students and I are stepping back from basic assumptions about what makes a successful career in music. Instead, we ask: what are the important features of music, and what are the appropriate institutions that can facilitate musical experiences in the world? To think critically about today’s musical institutions is to rethink the reasons they exist, and to plan lives in music that are rooted not in the assumptions passed on to us, but rooted in rationales that make music 29

meaningful for the world’s condition.

And from this, what new musical institutions may emerge in the twentyfirst century?

Last semester we explored the notion of service, and how authentic service to a community or society is both rooted in clear perceptions of people who are different from ourselves, and is also personally meaningful to the person serving. In the best scenarios, therefore, acts of musical service are not separate from the “main stage” aspects of musical careers, but are integrated into the intention behind every performance or teaching experience. Taking a cue from great artists of the past, such as Pablo Casals and others, a musician’s output is not for the sake of the art form, but for the sake of humanity.

This semester we are exploring the notion of civil society, and the ways in which existing and new institutions of music can re-conceive of their relationships to the public, so that we look beyond developing new audiences to developing wholly deeper impacts on society as a whole. ||

B O A R D

OF

A D V I S OR S

P r o f i l e

Anne-Marie Soullière The president of the Fidelity Foundation and a founding member of the YSM Board of Advisors, Soullière has dedicated her career to effective nonprofit management. Her relationship with the Yale School of Music began in 1970 with a secretarial job and has grown immensely since then: in addition to serving on the Board of Advisors, she is also a member of the Battell Stoeckel Trust, the fundamental source of support of the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

A graduate of Wellesley College, AnneMarie Soullière earned her M.B.A. from the University of California at Los Angeles. A fellowship at the National Endowment for the Arts provided her first experience with grantmaking. Her early career also included a post at the New England Conservatory of Music.

She returned to the School of Music in 1975 to create the position of executive assistant in the office of then-Dean Philip Nelson. Yale’s development office recruited Soullière in the early 1980s; for several years she served as a major gifts officer for New England with arts responsibilities across the country.

In 1987, Soullière became the president of the Boston-based Fidelity Foundation, a position she has held for 28 years. She describes the foundation’s work as “helping non-profit organizations think about their infrastructure” in order to better “accomplish their missions.” The foundation operates at the national level, making grants in the areas of arts and culture, education, community organizations, and medical research.

The past 28 years, she notes, have “been

a time of tremendous growth in the philanthropic world,” as well as in the challenges that nonprofits face.

Soullière’s experience in the nonprofit world also includes trusteeships for the Marlboro Festival and the Virgil Thomson Trust, among other organizations. Her friendship with Virgil Thomson began when she was working at Yale and he was teaching a class; Thomson’s many musical portraits include one of Soullière (published in 1981 as part of Nineteen Portraits for Piano).

“Philanthropy is about people and resources: putting them together and deploying them in ways that are effective for organizations.”

The Yale School of Music established its Board of Visitors (now known as the Board of Advisors) in 1996. Soullière recalls that, when Robert Blocker became Dean in 1995, he was “very thorough in speaking with people who had been involved with the School of Music in different capacities.” Out of those conversations grew the idea to form an advisory board. Soulliere has served on that board ever since its inception. The members of the Board of Advisors, she says, are “extremely thoughtful people who have great analytic skills. Each one of us has found a place in the School of Music that we want to be particularly involved in, as well as being involved overall.”

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For Soullière, that place is the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. She first attended a concert there in 1970.

Over time, she “came to understand what it meant for the performers and composers who have been able to study there, and also what it meant for the faculty.” Therefore, she says, “it was a pleasure to get more deeply involved.”

In 2011, when William Gridley announced his retirement from the Battell Stoeckel Trust, Soullière was asked to take the open seat on the trust.

“I greatly enjoy my association with the School,” says Soullière, who visits YSM and Norfolk several times each year. “It has allowed me to continue friendships and professional associations with people that I really value, and also to engage with the students and faculty of the present day.”

“The time that I spent working in the School was extremely important to my own personal and professional development,” Soullière continues.

“I’ve always been very grateful for the opportunity to be part of that community, and it’s been great to continue that in a volunteer capacity.” ||

Student and Alumni News

Marie Barker Nelson Bennett ’49MusB saw the concert premiere of her opera “Orpheus Lex” on Feb. 13, 2010 at Symphony Space in New York City. The libretto was written by David Kranes, a Yale School of Drama alumnus. This modern version of the Orpheus myth was conducted by Harold Rosenbaum and the New York Virtuoso Singers with the Artemis Chamber Ensemble. David Arnold, baritone, took the part of Orpheus; Wendy Baker, soprano, was Eurydice; and the chorus portrayed the sounds of the river. Reviews hailed the opera as a “major discovery” and a “magnificent piece.” Marie worked with Paul Hindemith during her years at YSM. Brian Fennelly ’65MM, ’68PhD received the 2013 Union College Outstanding Engineering Alumnus Award for his career in music. His CD “The Other Side of Time,” released on Albany Records, featured five of his compositions, including works for orchestra, wind orchestra, and chamber ensemble. Performers included Jean Kopperud, Chris Gekker, duo parnas, the Moravian Philharmonic, and Washington Square Ensemble, among others. His latest composition, “Tableaux” for piano and ten instruments, was written for Ensemble Mise-En and will premiere in New York at the end of March.

Brian Fennelly ’65MM, ’68PhD

Althea Mitchell Waites ’65MM, piano, released the recording “Celebration: Music of American Composers” in October 2012. The disc features two works written for and dedicated to her: Curt Cacioppo’s “Fantasy-Choruses on ’This Little Light of Mine’” and Jeremiah Evans’ “Metropolitan Express.”

This is her thirrd CD featuring music that has never been recorded or rarely heard in performance. Waites is currently on the piano faculty at California State University at Long Beach. She has been concertizing throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as a soloist, chamber musician, and collaborative artist. Recent seasons have included a performance of Messiaen’s “Visions de L’Amen” (1943) with pianist and colleague Mark Uranker, and solo recitals to showcase music from the new CD. Lori Laitman ’76BA, ’77MM will have her children’s opera “The Three Feathers” (with libretto by Dana Gioia, based on a Grimm’s fairy tale) premiered in October 2014. The opera was commissioned by the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech. In May, 2014, Joy in Singing will present the songs of Lori Laitman and Stephen Foster at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Performing Arts Library.

Later in May, at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, Music of Remembrance will premiere two of her works: “In Sleep The World Is Yours” (poetry by Selma

Althea Mitchell Waites ’65MM

Lori Laitman ’76BA, ’77MM 31

Meerbaum-Eisinger) and the English version of “Todesfuge” (poem by Paul Celan). Opera Colorado will present the professional world premiere of her opera “The Scarlet Letter” (libretto by David Mason, based on the Hawthorne classic), in May 2016, with Elizabeth Futral as Hester Prynne.

