Music at Yale | Spring 2016

Music at Yale SPRING 2016

Incubating Culture Yale Ensembles Expand New Music’s Center

ADMINISTRATORS AT THE HELM ALUMNI WRITING FICTION NORFOLK LEADERSHIP TRANSITIONS

Peter Oundjian conducts the Yale Philharmonia

Contents

Paul Hawkshaw to retire as director of Norfolk Chamber Music Festival 2 Peter Oundjian appointed principal conductor of Yale Philharmonia

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Argus Quartet appointed fellowship quartet-in-residence 3 School of Music launches mobile app

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School launches its first massive open online course

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Concert News

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Construction of Adams Center for Musical Arts

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Incubating Culture

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League of American Orchestras honors Anne-Marie Soulliere

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Faculty News

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Alumni at the Helm

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Music in Schools Initiative

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Career & Transfiguration

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Alumni and Student News

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Appointment of Director of Alumni Affairs

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Recordings and Publications

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Convocation 2015

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Gift endows Chamber Music Fellowship 47 In Memoriam

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Contributors 48

Yale School of Music Robert Blocker, Dean

Paul Hawkshaw to retire as director of Norfolk Chamber Music Festival Melvin Chen appointed as successor The Yale Summer School of Music/ Norfolk Chamber Music Festival will undergo a major leadership transition this year. Paul Hawkshaw, who has served as the festival’s director since 2004, will retire after the 2016 season; Melvin Chen, Deputy Dean of YSM, has been appointed as Hawkshaw’s successor.

Under Hawkshaw’s leadership, the program has flourished, with strong ticket sales, ambitious restoration projects, and closer relationships between the festival and the surrounding community. Whitehouse has been restored to its former beauty after its recovery from devastating water damage, and the first phase of the Music Shed restoration has provided a new roof, siding, and a beautifully reconstructed cupola atop the 1906 acoustic gem.

“Paul Hawkshaw has been a transformative and visionary leader for the Norfolk program,” noted Dean Blocker. “Perhaps even most significant is the warmth with which Hawkshaw has established close relationships between the festival and the surrounding community.” The Hartford Courant has hailed the “unity between the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the town where the Yale program is located.”

Hawkshaw said. With characteristic modesty he added, “It has been an honor to be a small part of it, and I look forward to visiting for many years to come.”

Melvin Chen first became acquainted with Norfolk as a member of the piano faculty in the early 2000s. He has also performed and taught there since returning to the Yale School of Music.

Chen brings strong credentials as a performer, educator, and administrator.

“The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival is a magical place that has inspired and nurtured generations of musicians,” Chen said. “Paul Hawkshaw’s tireless efforts have brought both the facilities and the musical program to new levels.

I will do my utmost to build on Paul’s work and to ensure that the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival continues to be a special place for musicians and audiences alike.” ||

“Norfolk — with its music, its history, its wonderful people, and its beautiful setting — is truly a cultural treasure,”

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Peter Oundjian appointed principal conductor of Yale Philharmonia The Yale School of Music announced in November that conductor Peter Oundjian has been named the principal conductor of the Yale Philharmonia, continuing his nearly 35-year affiliation with the School. Mr. Oundjian will conduct three concerts every year with the Yale Philharmonia and will help shape the artistic identity of the orchestra, including close involvement in the selection of guest conductors and repertoire.

Maestro Oundjian will be a major addition to the orchestral conducting program at the School. This program, which will admit one conductor this year, includes performances with the Yale Philharmonia and New Music New Haven in Sprague and Woolsey Halls, as well as opportunities to work with Maestro Oundjian and the guest conductors of the Yale Philharmonia, which in recent years have included Valery Gergiev, Yu Long, Yongyan Hu, Jahja Ling, and James Conlon, among many others. Maestro Oundjian will join colleagues in the admissions process and collaborate in providing a comprehensive curriculum for the conducting program.

Argus Quartet appointed fellowship quartet-in-residence The Argus Quartet has been appointed the new fellowship quartet-in-residence at the Yale School of Music. Beginning in the fall of 2015, they receive mentorship from the Brentano Quartet while performing frequently and receiving career guidance.

The members of the quartet —Jason Issokson, violin; Clara Kim, violin; Diana Wade, viola; and Joann Whang ’09 MM, cello — also assist the Brentano Quartet in leading performance classes and will coach undergraduate chamber music.

This year, the Argus Quartet has performed Sibelius on the Yale in New York series at Carnegie Hall; Bartók, in a Music Talks at the Whitney event that also included a talk by faculty member Michael Friedmann; and a full recital program in February that included works by Andrew Norman ’09 AD and faculty composer Christopher Theofanidis ’94 MMA, ’97 DMA. Formed in Los Angeles in the summer of 2013, the Argus Quartet dedicates itself to reinvigorating the audience-performer relationship through new and innovative concert presentations of diverse repertoire. The quartet has already won several competitions, including the Beverly Hills Consortium and the MTAC San Diego Competition, and received a commissioning grant from Chamber Music America for a new string quartet written by Eric Guinivan. ||

Born in Toronto, Peter Oundjian has been music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra since 2004. In 2012 he was also appointed music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Previously, he served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to 2010 and Artistic Director of the Caramoor International Music Festival in New York between 1997 and 2007.

