Class Notes
2000s Flutist Claire Chase ’01 traveled with four other members of the International Contemporary Ensemble to perform in Nagoya, Japan, in February. The concert, ICE’s Japanese debut, featured Chase along with oboist Nick Masterson ’01, bassoonist Rebekah Heller ’01, clarinetist Joshua Rubin ’99, and percussionist Nathan Davis with the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra on a program of music inspired by water. Included was a piece written by Dai Fujikura with ICE on the occasion of the birth of his daughter. Chase’s latest album, Density, is named for the piece that ends it: Edgard Varese’s “Density 21.5.” As the album works up to its namesake, says DownBeat, “Chase brings both staggering technique and humanity to this sterling collection of modern flute works.” Cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman ’01, founding cellist of the International Contemporary Ensemble and director of the period-instrument ensemble ACRONYM, released Six Suites for Solo Violoncello Without Bass, his historically informed approach to Bach’s masterpiece. Released in January, the recording employs a synthesis of several existing manuscript copies of the master work. Aurora Nealand ’01, who studied composition at Oberlin and physical
theater at the Jacques Lecoq School of Physical Theatre in Paris, biked into New Orleans in 2005 on her way across the country and decided to stay, entranced by the city’s jazz scene. This year, she fronted her own group, the Royal Roses, at the New Orleans Jazz Fest.
Clara Latham (right) with her band, the Fancy.
Composer Adam Schoenberg ’02 has had several new pieces produced in the past year: “Bounce” (inspired by his newborn son Luca) at the Hollywood Bowl, “American Symphony” by the Atlanta Symphony, and “Finding Rothko” by the Pacific Symphony in Costa Mesa. Pianist Sun-Hwa Alice Kim ’04 took a leading role in organizing the first alumni concert of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Seoul last August. Fourteen conservatory alumni performed on the program, which included piano works and small ensemble pieces for flute, violin, soprano, and piano. After a very successful first outing, Kim and company are planning a second concert in August 2014.
Six Win DownBeat Awards
Clara Latham ’04 was awarded one of 10 Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellowships for 2014. The program—the only national fellowship for doctoral work on issues of women and gender— supports the final year of dissertation writing for PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences doing interdisciplinary and original work on these issues. Latham, now a doctoral candidate in music at New York University, is exploring the role of sound and voice in the late-19th-century treatment of hysteria in her dissertation “Rethinking the Material Ear: Sound and Voice in Psychoanalysis.”
Three Overlapping Sounds, a piece for string quartet by Zhiyi Wang ‘04, won first prize in the Malta International Composition Competition and will be premiered in July. Wang’s orchestral piece The aroma
Ethan Philion ’14 was one of six conservatory students honored by DownBeat magazine’s 37th Annual Student Music Awards, which were revealed in the June 2014 issue. Philion, who plays acoustic bass, was awarded Outstanding Performance by a Jazz Soloist at an Undergraduate College. He was also recognized for his role in A Little Big Band, which garnered Outstanding Performance by a Small Jazz Combo at an Undergraduate College. The ensemble, coached by Bobby Ferrazza, consists of Emily Kuhn ’16, trumpet; Max Bessesen ’16, saxophone; Matt Segall ’14, saxophone; Zach Warren ’14, trombone; Chase Kuesel ’16, drums; and Philion on bass. “It was especially rewarding to receive the small ensemble honors with A Little Big Band,” says Philion, a student of Peter Dominguez. “One of the jazz department’s strengths is our unique small-ensemble program that allows students to form our own bands and to be coached by a faculty member. This program enabled us to bring in our own tunes and arrangements and work together to find a group sound, and I hope that’s what the DownBeat judges heard. There are tons of great student-led small ensembles here.” A Little Big Band plans a tour of the East Coast for late August.
58
of the exotic, a contemporary tone poem with French influences, has been selected for the Ablaze Records Orchestral Masters Volume 2 disc, which will be recorded in summer and released worldwide in fall. Wang also received two out of five nominations for Best Musical Arranger in the 25th Golden Melody Awards of Taiwan, which is considered Taiwan’s Grammy Awards. The awards ceremony will be held on June 28 in Taipei. Clarinetist Boris Allakhverdyan ’06 has been appointed co-principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra after four years as associate principal clarinetist for the Kansas City Symphony. “This is something that I’ve always dreamed of,” says Allakhverdyan, a native of Armenia who studied at Oberlin under Associate Professor Richard Hawkins. Sam Haar ’07 and Zach Steinman ’07 released Swisher, their second album as the electronica group Blondes, in August 2013. The album “doesn’t abandon the beauty of the duo’s earlier work...but it uses it more judiciously,” says Pitchfork, in reference to Blondes’ well-received, self-titled debut from 2012. “This shift makes Swisher less immediately captivating but somehow more involving than its predecessor.” Adriane Post ’07, who plays Baroque violin for Apollo’s Fire, performed selections by Bach, Handel, Couperin, and Corelli with cellist Paul Dwyer ’07 in concerts that took place in March in Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Cardiff-bythe-Sea, California.