Rhonda Rider ’80MM, cello, has released a new CD on MSR Classics.

As a culmination of her Artist-inResidence position at Grand Canyon National Park, “The Grand Canyon Project” CD includes ten new pieces for solo cello based on aspects of the national park. Rider continues her work as Chair of Chamber Music at the Boston Conservatory as well as serving on the cello faculty there and at Boston University. She is the cellist of Triple Helix Piano Trio.

David Saunders ’83MM is currently a professor of horn and music theory at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho.

He has spent the past ten summers in New Hampshire as principal horn with the New Hampshire Music Festival.

Amy Frost Baumgarten ’85MM has been principal cellist of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra/ Washington National Opera Orchestra since 2000. Highlights have included solo performances for ballets of Schubert, Dvorák, and Villa Rojo in the Opera House, and of Tosca and Otello in Japan with Placido

Rhonda Rider ’80MM

Susan Merdinger ’85MM

Student and Alumni News

Domingo. She is an active chamber musician at venues such as the Phillips Collection and Kennedy Center, and has performed with the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra. In 2011 she joined the adjunct faculty of George Mason University School of Music, and returned to Eastern Music Festival, where she has been a longtime faculty member. She and her husband flutist Jonathan Baumgarten have a daughter Sarah, born in 2006.

Pianist Susan Merdinger ’85MM was invited to join the International Roster of Steinway Artists in December 2012.

In May 2013, Merdinger performed an all-Schubert program for the second time on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Chamber Music Series at the Art Institute. In June 2013, Ms. Merdinger made her Chicago Philharmonic debut under the direction of Mattia Rondelli. She returned for her third summer on the faculty at Summit Music Festival, inculding concerts with the Elaris Duo (cellist Steven Elisha ’85MM and his wife, Larisa Elisha). Merdinger is also a founding artist faculty member of the Fine Arts Music Society (FAMS) Festival of Brown County.

Stephen Pelkey ’85MM has been named both Artistic Director and Philharmonic Orchestra conductor of the Southeastern Minnesota Youth Orchestras (SEMYO). Pelkey, a cellist,

Antonio (Tony) Underwood ’87MM

Elizabeth Suh Lane ’89MM

last served as director and teacher for the North Kansas City School District in North Kansas City, Mo., and as a private cello instructor there. Before that, he taught in the Houston, Texas area schools. Pelkey replaces outgoing artistic director Nancy Rohde. SEMYO is dedicated to the artistic and personal development of young instrumental musicians. semyo.org Antonio (Tony) Underwood ’87MM founded the production company Tone East Music, which has produced five independent CDs to date: “Tuba Mirum,” “They Call Him Antonio,” “Tone Poems I: And your tuba, too, Tony!”, “Tone Poems II: An American Symphony No. 1,” and “Tone Poems III: Synergy.” Two more, “Tone Poems IV: Children Of Light” and “A Tuba Sonate,” will be released in spring 2014. These recordings have broken through the style category of Pop/Rock on the tuba, bringing the instrument new recognition as a solo voice in commercial music. www.toneeastmusic.com Elizabeth Suh Lane ’89MM, violin, is founder and artistic director of the Bach Aria Soloists. She led them to their fourteenth Season of Collaboration in Kansas City with four important local arts partners. These partners included two presenters, the Folly Theater and JCCC Performing Arts Series; modern dance company Owen/Cox Dance

Jeremy Beck ’92MMA, ’95DMA 32

Company; and new music ensemble newEar Contemporary Chamber Music.

In 2013, the Bach Aria Soloists’ Night of Tango concert at the spectacular new Kauffman Center was named the No. 1 Kansas City concert of the year.

Composer Jeremy Beck ’92MMA, ’95DMA released a fifth CD of music on Innova Recordings in 2013. “String Quartets” features four of Beck’s five string quartets, recorded by diverse ensembles from Los Angeles; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Louisville, Kentucky. The San Francisco Chronicle called it “… appealing and skillfully crafted,” and Gramophone noted, “[This] American composer knows the importance of embracing the past while also going his own way. … [In] Beck’s forceful and expressive sound world … the writing is concise in structure and generous in tonal language, savouring both the dramatic and the poetic.”

Violinist Monica Germino ’93MM was a guest artist in residence at the Boston Conservatory’s New Music Festival, teaching and performing with faculty and students. The residency took place in February, 2014. Her collaborations with sound designer Frank van de Weij, including performances of “With a Blue Dress On”

by Julia Wolfe ’86MM, have received rave reviews in Seen + Heard, the New York Times, and The Strad.

Monica Germino ’93MM

Carol Williams ’98AD

Christine Gangelhoff ’95AD, flute, is a member of C Force, which released its newest recording, “Deep Blue.”

Gangelhoff and her fellow C Force members are on the faculty at the College of the Bahamas in Nassau on the island of New Providence.

Recently Gangelhoff also published the Bibliography of Art Music by Caribbean Composers.

Scott Morris ’96MM, ’97MMA has been recording his own arrangements of Erik Satie for a project called “Phonology: the Music of Erik Satie for Guitar” (MidShelf Music 1013). There will be a CD/DVD plus a book with all of the arrangements published this spring. The recording was made even more special by GSI (Guitar Salon International) who supplied the crème de la crème of French guitars for the recording, including a 2002 Friedrich, 2012 Rohe, 2010 Ligier, 1980 Friedrich, 2010 D. Field, and a 1956 Bouchet. In addition to the solo guitar music, a number of fantastic musicians joined me including Andrew York, Richard Kravchak (oboe), and Nanette Gobel.

Carol Williams ’98AD has been the Civic Organist of the City of San Diego since 2001. She is the city’s seventh Civic Organist and is the first woman in the United States to hold such a position. As Civic Organist, she plays weekly Sunday afternoon concerts.

Williams is also the artistic director of the Spreckels Organ Society, which hosts an annual international summer

Kim Perlak ’01MM

organ festival. Williams is also the organist-in-residence of St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Diego. The host of the “TourBus” DVD series of Great Organs of the World, her latest release features the massive organ at First Congregational Church in Los Angeles.

On behalf of the Spreckels Organ Society, Williams will commission works from leading composers to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Spreckels Organ.

Composer Lance Hulme ’94MMA, ’98DMA has released his fourth orchestra recording, “Sirens’ Song,” on the Ablaze Records Orchestral Masters, Vol. 1 CD. Hulme is professor at North Carolina Central University, where he leads the theory and composition programs.

John Kline ’98MM, ’99MMA was hired as Vice President for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success at Connect for Education. C4E is a leading elearning developer/digital publisher specializing in fully integrated turnkey online courses and online course materials for higher education.