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Oundjian was the first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet for fourteen years. He first joined the Yale School of Music faculty in 1981 as part of the quartet, which was in residence at Yale for nearly 40 years. As a conductor he has continued to serve as a visiting professor at the School. ||

music.yale.edu/digital-app

School of Music launches mobile app and new video The Yale School of Music launched a new mobile app last October, making its first foray into native digital publishing. With the app, the School of Music can create publications that audiences not only read but also hear and watch.

Embedded in the app is YSM’s newest cinematic admissions video, “The Music Makers,” featuring a number of YSM faculty, students, and alumni working in different cross-sections of the music profession.

Designed by Monica Ong Reed, the app was developed in collaboration with Yale Printing and Publishing Services (YPPS). The video is produced by Austin Kase.

The app’s inaugural content focuses on admissions, bringing the School’s new viewbook into the digital space. In addition to providing information on topics such as degree programs, faculty, resources, and leadership development, the app offers video spotlights on young alumni with a variety of successful careers. The School’s live stream is built into the app so that audiences anywhere can watch YSM concerts in real time. While the live streams are also accessible from the School’s website, the app offers a more focused viewing experience.

Dean Robert Blocker noted: “Through our app, we can share the YSM experience in a new and dynamic way, showcasing our distinguished musicians and our university’s incomparable creative resources.” ||

School launches its first massive open online course The Yale School of Music launched its first massive open online course (MOOC), “Music and Social Action,” in February. Taught by MacArthur Fellow Sebastian Ruth, the course asks vital questions about musicians’ responses to the condition of the world.

The free course includes not only engaging lectures but multimedia material such as historical photos and audio clips.

Sebastian Ruth is the Yale College Class of 1957 Visiting Professor of Community Engagement at the Yale School of Music. He is the founder and artistic director of Community MusicWorks, a nationally-recognized organization in Providence, Rhode Island that connects professional musicians with urban youth and families. Ruth has received a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for “creating rewarding musical experiences for often-forgotten populations and forging a new, multifaceted role beyond the concert hall for the twenty-first-century musician.”

www.coursera.org/yale Community MusicWorks was the inspiration for New Haven’s own Music Haven. Founded

by Netta Hadari ’99 MM, ’00 AD and Tina Lee Hadari ’04 MM, Music Haven provides free instruments, lessons, classes, and ensemble and leadership development opportunities to young people from low-income New Haven neighborhoods.

Sebastian Ruth’s free online course offers students around the world an opportunity to learn from this leading educator and thinker. The course asks fundamental questions such as: Do musicians have an obligation and an opportunity to serve the needs of the world with their musicianship? Are we looking at a dying art form or a moment of re-invigoration? The course itself, as well as the impact of organizations such as Community MusicWorks and Music Haven, argues the case for re-invigoration. ||

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Concert News

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

Horowitz Piano Series

The 2015–2016 season of the Oneppo Chamber Music Series offered a wide variety of ensembles and musical literature, ranging from the eighteenth century to the present.

Along with commemorating the 80th birthday of longtime Yale faculty member Peter Frankl, the Horowitz Piano Series features guest artists and Yale faculty for its 2015-16 season.

The Brentano String Quartet opened each semester, with concerts on September 29, 2015 and January 26, 2016. Under the artistic direction of David Shifrin, the season has also presented the Dover and Miami String Quartets, as well as the Tetzlaff Piano Trio. The Brentano Quartet also opened the second semester on January 26.

The series opened on October 7, 2015 with artistic director Boris Berman performing works by Beethoven,

The series highlighted new music with eighth blackbird on October 20: the Grammy Award-winning ensemble performed Hand Eye, an evening-length work by the Yale alumni composer collective Sleeping Giant. On December 8, Imani Winds performed music celebrating dance and its variations, with selections by Latin American composers and Imani members, as well as traditional dance music.

The third recital of the series presented Wei-Yi Yang in sonatas by Prokofiev and Schubert.

On December 2, Melvin Chen paired new music with Schubert’s Sonata in G major, D. 894. He gave the world premiere of Shadows for piano, laptop, and projection, a new piece written expressly for Chen by Jason Freeman.

Peter Frankl

Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. On October 21 it celebrated Peter Frankl’s 80th birthday, presenting Frankl and colleagues from the piano faculty teaming up to perform piano duets by Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, and Bartók.

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Hung-Kuan Chen closed the semester on December 15 with Chopin’s complete 24 Preludes, Op. 28, as well as selections

by Haydn and Schubert.

The new semester began with two guest artists: Pierre Réach offered

Jacob Druckman

music of the nineteenth century, including Liszt’s transcription of the Symphonie Fantastique, and Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon explored music from Haydn to Jánacek. The season concludes on May 11 with Dean Robert Blocker, playing Mozart and Bach/ Busoni as well as five new pieces by Yale composers.

Ellington Jazz Series Willie Ruff, who this year won a lifetime achievement award from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, continued his artistic leadership of the Ellington Jazz Series. This season offers five concerts, beginning October 2, 2015 with four-time Grammy Award-winning bassist and composer Christian McBride and his trio.

The series proceeded with tributes to two jazz greats, first on October 30 with a tribute to John Coltrane from saxophonist Javon Jackson and We Four, then on December 4 with the ensemble New Duke. Led by Brian Torff, New Duke combines Duke Ellington’s music with elements of jazz, hip-hop, rock, and funk. The Piano Jazz Summit on March 4 featured keyboard legends Barry Harris, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and Aaron Diehl.