Composer Benjamin Broening ’01MM collaborated with eighth blackbird on the album “Trembling Air,” which was released in November on Bridge Records. This follows last year’s release of “Recombinant Nocturnes,” a disc of piano music on Innova. Broening was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in April 2013.

Christian Van Horn ’02MM, ’03AD

Paul Jacobs ’02MM, ’03AD 33

Kim Perlak ’01MM became Assistant Chair of Guitar at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

She began the position on September 1, 2013. With 1100 students and sixty faculty, the guitar department at Berklee is one of the largest and most stylistically diverse in the world. In addition to supervising this department, Kim will be teaching and working with her colleagues to develop programs.

Erika Schafer ’01MM is assistant professor of trumpet at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, which hosted the 2014 Trumpet Festival of the Southeast. This annual celebration of trumpet playing and teaching in the southeastern United States took place January 17–19. Featured artists included YSM faculty member Allan Dean. Approximately 200 people took part in the festival, with twentytwo universities and nine exhibitors represented. The festival was made possible in part by a grant from the International Trumpet Guild.

Christian Van Horn ’02MM, ’03AD made his Metropolitan Opera debut this season in a new production of “Falstaff” conducted by James Levine in December 2013. The performance was part of the Live in HD broadcast series.

Van Horn is also performing in a run of “La Bohème” at the Met this spring.

Jamie Andrew Kirsch ’03MM

Christopher Jennings ’04MM

Student and Alumni News

Paul Jacobs ’02MM, ’03AD has been appointed to lead the Oregon Bach Festival’s newly-created Organ Institute in the 2014 season. The Oregon Bach Festival is arguably the first major festival to add a component devoted exclusively to organ study and performance. The inaugural Organ Institute will take place June 30–July 5, 2014, within the Oregon Bach Festival’s schedule of June 25–July 13, 2014. Through the Institute, organists will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the art of organ playing, exploring technique and interpretation through specialized seminars. In preparation for a final public recital, participants will perform in daily master classes under the direction of Jacobs and others. The Institute will be open to both performing participants by recorded audition and to nonperforming auditors.

Jamie Andrew Kirsch ’03MM has been appointed the next music director of Chorus Pro Musica. Kirsch is the director of choral activities at Tufts University.

Christopher Jennings ’04MM, organ, was a featured performer on American Public Radio’s Pipedreams in October.

The performance was recorded live from his concert at the East Texas Organ Festival last fall. The program is available for streaming on the Pipedreams website: pipedreams. publicradio.org/listings/2013/1342

Vincent Carr ’06MM

Christopher is Associate Organist and Choirmaster at St. James’ Church New York City. He is currently pursuing a performance certificate in Well Coordinated Injury-Preventive Keyboard Technique with the worldrenowned pianist Barbara Lister-Sink at Salem College.

Daniel Visconti became the newest ensemble member of Fifth House Ensemble. 5HE first worked with Visconti as a composition faculty member at the 2013 fresh inc festival.

In his own words, Visconti’s role with 5HE will include creating “homebrewed music and arrangements for a variety of occasions, made exactly to order” for 5HE and its cross-genre artistic collaborations, fostering relationships with living composers, and developing compositional activities for use in 5HE’s education and outreach programs in partnership with composer Stacy Garrop.

Organist Vincent Carr ’06MM studied composition last summer at La Schola Cantorum de Paris, upon the invitation of the European American Musical Alliance. During his residency in Paris, he studied harmony, counterpoint, musicianship, and composition in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger from her last disciples and students. He completed three compositions: “The Baby’s Dance” and “Ave Verum Corpus” for SATB chorus, and the Petit Suite for Piano, all under the guidance

Julian Pellicano ’07MM, ’09MM

Dominick DiOrio ’08MM, ’12DMA 34

of American composer David Conte.

Following his studies in Paris, Mr. Carr presented a solo organ recital in Lille (Flanders) as part of the city’s Organ Festival. In June 2006, he finished a seven-year tenure as the Associate Organist at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, NJ. He currently freelances in New York City and is an adjunct professor at the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University.

Jeremy Harting ’06MM recently accepted the position of Adjunct Instructor of Guitar at both Saint Joseph’s University and Eastern University. He served as Assistant Professor of Guitar at Ithaca College during the 2012–13 academic year.

Julian Pellicano ’07MM, ’09MM was appointed Resident Conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in Manitoba, Canada. In addition to his duties with the WSO, which began in September 2013, Pellicano joins the conducting faculty of the University of Manitoba and serves as the music director of the University of Manitoba Symphony Orchestra.

Dominick DiOrio ’08MM, ’12DMA is the recipient of an inaugural grant from the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music.

DiOrio is currently assistant professor of choral conducting at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

The grant will allow DiOrio to write a

Michael Mizrahi ’08DMA

Elizaveta Miller ’11MM

new work for NOTUS: Contemporary Vocal Ensemble for performance with the ensemble next year. This project is in line with DiOrio’s personal goal of commissioning new works for NOTUS, with a particular emphasis on new works by IU composition department faculty and students. It is DiOrio’s mission to commission a new work from every member of the Jacobs School composition faculty in the next few years.

Flutist Ginevra Petrucci ’12MM, ’13AD joined the Kodály Quartet to record Friedrich Kuhlau quintets for flute and strings on the Brilliant Classics label. Petrucci also played her debut recital at Carnegie Hall with pianist Bruno Canino on Nov. 21, 2013 in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. The program included the world premiere of a piece composed by Daniel Schlosberg ’10BA, ’13MM, ’14MMA, commissioned for this event.

Pianist Michael Mizrahi ’08DMA, assistant professor of music at Lawrence University since 2009, received the Lawrence Award for Excellence in Creative Activity. Established in 2006, the award recognizes outstanding creative work for advancing Lawrence’s mission. Mizrahi’s debut album, “The Bright Motion” on New Amsterdam Records, was released in 2012. It was included on both Time Out New York’s and Time Out Chicago’s annual list of best albums of 2012. Mizrahi is a founding member of both the NOW Ensemble and the Moët Trio.

Wayne Weng ’12AD won first prize in the seventh Iowa International Piano Competition, held March 7–9, 2013.

The first two rounds of the intensive three-day event included a solo recital and a chamber music performance.

In the final round, Weng performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major with the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ryan Haskins.

Elizaveta Miller ’11MM won first prize of the Musica Antiqua fortepiano competition in Bruges, Belgium.

Since graduating from YSM, she has also received second prize at the international fortepiano competition Premio Ferrari in Rovereto, Italy and the winner of the 1st prize at the Nikolay Rubinstein piano competition in Paris, France.

Ginevra Petrucci ’12MM, ’13AD

Wayne Weng ’12AD

Cristóbal Gajardo ’13MM was invited to the University of Chile to lead a chamber music workshop. Gajardo, a percussionist, worked with ten students for two weeks and gave a final concert.

In the first part of the concert, the students performed the pieces that they worked on with Gajardo. The second part featured Gajardo performing solo pieces as well as duets with a flutist.

The concert featured the Chilean premiere of pieces by Elliot Cole, Peter Klatzow, and Alejandro Viñao.

Cristóbal Gajardo ’13MM 35

Yue Grace Guo ’13MM has been appointed principal harp of the China Philharmonic, which is directed by Yu Long. Previously, while still at Yale, Grace won the Anne Adams Awards from the American Harp Society.

She was also the first prize winner in the senior division of the 2011 harp competition on the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) Solo Competition. Grace won a fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center, which she attended in the summer of 2013.

Composer Fernando Buide ’09MMA, ’13DMA was awarded the seventh edition of the Aeos-BBVA composition prize for his piece “Fragmentos del Satiricón.”

The award includes a cash prize and the performance of the work by numerous professional orchestras in Spain in the 2014–15 and 2015–16 seasons. The prize is given by the Spanish Association of Symphony Orchestras (AEOS) and the BBVA Foundation. Buide is currently a professor of composition and music theory at the Conservatorio Superior de Música da Coruña, Spain. ||

Fernando Buide ’09MMA, ’13DMA

A L U M N I

P r o f i l e

Richard and John Contiguglia Identical twins Richard and John Contiguglia (both ’59BA, ’61MM) have played piano together since they were five years old. Now their career has started to come full circle.

Recently the Contiguglia brothers received their second Grand Prix du Disque from the Liszt Society of Budapest, following the 2012 release of their Liszt-Bartók CD on Gemini CD Classics. The award was presented on October 22, Liszt’s birthday, at the Franz Liszt Academy.

Their first Grand Prix Award from the Liszt Society came 37 years earlier, in 1975. Honoring their recording of Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, it was the first award that the Society conferred.

At the age of twelve, in their hometown of Auburn, New York, the brothers performed on a recital with the composer and pianist Percy Grainger.

Afterward, Grainger gave them many of his two-piano scores. They have continued to perform Grainger’s music, including several broadcasts on NPR during the Grainger centenary year, 1982, and three albums featuring Grainger’s music. In 2011, they traveled to Australia to participate in Townsville’s 21st Festival of Chamber Music, which celebrated the music of Franz Liszt and Percy Grainger.

After graduating from Yale, where they both studied piano with Bruce Simonds, the Contiguglias studied the duo repertoire for four years with Dame Myra Hess. They made their London debut in 1962. In 2008, they were the featured pianists for the annual celebration of Dame Myra Hess Day at London’s National Gallery. “The occasion was without a doubt one of the highlights of our lives,” says Richard Contiguglia.

“I think that our most important contribution as a piano duo during our 52-year career,” said John, “has been to introduce a trove of two-piano and four-hand compositions

by Liszt, Bartók and Percy Grainger, and, yes, even Franz Schubert, to the music-loving public.”

Many of their records on the Connoisseur Society label of Liszt and Bartók duos, among other pieces, were firstrecorded performances.

The brothers presented modern-day premieres “of these and other Liszt compositions, including numerous Symphonic Poems, in London, New York and Holland,” said John. “We gave probably the first complete

“I profited enormously from Yale’s liberal arts curriculum, which made me curious about many subjects besides music for the rest of my life.” performances ever in New York and Holland of Liszt’s Grosses Konzertstück über Mendelssohn’s ’Lieder ohne Worter,’ which we reconstructed from manuscript copies.”

“And I’m proud of that,” he continued.

“It’s led the way for a richer duo piano repertoire.”

That enriched repertoire also includes Max Bruch’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra; they gave the New 36

York premiere of that piece with the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. With the Cleveland Orchestra, they revived Victor Babin’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra.

Richard and John Contiguglia received their B.A. degrees summa cum laude and were elected to Phi Beta Kappa in their junior year. At graduation they were awarded the Charles Seymour Prize, jointly, for achieving the highest academic average in the graduating class of Berkeley College.

Both brothers credit their Yale education, in part, for their musical curiosity. “I profited enormously from Yale’s liberal arts curriculum, which made me curious about many subjects besides music for the rest of my life,” says Richard. John adds, “I just look back and reflect on how lucky we were.” ||

Recordings

Sharon Ruchman ’73MM A Bit of Tango and More…

Sharon Ruchman, composer and pianist, announced her recent departure from traditional classical music with the release of her sixth CD of original music, “A Bit of Tango and More…” The CD, released October 2013, features 13 tracks of Ruchman’s original music which includes two tangos, “Slow Tango” and “Milonga.” In addition, the release includes 11 original classical compositions, including her Trio in G minor for violin, cello, and piano; Sonata in D major for cello and piano; and the Piano Sonata in A-flat major, all featuring Ruchman on piano. www.sharonruchman.com Sharon Isbin ’78BA, ’79MM Sharon Isbin & Friends: Guitar Passions

Sharon Isbin released her latest recording on Sony Classical. “Sharon Isbin & Friends: Guitar Passions” pays tribute, Isbin writes, to her “guitar heroes, artists that I admire from the classical, rock and jazz worlds, many of whom have been great friends and performing partners… Our collaboration on these works, inspired

by South American and Spanish roots, has led to the creation of seven premiere recordings.” The recording includes music by Joaquin Rodrigo, Isaac Albéniz, Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Anne Wilson and Nancy Wilson (Heart), Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Gaudencio Thiago de Mello, among others.

Rhonda Rider ’80MM

David Lang ’83MMA, ’89DMA

The Grand Canyon Project

death speaks

Rhonda Rider, cello, released a new CD on MSR Classics titled “The Grand Canyon Project.” The album is a culmination of her Artist-in-Residence position at the Grand Canyon National Park, which she was awarded in 2010.

Throughout Rider’s time with the park, she performed eleven pieces commissioned especially for her in fifteen concerts across the U.S. The new CD includes ten new pieces for solo cello, each based on some feature of the National Park. Throughout working on her latest album, Ms. Rider has continued her work as Chair of Chamber Music at The Boston Conservatory and as cello faculty there and at Boston University.

David Lang released “death speaks” on Canteloupe. The recording includes Lang’s “depart” as well as the title track, which was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Stanford Lively Arts. In the title song cycle, death is a character personified: Lang wrote for the piece’s Carnegie Hall debut last year, “It isn’t a state of being or a place or a metaphor, but a person, a character in a drama who can tell us in our own language what to expect in the World to Come.” Featured performers on the recording include Yale alumni Bryce Dessner ’98BA, ’99MM (guitar) and Maya Beiser ’87MM (cello).

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Recordings

“[This] American composer knows the importance of embracing the past while also going his own way. … [In] Beck’s forceful and expressive sound world … the writing is concise in structure and generous in tonal language, savouring both the dramatic and the poetic.”