Viney ’02 MM, ’03 MMA, ’07 AD and Anna Grinberg ’01 MM, ’02 AD. The series continued on November 19 with works by guest composer Paul Lansky and Yale student composers. In the annual New Music for Orchestra concert on December 10, the Yale Philharmonia gave the world premieres of works by student composers Krists Auznieks, Katherine Balch, Natalie Dietterich, Brian Heim, Dylan Mattingly, Liliya Ugay, and Tiange Zhou.

In 2016 the series resumed on February 11 with a tribute to the late Jacob Druckman, a longtime member of the Yale composition faculty, along with new works by student composers.

The series features faculty members Christopher Theofanidis and Jack

In May, the series closes with a tribute to the founding of the Duke Ellington Fellowship in 1972, when Willie Ruff brought together thirty jazz legends including Eubie Blake, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Odetta, and Ellington himself on the stage of Woolsey Hall; the event will feature a screening of recently rediscovered documentary footage of that founding event.

New Music New Haven The season’s first concert on October 8, 2015 featured works by faculty members Martin Bresnick and Hannah Lash. The United States premiere of Bresnick’s Handwork was performed by the Viney-Grinberg piano duo: Liam

Peter Oundjian conducts the Yale Philharmonia

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Vees on March 10, and David Lang and Aaron Jay Kernis on April 14, with both concerts also including new works by student composers.

Yale Philharmonia The Philharmonia opened its season with guest conductor José Serebrier on Friday, September 25. Serebrier led the orchestra in his own Symphony No. 2, “Partita,” the same piece with which he made his U.S. conducting debut at age 19, as well as pieces by Rachmaninoff and Mussorgsky.

On October 16, Peter Oundjian led the Philharmonia in Bartók’s Divertimento for String Orchestra and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

Adelya Nartadjieva ’16 MM, a winner of the Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition, was the featured soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major.

Yale Opera.

Center: A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Top and Bottom: Fall Opera Scenes

Peter Oundjian, who this year was appointed the orchestra’s principal conductor, leads the last two concerts of the season. Pianist Sun-A Park ’16 AD, the third Woolsey Competition winner, plays Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on April 1. The season’s final program on April 28 includes Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony and Holst’s The Planets.

Yale Opera Under the artistic direction of Doris Yarick Cross, Yale Opera continues a wide variety of activities. The annual Fall Opera Scenes opened the season on November 7 and 8, 2015. Featuring the work of stage director Marc Verzatt and musical directors Douglas Dickson and Timothy Shaindlin, the production presented a different selection of scenes each day, with repertoire by Mozart, Verdi, Britten, and Janácek, among others.

Bass-baritone Alan Held visited Yale on December 14 to give a public master class. The class included performances

by Paweł Konik, bass-baritone; Dean Murphy, baritone; Anne Maguire, mezzo-soprano; Zachary Johnson, baritone; and Andrés Moreno, tenor.

The November 6 concert, featuring guest conductor Sarah Ioannides, was part of New Haven’s Northern Lights Festival, in which the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and YSM celebrated the 150th anniversary of the births of Scandinavian composers Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen. Ioannides conducted two Sibelius symphonies, No. 1 in E minor and No. 2 in D major.

The annual New Music for Orchestra concert took place on December 10, with conducting fellow Heejung Park ’16 AD leading the Yale Philharmonia in works by student composers.

Carolyn Kuan, the music director of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, led the orchestra for the first time on January 29. The concert featured Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and also presented violinist Mélanie Clapiès ’15 AD, another Woolsey Competition winner, in Berg’s Violin Concerto.

The Philharmonia’s annual concert in Sprague Hall presented the School’s two students in the newly reconfigured Artist Diploma program. With Heejung Park conducting, pianist Wai Yin Wong ’17 AD played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, and mezzosoprano Evanna Chiew ’16 AD sang Lieberson’s Neruda Songs.

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Stage director Claudia Solti and conductor Rune Bergmann made their Yale Opera debuts in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, presented February 19, 20, and 21 at the Shubert Theater. They were joined by the Yale Philharmonia; the children’s chorus from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fairfield, Conn.; and actor Christopher Bannow in the role of Puck.

For its spring production of the season, Yale Opera will present a new production of Massenet’s Don Quichotte.

The production, to take place May 6 and 7 in Morse Recital Hall, will have musical direction and accompaniment

by Douglas Dickson and Timothy Shaindlin.

Yu Long, conductor Chinese conductor Yu Long visited Yale for a residency on September 28, 2015. During his visit, Maestro Yu took part in an open conversation with Dean Robert Blocker about the state of classical music in China.

Yu also led the Yale Philharmonia in an open rehearsal of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Maestro Yu is Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the China Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director of the Shanghai Symphony, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

Uliana Lopatkina

Special Events Uliana Lopatkina, dancer Uliana Lopatkina, the highly celebrated prima ballerina at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, visited the Yale School of Music Oct. 13–15 for a residency sponsored by Frederick Iseman ’75.

The highlight was a performance titled “Three Legends of Russian Ballet,” a tribute to Anna Pavlova, Galina Ulanova, and Maya Plisetskaya.

Lopatkina, partnering with Andrey Ermakov, performed highlights from

the repertoire of each of those three legends. The evening also offered video footage from the lives and careers of Pavlova, Ulanova, and Plietskaya.