Christine Gangelhoff ’95AD Deep Blue

Christine Gangelhoff, flute, is a member of C Force, which released its newest recording, “Deep Blue.” “Deep Blue” reflects the ensemble’s commitment to preserving and promoting art music from the Bahamas and the neighboring Caribbean region. It is a compilation of original compositions, transcriptions, and arrangements of pieces written in a classical vein while manifesting elements of Bahamian folk culture in the use of theme, rhythm, and melody.

Gangelhoff and her fellow C Force memebers are all faculty at the College of the Bahamas in Nassau on the island of New Providence.

Susan Merdinger ’85MM

Marco Beltrami ’91MM

Carnival Retrospection

Carrie The Wolverine

Pianist Susan Merdinger released two CDs in 2013. “Carnival” features two major works by Robert Schumann, Carnaval and Faschingsswank aus Wien.

“Retrospection” is a historical release of recordings she made while a student at Yale. The March/April 2014 issue of Fanfare Magazine has a review of both CDs and an interview with Merdinger.

Bryce Dessner ’98BA, ’99MM Aheym

Composer Marco Beltrami has released the soundtracks to the movies “Carrie” and “The Wolverine.” The soundtrack to “Carrie” was released in October 2013, and “The Wolverine” in July 2013.

Jeremy Beck ’92MMA, ’95DMA String Quartets

Composer Jeremy Beck released a fifth CD of music on Innova Recordings in 2013. “String Quartets” features four of Beck’s five string quartets, recorded by diverse ensembles from Los Angeles; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Louisville, Kentucky. The San Francisco Chronicle called it “… appealing and skillfully crafted,” and Gramophone noted,

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Bryce Dessner collaborated with the Kronos Quartet on the album “Aheym,” released in November on Anti- Records.

Dessner’s debut recording as a composer, “Aheym” features four tracks, including “Tenebre,” an homage to Laurence Neff, Kronos Quartet’s lighting designer of 25 years. “Aheym,” which means “homeward” in Yiddish, was initially written for the Kronos Quartet’s performance at the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival in 2009.

Lance Hulme ’98DMA Sirens’ Song

Composer Lance Hulme released his fourth orchestra recording, “Sirens’ Song,” on the Ablaze Records Orchestral Masters, Vol. 1 CD. “Sirens’ Song” was commissioned by the University of Oklahoma Philharmonic and was the “stand out winning work” of the Ablaze Records’ call for scores. The recording is with the Brno Philharmonic orchestra under Maestro Mikel Toms. Hulme is professor at North Carolina Central University, in charge of the theory and composition programs.

Benjamin Broening ’01MM Trembling Air

Composer Benjamin Broening collaborated with eighth blackbird on the album “Trembling Air,” which was released in November on Bridge Records.

Michael Mizrahi ’03MM, ’04MMA, ’08DMA The Bright Motion

Pianist Michael Mizrahi released his debut album, “The Bright Motion,” in 2012 on New Amsterdam Records. It was included on both Time Out New York’s and Time Out Chicago’s annual list of best albums of 2012. The 10-track disc is a collection of new works for solo piano by current-day composers, including Patrick Burke ’03MM, ’04MMA, ’09DMA; Mark Dancigers ’03BA, ’05MM; and Judd Greenstein ’04MM. The video of the album’s title track was featured on National Public Radio’s “Deceptive Cadence,” which hailed it as “a meditation on quietude amidst unceasing movement, a thickwalled cell of solitary contentment in the churn of daily life.”

Colin Lynch ’06MM

Greg Anderson ’08MMA, ’13DMA

The Organ of Stambaugh Auditorium

An Amadeus Affair

Colin Lynch released his debut solo album, “The Organ of Stambaugh Auditorium”, on the Raven Label. In the recording, he plays works by Whitlock, Parry, Roger-Ducasse, and Vierne on the four-manual, 67-stop E.M Skinner organ in Stambaugh Auditorium, Youngstown, Ohio. The hall and organ were built in 1926, and in 2010 all of the original equipment of the organ was restored. Colin Lynch is Associate Director of Music and the Organist at Trinity Church in Copley Square, Boston, MA.

The Anderson & Roe Piano Duo — Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe —released “An Amadeus Affair,” their second recording on the Steinway label. Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos is surrounded by four-hand arrangements of music from his operas and concertos.

Anderson & Roe’s first release on the Steinway label, “When Words Fade,” was released to critical acclaim and spent over a dozen weeks on the Billboard Classical Charts.

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Recordings

cadenzas. “I approached the piece not from a scholarly or editorial perspective, but more as a sprawling playground for pianistic invention and virtuosity, taking cues from the composer-pianist tradition Mozart helped to crystallize,” Andres explains.

Daniel Wohl ’12 MMA Corps Exquis

Composer/performer Daniel Wohl released his debut album “Corps Exquis” on New Amsterdam Records in June 2013. The electroacoustic album was honored as a WQXR/Q2 Music Album of the Week and features acclaimed new music ensemble Transit as well as guest performances by So Percussion and others.

Ginevra Petrucci ’12MM, ’13AD Kuhlau Flute Qunitets

Flutist Ginevra Petrucci ’12MM, ’13AD joined the Kodály Quartet to record quintets by Friedrich Kuhlau on the Brilliant Classics label. The CD, featuring three Kuhlau quintets for flute and strings, was recorded December 2012 at the Phoenix Studio in Budapest. The string players on the recording are Attila Falvay violin; János Fejérvári, viola; Mihály Várnagy, viola; and György Éder, cello. These quintets are scored unconventionally for flute, violin, two violas, and cello. The flute essentially takes the role of first violin rather than soloist, becoming an integral part of the musical fabric and structure.

Matthew Barnson ’07MM, ’08MMA, ’12DMA Sibyl Tones

Timo Andres ’07BA, ’09MM Home Stretch

Timo Andres released his album “Home Stretch” on Nonesuch in July 2013.

Andres pairs the newly-composed title work with two reinventions of works by musical heroes Mozart and Brian Eno. The Metropolis Ensemble, led by conductor Andrew Cyr, performs on the album, with Andres on piano.

The piece “Home Stretch,” written for pianist David Kaplan ’07MM, 08MMA, was conceived as a companion piece to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12, K. 414. Mozart left much of the solo part unwritten, and pianists generally play from a completed score; Andres, instead, inserts his own voice into the left hand and ends the work with newly-written

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Composer Matthew Barnson has released his latest CD, “Sibyl Tones,” on Tzadik Records. The CD features three original pieces for string quartet performed by the Arditti Quartet and the JACK Quartet.

ADDENDUM The Spring 2013 issue of Music at Yale inaccurately stated that the Yale International Choral Festival, held in June 2012, was the first of its kind.

Knowledgeable alumni have contacted us to say that Yale has previously held an international choral festival, which took place approximately forty years ago.

If you have memories from that event, kindly share them with musicnews@yale.edu.

Publications

Christine Gangelhoff ’95AD Christine Gangelhoff published the Bibliography of Art Music by Caribbean Composers: Volume 2. The International Journal of Bahamian Studies (IJBS), the research publication of The College of The Bahamas dedicated the second installment of Volume 19 (2013) to music of the Caribbean, including 12 Caribbean nations. It is an open-access, peer-reviewed publication featuring research by Gangelhoff, music faculty at The College, and Cathleen LeGrand, former research librarian at the institution. The first volume (Volume 17, No. 1) was published in 2011. The authors have been recognized for their research in this area by being awarded The College of The Bahamas Stanley Wilson Award for Excellence in Research. They intend to devote the third volume of the bibliography to the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Jessica Wiskus ’00MM, ’01MMA, ’06DMA Jessica Wiskus has published a new book, The Rhythm of Thought: Art, Literature and Music after MerleauPonty (University of Chicago Press, 2013). The book explores the work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, using his thought to develop the concept of “rhythm” as a philosophical notion of art that is expressed not only through, for example, the music of Debussy, but also through the works of Mallarmé, Cézanne, and Proust. Wiskus’ academic research draws on her experience as a horn player, and influences her examination in The Rhythm of Thought of philosophical inquiry as a mode of artistic expression. ||

Sean Chen ’14AD Cliburn Competition Crystal Award

Pianist Sean Chen, the Crystal Award winner in the Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, released a disc on Harmonia Mundi. The composite recital, recorded in concert at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, includes Brahms’ Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 21, No. 1; Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata; and Bartók’s Three Etudes, Op. 18.

Tell us about your recording and publishing projects at music.yale.edu/alumni/submit-news 41

In Memoriam

Mitch Leigh ’51BM, ’52MM

Mitch Leigh, a Yale graduate and benefactor, died Sunday, March 16, following a stroke. Dean Blocker announced the news to the School of Music community “with immense gratitude for his life and unspeakable sadness for our loss.”

Mitch Leigh was born in 1928 in Brooklyn. His parents, who had arrived in New York in 1921, made it a priority for him to study music. After attending the High School of Music and Art, he joined the army in 1946 in order to take advantage of the G.I. Bill. While recovering at Walter Reed Army Hospital from a baseball injury, he heard music by Paul Hindemith on the radio and wrote to him at Yale. The next fall he enrolled, earning his bachelor’s degree from Yale College in 1951 and his master’s from the Yale School of Music in 1952.

Dean Blocker noted, “Mitch Leigh continually maintained that his time at Yale was the turning point in his life. His love and admiration for Keith Wilson, his lifelong friendship with Willie Ruff, and his gratitude for having Paul Hindemith as his teacher were all dominant themes in his Yale experience.”

Leigh once said in an interview, “After working with [Hindemith], when I left Yale I could write anything.” Leigh is best known for the musical Man of La Mancha, with book by Dale Wasserman and lyrics by Joe Darion. Based on Cervantes’s The Adventures of Don Quixote, the musical opened on Broadway in 1965 and won two Tony Awards.

Leigh was also a producer, director, and businessman.

One of the School’s most prominent alumni, Leigh was also one of its strongest supporters. In 2001, Yale’s then-president Richard Levin announced that the School’s building at 435 College Street would be named Abby and

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Mitch Leigh Hall. Levin said, “We are delighted to recognize Mitch and Abby Leigh, who have been such good friends and generous supporters of Yale and the School of Music. It is a special pleasure to honor one of the school’s most accomplished graduates.” The building, which reopened in the fall of 2006 after a yearlong renovation, contains faculty studios, administrative offices, and classrooms.

In 2006, it was announced that the Willie Ruff Chair in Jazz at the School of Music had been created through Leigh’s generosity. Dean Blocker commented in the announcement that “the establishment of the Willie Ruff endowed chair is reflective of the ongoing commitment to the School of Music and the heartfelt affection the Leighs have for Willie Ruff.”

One of Leigh’s first gifts to the School of Music honored his teacher, Keith Wilson, with an endowed scholarship. Leigh further recognized Wilson by naming the band room in Hendrie Hall for him.

In his March 16 letter to the YSM community, Dean Blocker noted,” Most important to Mitch was his family. Abby, his beloved wife, and the children — David, Eve, and Andy — enlarged his life and in so doing enriched the School of Music as well. Today we remember the life of a remarkably talented man whose benevolence made and will make dreams possible for countless aspiring young artists.”

Keith Wilson, Professor Emeritus of Clarinet Clarinetist Keith Wilson died peacefully on June 2, 2013.

He was 96.

Mrs. Mary Baker Supplee ’27Mus Mrs. Rachel Moore Richardson ’34CERT Dr. Otto H. Helbig ’36CERT

“The profound influence Keith had on the lives of countless students, colleagues, and friends is incalculable,” said Dean Robert Blocker. “His humanity and humility elevated music and its servants. We were enriched by Keith’s extraordinary life.”

Rev. Ernest Myron Fowler ’38MDiv Mr. Pliny H. Hayes III ’39BA, ’41Mus Mr. Philip William Maas, Jr. ’40Mus Mr. Victor E. Cherven ’41Mus Dr. John William Woldt ’42MM Mrs. Phyllis Ross Saranec ’44MA Mrs. Jean Nelson Melcher ’44Mus Prof. Robert Scott Conant ’48BA, ’56MM Mrs. Elsbeth Gaertner Lewin ’48MA Mr. Edward F. Farrer ’48BM, ’52MM Miss Dorothy Ann Doyle ’49Mus Miss Grace Elizabeth Wherry ’49Mus Mrs. Rosamond H. Fouser ’49Mus Prof. Lee Harris Potter ’49Mus Mrs. Maria Whitehead Grove ’51BM Mr. Charles Collier Jones ’52BM Mr. Edwin Hymovitz ’53Mus Ms. Joan Gardella Stanko ’53Mus Mr. John Mahan II ’58BM Mr. Gerard Roland Le Tendre ’60BM, ’61MM Mr. Tharald Borgir ’60MM Mr. Buryl A. Red ’61MM Dr. Marcia S. Beach ’64MM Mr. Wayne Matthew Halonen ’65MM Mr. Richard Elliot Luby ’74MMA, ’78DMA Mr. John Eaton George, Jr. ’76MM Mr. Jethro James Woodson, Jr. ’83MM Mr. Scott Vernon Uhrig ’91MM

Keith Wilson was appointed to the YSM faculty in 1946 and taught here for over 40 years before retiring in 1987 at the age of 70.