Other events in the residency included a question-and-answer session with the audience, and an open conversation with Yale faculty members Emily Coates ’06 BA, ’11 MA and Christopher Theofanidis ’94 MMA, ’97 DMA.

YSM students perform at Kennedy Center As part of the Kennedy Center’s Conservatory Project, five YSM students performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on February 19. The students of the Videnia Quintet are flutist Felice Doynov ’17 MM; oboist Lydia Consilvio ’17 MM; clarinetist Bixby Kennedy ’16 MM; hornist Cody Halquist ’16 MM; and bassoonist Cornelia Sommer ’16 MM. Their program included works

by Ligeti, Lalo Schifrin, and faculty composer Martin Bresnick, as well as original arrangements (by Kennedy, Sommer, and William Purvis) of music

by Verdi and Monteverdi. ||

Haiti’s Minister of Culture visits Yale On Wednesday, May 6, Her Excellency Dithny Joan Raton, Haiti’s Minister of Culture, and her delegation met with Dean Robert Blocker and Thomas C. Duffy.

The group discussed music in Haiti as well as Yale’s possible involvement in the reconstruction of their music infrastructure.

Left to right: The Rev. Dr. G. David Cesar, Membre, Institut des Beaux Arts et Musique; Directeur, Ecole de Musique Ste Trinite; Conducteur, L’Orchestre Philharmonique Ste Trinite Thomas C. Duffy, Professor (Adjunct) of Music and Director of University Bands, Yale Her Excellency Mrs. Dithny Joan Raton, Minister of Culture, Haiti Robert Blocker, Dean, Yale School of Music Patrick Delatour, Architecte de Monument; Charge de Liaison entre le Ministere de la Culture, le Ministere des Finances et Le Institut de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine National (L’ISPAN) reinforcement des capacities de L’ISPAN

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Adams Center for Musical Arts

The new Adams Center for Musical Arts is scheduled to open in the fall of 2016.

The Elm Street facade of Hendrie Hall has been restored, and construction of the addition has begun.

Incubating Culture

Cantata Profana

Yale Ensembles Expand New Music’s Center

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YSM alumni don’t wait for opportunities to come to them.

They are building ensembles for the work they want to make.

They are tearing down boundaries between cultures, genres, and venues.

Invisible Anatomy

They’ve taken Williamsburg by storm: performing at National Sawdust, the 13,000-foot former factory space turned collaborative incubator —the first venue of its kind in the nation. They’re recording Grammy-winning albums and promoting Pulitzer Prize-winning new works. They’re maximizing new models like the artist-centric New Amsterdam Records. They’re collaborating with theater directors, lighting designers, and dancers. And, of course, they’re performing at venues like Carnegie Hall. This is how to be a cultural leader.

Jacob Ashworth ’13 MM, ’14 MMA of Cantata Profana has this directive: “to get out from behind stands, and out of the chairs, to train a new generation of musicians.” In doing so, these artist-led ensembles are discovering new formulas, learning all the tasks of entrepreneurship on the job.

THE MENTORS Of Yale’s inspiring teachers, composercollective Sleeping Giant credits Martin Bresnick, David Lang ’83 MMA, ’89 DMA, and Christopher Theofanidis ’94 MMA, ’97 DMA. Vocal octet Roomful of Teeth’s founder Brad Wells ’98 MMA, ’05 DMA adds to that list Marguerite Brooks and Michael Friedmann.

The same goes for Invisible Anatomy’s Brendon Randall-Myers ’14 MM. Martin Bresnick’s lectures made a big impact on his future direction.

Randall-Myers was especially buoyed when David Lang volunteered his own apartment for an Invisible Anatomy benefit concert.

Half of Cantata Profana’s core artists worked with Friedmann. RandallMyers says, “Bang on a Can and Sleeping Giant are our precedents.”

Bang on a Can, of which David Lang is a founder, along with Julia Wolfe ’86 MM and Michael Gordon ’82 MM, established a composer collective model.

Most of the six Giants studied with them in various capacities, as well as attending their summer festival.

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Roomful of Teeth’s Dashon Burton ’11 MM says, “We couldn’t exist without the amazing progress made by people like Meredith Monk. We are so lucky to live in a time of fantastic artists like JACK Quartet and ACME, and lots of others pushing boundaries every day.”

So let’s introduce some young ensembles formed by YSM graduates.

INVISIBLE ANATOMY: THE DRAMATISTS The youngest ensemble, Invisible Anatomy recently took the stage of National Sawdust to realize its audiovisual ambitions. “Sawdust,” says guitarist Brendon Randall-Myers, “is amazing. Period.” Everything is possible with multi-media capabilities.

Sawdust is dedicated to audiocraft, and, says Randall-Myers, “designed for audiophiles.” What CBGB was to punk, what churches were to early music, so venues like Sawdust will be for the new classical. Anatomy’s show nearly sold out, attracting everyone from metalheads to video game music fans.

Invisible Anatomy

Randall-Myers loves the composerperformer ensemble model. It’ll change the business, offering a complete package that can present anywhere: rock clubs, churches, jazz clubs. That awareness of showmanship came straight from Yale School of Drama.

“They amaze me,” says Randall-Myers.

Anatomy’s pianist, Daniel Schlosberg ’10 BA, ’13 MM, ’14 MMA also credits Yale School of Drama. He’s loved theater since high school, before sliding into opera conducting. And for Schlosberg, theater is the key. “I still go back,” he admits, “even though I’m not a drama alum, because it renews my sense of what art can be.” Through YSD and his undergraduate days in Yale College, he met director Ethan Heard ’07 BA, ’13 MFA, Dustin Wills ’14 MFA, and lighting designers Solomon Weisbard ’13 MFA and Daisy Long ’11 BA. Schlosberg considers YSM the “best place to be interdisciplinary,” encouraging him to start Invisible

and composition not separate. I hope,” he adds, “that we’re past the point in music where music exists without being performed.” Invisible Anatomy is shedding labels, ready to be at home in any venue.

ROOMFUL OF TEETH: THE BIG WIN How do you get a contemporary virtuoso vocal octet? Start at Yale.

Founder Brad Wells began auditioning singers in the winter of 2009. His goal was to expand the limits of traditional vocal performance — to go beyond a limited vocabulary of singing timbres and gestures. He wanted to add to

and a thirst for adventurous repertoire.

For Roomful of Teeth, there’s no revoking classical tradition. It’s simply, as bass-baritone Dashon Burton puts it, “a great spirit of ’yes, and…’” instead of rebelling against anything.

Wells credits the label New Amsterdam as a critical partner from the beginning.

YSM alumni Judd Greenstein ’04 MM and Sarah Kirkland Snider ’05 MM, ’06 AD formed New Amsterdam with William Brittelle in 2007. Outside Mass MoCA, Roomful of Teeth’s first performances were New Amsterdam events. Notably, this label is both a presenter and promoter. Vocalistconductor-composer Eric Dudley ’03 MM, ’04 MMA, ’11 DMA thinks it

Roomful of Teeth:

Anatomy to explore “what concerts should be,” using theater’s way of working to create a “total experience that considers every possible element.”

They are developing a new show that will be conceived as a whole in all its possible dimensions. He says, “We’ve come together to make performance

the available colors for composers. In short, he and his fellow singers wanted to remind people of the unsurpassed potential of the human voice.

He narrowed his collaborators down to the final eight in the ensemble, all bearing the same stamp of excellence 12

“fosters a dialogue among artists and creators that might not exist so easily,” giving New York “a start-up music culture in a way that hadn’t been the case.” Founder Wells admits, “We could not have reached the audiences we’re reaching without them.”

Roomful of Teeth:

How big is that audience? Perhaps limitless. After all, Roomful of Teeth performed at the Grammys. What’s that like? “Humbling,” says Eric Dudley, “a bit intimidating, and ultimately thrilling.” And, he notes, “the best in-house sound quality we’ve ever experienced.” When asked what his proudest moment has been so far, Dashon Burton says, “I’m so glad that my mum was able to attend the ceremony.”

And that didn’t end with a Grammy.

The work “Partita for 8 Voices,” composed for Teeth’s first album by vocalist and violin alumna Caroline

first performed in 1970 by Leonard Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic, has rarely been heard since. Yet it’s a perfect vehicle for this octet: a struggle to create a new musical speech of playful virtuosity. Disembodied voices of the eight flow about, sometimes conjoined in sense, sometimes nonsense, giving the feeling of spontaneity, taking us to the threshold

string quartet and electronics (provided

by Johannson himself). Were listeners on the left bank of the Nile, or drifting off out toward the vibrant Manhattan skyline on the translucent floating vowels? Groups like Roomful of Teeth and Cantata Profana are the vocal-line bridge between the ancient and the new in their performance.

Sleeping Giant

Shaw ’07 MM made her the youngestever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. The Daily Beast praises Teeth’s sophomore album, Render, as “another masterwork of new millennium vocal polyphony.” Render earned them a second Grammy nomination. Plus, the crew is expanding their educational influence: Eric Dudley was just appointed music director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra.

Roomful engages in dream collaborations. They performed Berio’s Sinfonia with Seattle Symphony and packed the house. This behemoth,

of intelligible theater. It’s witty — packed with diverse borrowings from Beckett to Martin Luther King Jr. — and it offers as much irreverent revelation to an audience now as it did over 40 years ago.

Perhaps their most unusual venue was the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Icelandic composer Johnan Johannson’s Drone Mass resounded off walls from the 15th century B.C. in this collaboration between Roomful of Teeth and ACME. Johannson’s contemporary oratorio weaves sung texts from the Coptic Egyptians with 13

SLEEPING GIANT: COMPOSER COLLECTIVES UNITE This composer collective’s latest triumph is Hand Eye, commissioned by eighth blackbird for Carnegie Hall.

Hand Eye sprung from the Detroit art collection of Maxine and Stuart Frankel: each member of Sleeping Giant toured the collection, picking a work that inspired them musically.

For instance, an abstraction in pen and ink celebrating biological pattern, repetition, and symmetry, translated into a culminating chorale. The six composers wove references to each

Cantata Profana

other’s music into their individual movements, each focusing on one of the six instrumentalists of eighth blackbird.

These composers are Timo Andres ’07 BA, ’09 MM; Andrew Norman ’09 AD; Jacob Cooper ’06 MM, ’10 MMA, ’14 DMA; Christopher Cerrone ’09 MM, ’10 MMA, ’14 DMA; Robert Honstein ’04 BA, ’10 MMA, ’14 DMA; and Ted Hearne ’08 MM, ’09 MMA, ’14 DMA, and are ready to be heard. Giant’s work is being performed in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw and the L.A. Philharmonic.