When he joined the faculty, he was the School’s only woodwind professor. He served as director of the Yale Bands until 1972. During his tenure, he also served as the associate dean of the School of Music and director of the Norfolk Summer School of Music.

In 1999 he was awarded the Sanford Medal, the School of Music’s highest honor. He also received the Gustav Stoeckel Award, which honors faculty who have contributed to the life of the School of Music. Dean Blocker called Wilson ”the embodiment of all the Yale School of Music stands for and hopes to be.”

Wilson’s former students include clarinetist Richard Stoltzman ’67MM and composer Mitch Leigh ’52MM. An article in the Yale Bulletin and Calendar quotes Stoltzman as saying, “It was through Mr. Wilson that I discovered the greatest mission of a musician: to communicate music with peers to the audience. He gave me that wisdom and that love.” Stoltzman also recalled Wilson’s artistry, saying that when he first heard Wilson perform the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, “I heard the clarinet as I had never heard it before, but as I always dreamed it could be — not just as an instrument but as an expression of the deepest emotions of the music.”

Keith Wilson served on the YSM faculty alongside Paul Hindemith.

At Hindemith’s request, Wilson transcribed the Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber for concert band. In 1956, Wilson conducted members of the Yale Concert Band in the first documented performance of Charles Ives’s “Calcium Light Night” (Set No. 1, Movement V).

Clarinetist David Shifrin, who succeeded Wilson on the faculty, called him “one of the great single most important figures in the history of the Yale School of Music.”

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In Memoriam

Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor

John Swallow, Professor Emeritus of Trombone John Warner Swallow, one of the most important trombone performers and teachers in the United States, died Saturday, October 20, 2012 after a long illness.

In a message to the School, Dean Robert Blocker wrote of the community’s “admiration and affection” for Professor Swallow, who came to the School of Music in 1965 as a Lecturer of Trombone. Swallow retired in 2001 as Professor of Trombone, adjunct, and received emeritus status.

Conductor Lawrence Leighton Smith, died at home on Friday, October 25, 2013 in the company of his family. He was 77.

Smith was the music director of the Yale Philharmonia and the head of the conducting program at Yale for ten years (1995–2004).

Known for his commitment to working with student musicians, Smith led many performances at Yale, as well as the Manhattan School of Music.

John Warner Swallow was born in 1924 in Oneida, New York.

He was a member of the New York Brass Quintet for many years. Swallow enjoyed performance associations with the Utah Symphony under Maurice Abravanel and the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner, and was a member of groups such as Gunther Schuller’s Twentieth Century Innovations and Arthur Weisberg’s Contemporary Chamber Ensemble.

He was the subject of a doctoral thesis by Brett Arthur Shuster, “John Swallow: A Study of His Life and Influence in the Trombone World” (Arizona State University, 2002).

Born April 8, 1936, Smith was one of the most respected American conductors of his time. His conducting career took off in 1973 when he became a first prize winner of the Dmitri Mitropoulos Competition. Smith went on to appear with nearly every major orchestra in the United States and to tour internationally.

As music director of the Louisville Orchestra from 1982 to 1993, Smith earned international recognition for both live performances and recordings. He also served as music director of the Austin, Oregon, and San Antonio Symphonies. He became the first American conductor of record to conduct the Moscow Philharmonic, creating the widely acclaimed “Moscow Sessions” recordings.

“John was both artist and teacher in the most exemplary fashion,” wrote Blocker, ”and his ready smile and collegial manner endeared him to students, faculty, and staff alike.

His distinguished contributions to YSM and to music will endure through the lives and work of students fortunate enough to have studied with him.” ||

He began his conducting career at Tanglewood as a musical assistant to Erich Leinsdorf, also spending time at the Peabody School of Music. He is a recipient of three honorary doctorates and, with the Louisville Orchestra, fourteen ASCAP awards for adventurous programming. As music director of the Colorado Springs Symphony, Smith was instrumental in the rebirth of the orchestra as the Colorado Springs Philharmonic in 2003.

A native of Portland, Oregon, Smith was also an accomplished pianist and started his music career as a piano soloist.

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Contributors to the YSM Alumni Fund

Professor Brian Fennelly ’65MM, ’68PhD Mr. W. Marvin Johnson, Jr. ’63Mus Dr. Roderic M. Keating ’65MM Ms. Jane P. Logan ’69MM Professor Vincent F. Luti ’67MM, ’70MMA, ’78DMA Dr. Maija M. Lutz ’63MM Mrs. Sheila A. Marks ’60MM Mr. Mallory Miller ’69Mus Ms. Patricia Grignet Nott ’66MM, ’69MMA, ’76DMA In memory of William Bennett III Ms. Lola Odiaga ’66MM Ms. Elizabeth Sawyer Parisot ’66MM, ’70MMA, ’73DMA Professor Hildred E. Roach ’62MM Professor Werner G. Rose ’61MM Mr. George R. Schermerhorn ’62MM Mr. Stephen A. Simon ’60BM Professor Melinda K. Spratlan ’65MM, ’71MMA, ’75DMA Mrs. Althea Waites ’65MM

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 1940s Anonymous Mr. Victor E. Cherven ’41Mus Professor Robert S. Conant ’48BA, ’56MM Mrs. Nina Ardito Gambardella ’47Mus Mrs. Jane S. Lee ’48BM Professor Henry N. Lee, Jr. ’49BM Mrs. Florence G. Smith ’44BM Mr. Lloyd L. Thoms, Jr. ’45WBA In memory of the Class of 1945who gave their lives in service to their country 1950s Professor John K. Adams ’58BM, ’59MM Mrs. Elena G. Bambach ’55BM, ’56MM Miss Martha H. Bixler ’51BM Mr. Blaine Butler ’56BA, ’58BM, ’59MM Professor Galen H. Deibler ’54BM, ’55MM Mr. Martin Fenton, Jr. ’56BA Ms. Mary G. George ’52BM Mrs. Renee K. Glaubitz ’51BM Mr. Edward H. Higbee, Jr. ’52BM, ’53MM Mrs. Ella A. Holding ’57BM, ’58MM Professor G. Truett Hollis ’55BM Dr. Michael M. Horvit ’55BM, ’56MM Mrs. Hannelore H. Howard ’51Mus Dr. G. Lawrence Jones ’59MM Mrs. Anne P. Lieberson ’50BM Professor Donald Miller, Jr. ’55BA, ’60MM Mr. Malcolm Mitchell ’57BA Mrs. Joyce B. Osborn ’57BM, ’58MM Dr. Eugene Thamon Simpson ’53BM, ’54MM Professor Margaret A. Strahl ’56BM, ’57MM Mr. Robert K. Thompson, Jr. ’58BM Mrs. Cora W. Witten ’54BM

1970s Ms. Cecylia B. Barczyk ’79MM Mr. Geoffrey W. Barnes ’74MM Mr. David A. Behnke ’77MM David B. Bernstein ’76MM Ms. Nansi E. Carroll ’75MM, ’76MMA, ’82DMA Mr. Gene Crisafulli ’73MM Ms. Deborah Dewey ’79MM Professor William G. Hoyt, Jr. ’76MM Mr. David B. Johnson ’72MMA Mr. Richard A. Konzen ’76MM, ’77MMA, ’84DMA Ms. Susan Bell Leon ’79MM Mr. Anthony M. Lopez ’75MM Ms. Anita La Fiandra MacDonald ’70MM Mr. Shmuel Magen ’77MM In honor of Professor Aldo S. Parisot Professor Charles M. McKnight ’73MM Mr. James H. Pyle ’78MM Ms. Wendy S. Schwartz ’70MAT., ’71MM Mr. Philip D. Spencer ’77MM Ms. Julie Margaret Stoner ’72MM Professor William F. Westney ’71MMA, ’76DMA Mr. Rodney A. Wynkoop ’73BA, ’80MMA, ’85DMA Professor Donald R. Zimmer ’78MM

1960s Ms. Syoko Aki ’69MM The Rev. Dr. Robert Carpenter ’65BA, ’68MM Miss Rosemary Colson ’65MM Mrs. Sylvia W. Dowd ’62MM

1980s Ms. Elisabeth Adkins ’80MM, ’81MMA, ’87DMA Ms. Anita M. Ashur-Wakim ’85Mus 45

Dr. Eliot T. Bailen ’80MM, ’82MMA, ’89DMA Ms. Susan S. Breitung ’86MM Ms. Barbara Peterson Cackler ’81MM Mr. Edward H. Cumming III ’84MM, ’85MMA, ’92DMA Ms. Irina Faskianos DePatie ’89BA, ’90MM Mr. Ronald Charles Evans, Jr. ’89BA, ’92MM, ’99M.BA Ms. Pamela King ’85MM Mr. David M. Kurtz ’80MM Mr. Robert Scott Satterlee ’89MMA, ’94DMA Timothy P. Schultz, DMA ’82MM Ms. Jennifer Louise Smith ’88MM Mr. Alexander S. Walsh-Wilson ’81MM Ms. Mary Diane Willis-Stahl ’80MM

Mr. Hando Nahkur ’06CERT Mr. Denis Petrunin ’09MM, ’10AD Mr. Ravi S. Rajan ’00MM Mr. Dantes Yasmin Rameau ’07MM Ms. Janna Leigh Ryon ’00MM Ms. Elizabeth B. Schurgin ’07BA, ’08MM Ms. Meghan K. Titzer ’06BA Mr. Yan Ming Alvin Wong ’09DMA, ’11MMA 2010s Mr. John S. Allen ’13MM Mr. Jacob S. Ashworth ’13MM Mr. Caleb M. Bennetch ’13MM Ms. Samona Rasheed Bryant ’11MM Mr. Victor B. Caccese ’13MM Ms. Qi Cao ’10MM Ms. Megan Y. Chartrand ’13MM Mr. Eric Donald Dionne ’11BA, ’13MM Mr. William J. Gardiner ’13MM Ms. Lindsay Jane Garritson ’10MM, ’11DMA Mr. Michael J. Gilbertson ’13MM Ms. Yue Guo ’13MM Mr. Noah Downing Horn ’10MM, ’12MM, ’13MMA Ms. Yuki H. Katayama ’13MM Ms. Jihee Kim ’11DMA Ms. Nayeon Kim ’12MM, ’13DMA Ms. Brittany Michele Lasch ’12MM Ms. Jean Laurenz ’13MM Mr. Corin Lee ’13MM Mr. Igal Levin ’13MM Ms. Jessica Li ’13MM Mr. Shawn P. Moore ’13MM Mr. Paul Gabriel Nemeth ’12MM Mr. Tian Hui Ng ’10MM Mr. Arash Noori ’12MM, ’13DMA Ms. Sherezade K. Panthaki ’11DMA Ms. Ginevra Petrucci ’12MM, ’13DMA Ms. Anastasia Petrunina ’10MM Ms. Caroline W. Ross ’13MM Mr. Daniel Jay Schlosberg ’10BA, ’13MM Ms. Hae Yoon Shin ’13DMA Ms. Adrianna L. Tam ’13MM Mr. Justin Mark Tierney ’12DMA Mr. John Taylor Ward ’12MM, ’13MMA Ms. Lauren K. Yu ’13MM

1990s Mr. Ole Akahoshi ’95CERT Ms. Janna Baty ’93MM Mr. Marco E. Beltrami ’91MM Ms. Amy Feldman Bernon ’91MM Ms. Kin Chau ’93MM Dr. Jayson Rodovsky Engquist ’96MM Mr. William R. Funderburk IV ’98MM Ms. Alison Eileen Graff ’93MM Mr. Netta Mordechai Hadari ’99MM, ’00DMA Ms. June Young Han ’96MM, ’97AD Ms. Melissa J. Marse ’98MM Mr. John Scott Marshall ’92MM Mr. James K. McNeish ’96MM Mr. David Henry Nadal ’95MM Dr. Timothy John Olsen ’88MM, ’89MMA, ’95DMA In memory of Mr. Dwike Mitchell Ms. Jill A. Pellett Levine ’93MM, ’94AD Ms. Kirsten Peterson ’90MM Mr. Svend J. Ronning ’91MM, ’93MMA, ’97DMA Dr. Andrew D. Shenton ’93MM Ms. Ayako Tsuruta ’95MM, ’96AD Ms. Emily Payne Veletzos ’99MM Mr. Carlos Urbano Villarreal ’98CERT Mr. Gregory Christopher Wrenn ’92MM 2000s Mr. Gregory Neil Anderson ’08MMA Mr. Michael B. Benninger ’02MM Mr. Thomas Alfred Bergeron II ’08MM, ’09AD Mr. Fernando Buide ’09MMA Dr. Dominick DiOrio, III ’08MM, ’09MMA, ’12DMA Ms. Marisa Wickersham Green ’06MM Ms. Tina Lee Hadari ’04MM Mr. Alonso Hernandez ’00MM Mr. Robert Surette Honstein ’04BA, ’10MMA Dr. Sarita Kit Yee Kwok ’05MMA, ’06AD, ’09DMA Ms. Katherine Mireille Mason ’04MM Mr. Vaughn Joseph Mauren ’09MM

Additional Donors Serena and Robert Blocker Przemyslaw Thomas Minior Professor Aldo S. Parisot Mrs. Stephen A. Simon (widow of Mr. Stephen Simon ’60BM) Worcester Chapter American Guild of Organists

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The Yale Philharmonia records the original score for the video “Why Music?”, which premiered September 2013 on the School’s new website.

Watch: music.yale.edu/video/music

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