Their name — after the Connecticut state park that gives a view of Long Island Sound and New Haven — acknowledges their roots at Yale and the place they’re conquering one commission at a time: New York City.

Their works have sold out (Le) Poisson Rouge and John Zorn’s The Stone in the East Village. You can also find them during their two-year residency in Albany, most recently re-imagining Mozart piano concertos.

CANTATA PROFANA: MADRIGALISM MEETS SERIALISM The core members of Cantata Profana came from a cross-section of the University: the Yale School of Music, School of Drama, Yale Baroque Ensemble, Yale Opera, and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Productions at the Yale Cabaret such as Pierrot Lunaire and Basement Hades were “integral,” says Jacob Ashworth, and their first formal concert as Cantata Profana took place in February 2013.

They’re now packing their fourth season with exciting collaborations.

Ashworth credits the project-oriented experience of YSM as the perfect community for finding each other.

The “really big pile of expertise” that Cantata’s core artists bring together comes from his days there.

Ashworth points out: “The more narrowly you define who you are, the very essence of what you are, you can actually do whatever you want.”

The ideal comment after a concert is: “It’s like nothing you’ve ever done, but it’s so you.”

Their sister company, Heartbeat Opera, run by stage directors Ethan Heard and Louisa Proske ’12 MFA, offers a total theatrical collaboration. They’ve staged György Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragments to great acclaim, Heard directing the soprano, Annie Rosen ’12 MM, to interact directly with Ashworth on fiddle for pure theater. Their spring 2016 festival features a 90-minute adaptation of Lucia de Lammermoor with a new arrangement of Donizetti’s score by Daniel Schlosberg. This new staging features a nameless inmate in a mental hospital reimaging herself as Lucia, a daring heroine only broken by the violent effort of the men around her.

Cantata Profana

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League of American Orchestras awards Gold Baton to Anne-Marie Soulliere

New Morse Code

NEW MORSE CODE Before Cantata Profana came together, cellist Hannah Collins ’06 BS, ’08 MM, ’09 AD had teamed up with Yale percussionist Mike Compitello ’09 MM, ’12 MMA, ’16 DMA to form the duo New Morse Code. They both met in the M.M. program, but only after she came back from the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and he from a Fulbright year with Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt did they combine forces musically.

The New Haven Independent proclaimed the duo as “much more than accomplished instrumentalists… not just playing for the future of music, but vibrantly living and shaping it.”

You’ll hear them perform in many different kinds of spaces, including art museums, dance studios, outdoor stages, and concert halls.

NEW MORSE CODE TAKES YALE’S LESSONS ON A WORKING VACATION Visual artists and writers don’t deserve all the fun. Avaloch Farm Music Institute turns the artist colony model into a residency program for performers in New Hampshire. Avaloch is purpose-built to be an inspiring setting ideal for ensembles working with a composer to create new works.

New Music Initiative, a special period of the season where every ensemble brings a collaborating artist or composer with them. New Morse Code selects the ensembles and composers that will participate and also serves as ensemble-in-residence during that part of the season. Hannah notes, “we received over three times as many applications for 2016 as we did in our first year, 2015.”

Many Yale alumni have already brought their creative projects to Avaloch Farm, including Ashley Bathgate, Jacob Cooper, Robert Honstein, Matt Barnson, Paul Kerekes, Sam Suggs, Doug Perry, Jonny Allen, Julian Pellicano, Jeff Stern, David Perry, Miki Sawada, and Cantata Profana.

EYE ON THE FUTURE OF MUSIC Sleeping Giant’s Honstein wants to help classical music to shake off attachments to old ideas about how it is presented, received, and taught. “There are many people hungry for good new music and I think we’ve barely reached most of them.”

Eric Dudley of Roomful of Teeth says of the future: “Very much TBD. We are always looking forward to performing in new places and finding meaningful collaborations with new artists. Our arms and minds are open.” ||

Founder Fred Tauber and executive director Deb Sherr invited Collins and Compitello to be the directors of the

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Anne-Marie Soullière, a member of the Yale School of Music’s Board of Advisors, was awarded the Gold Baton at the League of American Orchestras’ conference in May 2015. Soullière, the retired president of Fidelity Foundation, serves on the YSM Board of Advisors and is a member of the Battell Stoeckel Trust, the fundamental source of support of the Yale Summer School of Music/ Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

The Gold Baton is the League’s highest honor and it was presented

by Mark Volpe, managing director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Volpe cited Soullière’s “lifetime of passionate support for music, enlightened leadership of the Fidelity Foundation, and wise, sympathetic counsel to numerous musical leaders.”

Robert Blocker commented: “Anne-Marie has been and remains a dynamic advocate for music.

We are most fortunate to have her wisdom and vision as a charter member of our Board of Advisors.”

FACULTY NEWS

Thomas C. Duffy

Peter Frankl

Thomas C. Duffy, professor of music and director of university bands at Yale University, has been appointed the new conductor of the Youth Orchestra at the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven. He succeeds Netta Hadari ’99 MM, ’00 AD, who served as conductor of the orchestra for the past five years, according to a release from the school.

In celebration of his 80th birthday this season, Peter Frankl received the Gustave Jacob Stoeckel Award, which is presented to Yale faculty who, like Stoeckel, have made extraordinary contributions to the Yale School of Music and in so doing have enriched the School and enlarged its role in America’s musical life. In addition, a group of students, alumni, and faculty dedicated two chairs in the Norfolk Music Shed to Frankl and his wife Annie.

“What an honor to be invited to be the next in a long line of distinguished conductors of the Greater New Haven Youth Orchestra,” Duffy said in the release. “For most of my life I have enjoyed conducting professional and academic orchestras and wind bands all over the world. But there is something special about the process of introducing pre-college musicians to the challenges and delights of performing major repertoire — Beethoven, Brahms, Stravinsky, Elgar, Britten and others — for the very first time.”

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Frankl continued the birthday celebrations with two collaborative concerts. In October, the Horowitz Piano Series presented Frankl playing music for two pianos and for piano four hands with his colleagues on the Yale piano faculty. The program included music from Mozart to Brahms to Frankl’s Hungarian compatriot Béla Bartók. In February, Frankl joined with another group of Yale faculty colleagues for a performance on the Faculty Artist Series. The program featured the Sextet for clarinet, horn, string trio, and piano, by Ernö Dohnányi — another Hungarian composer — along with works by Schubert, Saint-Saens, Dutilleux (in honor of that composer’s centenary), and Brahms.

Peter Frankl released a recording on the Nimbus label in collaboration with flutist Ransom Wilson, and he recorded the Brahms Piano Quintet with the Artis Quartet on the same label. In Budapest, he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C major, K. 503 with the renowned Budapest Festival Orchestra.

David Lang

Hannah Lash

Willie Ruff

Composer David Lang Lang ’83 MMA, ’89 DMA received numerous honors in the past year. At the Ohio State University’s spring 2015 commencement, which took place May 10 in Ohio Stadium, Lang was one of three people given honorary doctorates for their contributions to society and academics.

As Composer-in-Residence of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Lash is currently writing a symphony based on the mysterious Voynich texts housed at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The ongoing two-season collaboration between Lash and the NHSO, called the Lash/ Voynich Project, will culminate in a new major work for orchestra titled The Voynich Symphony. Each of the work’s four movements will address a different aspect of the mysterious Voynich manuscripts: Herbal, Astronomical, Biological, and Cosmological. The NHSO, under music director William Boughton, premiered the first movement at Woolsey Hall on October 1, 2015. The Lash/Voynich Project has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy Award, and the Alison M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University.

Longtime YSM faculty member and alumnus Willie Ruff ’53 BM, ’54 MM was the recipient of a major award from the New Haven Arts Council: the C. Newton Schenck III Award for Lifetime Achievement in and Contribution to the Arts. Ruff has been on the faculty at the Yale School of Music since 1971, and has also served on the faculty at UCLA, 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. In an article in 2015, the New York Times called Ruff “a kind of emissary from the jazz world for four decades” at Yale.

On October 16, 2015, Lang was awarded the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, at the Payne Whitney Mansion in New York.

Bénédicte de Montlaur, the French Embassy’s cultural counselor, presented the award, which was created in 1957 to recognize those who have contributed to the furthering of French art.

Lang received both Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for his “Simple Song No. 3,” written for the film Youth.

As a harpist and performing artist, Hannah Lash is now represented by Ariel Artists. Performing her own music as well as the music of other composers, Lash has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Cabrillo Festival, Miller Theatre, the Alabama Symphony, and the Bennington Chamber Music Conference, among others. She gave the premiere of her own Concerto for Harp and Chamber Orchestra with the American Composers Orchestra in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in October 2015.

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The award announcement noted: In addition to sharing the concert stage with some of the most iconic names in jazz, Yale School of Music professor Willie Ruff has served music and our community as an educator, an explorer, a writer, and an ambassador, inspiring audiences and connecting new generations of performers to history and possibility.

The theme of the 2015 Arts Awards was Art Recharged, in recognition of the power of individuals and groups to respond to artistic and logistical challenges through reinvention. The award was conferred at the 2015 Arts Awards luncheon, which took place December 4 at the New Haven Lawn Club.

Christopher Theofanidis Composer Christopher Theofanidis has seen the premiers of many new works in the past year. In April, the Miró String Quartet premiered his half-hour work Five, responding to Bill Viola’s Going Forth by Day, at Chamber Music Monterey Bay. April 2015 saw the premiere of Creation/ Creator, an interdisciplinary evening length oratorio exploring the act of creating for the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, soloists, actors, and video. A CD of the piece has just been released this fall on the ASO Media Label.

Wei-Yi Yang In December, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra premiered A Thousand Cranes at the Nasher Sculpture Museum in Dallas, Texas. The work is a response to the story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who, confronting her own death, folded a thousand origami cranes as a symbol of hope and of her faith in the continuation of beauty.

For the Baltimore Symphony’s 2016– 2017 season, Theofanidis is working on a piece based on Tom Waits’ “Down in the Hole,” perhaps best known as the theme song from The Wire.

Last June at the Caramoor Festival, Peter Oundjian conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in the premiere of Theofanidis’ work Making Up for Lost Time. The premiere of the twelveminute work was part of Caramoor’s 20th anniversary season.

The Plymouth (Mass) Philharmonic opened its 100th anniversary season last October with Theofanidis’ Dreamtime Ancestors. The twentyminute work, created for the orchestra consortium New Music for America, is a response to Australian aboriginal creation stories; the work will be performed by 58 different orchestras through 2017.

Wei-Yi Yang continues to be active as a performer and educator. In September 2015, he performed as Artist in Residence at the Conservatori Superior de Música de les Illes Balears.

In addition, he played in the opening concert in collaboration with conductor/ pianist Alfredo Oyaguez Montero ’96 MM to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of UNESCO International Music Day (Día Internacional de la Música), which was established in 1975

by Sir Yehudi Menuhin.

In November, back in the United States, Yang served on the jury of both the Concert Artist Guild (CAG) audition and the Heida Hermann International Piano Competition. In January 2016, he joined the New York Philhamonic Ensemble for a concert in Merkin Hall.

This summer, he will debut in three European music festivals: in Liesing in the Austrian Alps, collaborating with Tanya Bannister ’01 CERT; in Lucca, Italy, serving as guest artist and competition adjudicator; and at Festival Internacional de Música de Deia in Mallorca, Spain.

Wei-Yi Yang recorded a CD on the Genuin label with violinist Sarita Kwok ’05 MMA, ’06 AD, ’09 DMA. ||

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Alumni at the Helm

By Donna Larcen

It’s not unusual for music school graduates to spend some time teach others in a university setting.

But for Ronald Crutcher, president of the University of Richmond, Kate Sheeran, Provost and Dean of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Zdzisław Łapiński, Rector of the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland, the journey to academia was influenced by cherished mentors and good luck.

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“I think that is a common theme for me. My favorite parts are the human connections.”

After high school, she went on to study at Eastman School of Music, majoring in horn. She picked that school because of instructor Peter Kurau. “You have to hit it off with the teachers,” she says. “You have to find a mentor.”

It was at Eastman that she found another continuing theme in her life: new music. It remains one of her passions. She taught a couple of private students, which piqued her interest in education. She worked in a young audiences program in the Rochester schools and played in the new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound.

After graduating, “I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go. The Midwest wasn’t for me. I was really waffling. I needed a plan.

Mr. Kurau called Bill Purvis at Yale. He had room for one more horn player.”

Kate Sheeran ’04 MM PROVOST AND DEAN, SAN FRANCISCO CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC

From Rochester, she got into her car and drove to New Haven.

She had an audition piece prepared. They clicked.

“I owe him a lot for taking me,” she says of her Yale mentor.

“You don’t think of Yale as a Plan B, and I can’t think now why I didn’t first apply there. It’s not like me.”

A life in music usually starts early. So it was for Kate Sheeran.

“My grandfather was a tough FBI agent who busted mobsters in Brooklyn,” she says. “But he always played piano. He had ten kids and my mom was number seven. My youngest music singalongs were with Grandpa at the piano. He was a communal music maker.”

Yale had a smaller roster of horn players than Eastman. “I did a lot of playing at Yale. I was in two chamber groups, the opera orchestra. I worked in the Music in Schools program at local New Haven schools. It was great. I loved that.”

In grade school in Vermont, she signed on to play horn and found a music teacher she loved. That led her to summers at Kinhaven Music School in nearby Weston. “We learned chamber music, and everyone who was an instrumentalist learns to sing madrigals and Bach chorales.”

But did she have a career plan?

“I thought I would go into New York City and take some auditions. But I couldn’t see myself going full force. I would love if an orchestra job fell in my lap and I wanted to play. Mr. Purvis made us think first and figure out a musical solution for every technical program.”

She’s a loyal alumna, reaching out to her fellow Kinhavenites for musical reunions, and serving on its board of trustees.

Near the end of her time at Yale she got into a music leadership program, and was on a list for a possible internship. Her group Alarm Will Sound became artists-in-residence at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Penn., near Harrisburg, the state’s capitol.

She uses Facebook as some from an earlier generation would write a note. When a cherished high school music teacher retired from Mill River Union, her local high school in North Clarendon, Sheeran posted the newspaper story about 40-year career, and wrote this on her Facebook wall:

They needed a manager. Sheeran took the job, working off a three-year grant. The group worked on electronic music and made an album.

“There is no doubt in my mind that I have made my career in music and education because I have benefitted from the wisdom and inspiration of a whole lot of wonderful music teachers. Bear Irwin is one of them, and he is certainly one of the best. He always treated us, his students, with respect and care, and I learned so much about music and life from him. Congratulations on your retirement, Bear, and thanks for everything you’ve done for all of us!”

“So here we are living on a 200-year-old farmhouse. I taught as an adjunct at Dickinson College. I played horn in local orchestras in Lancaster, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia. I taught at Bucknell and Susquehanna. I started applying for jobs in New York City.”

It was great training in multitasking. She learned to manage others and her own career, combining playing, teaching, and supervising.

In a Golden Rule moment, this is exactly the way Sheeran wants her career to go.

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In 2007 Sheeran found her next gig, as associate director of the Mannes Preparatory Division at the New School in New York City. Within a couple of years, she became director of the precollege program, then assistant dean. She stayed at Mannes for eight years.

She traveled to the 2015 New Music Gathering in San Francisco and met David Stull, who had left the Oberlin Conservatory of Music to become president of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

“I had been at Mannes a long time,” she says. “David encouraged me to apply” for the opening of provost and dean.

“I thought it was a stretch for me, but I did it.”

She’s been in the San Francisco post since last July, overseeing all the curriculum, academics, and faculty. She calls herself Stull’s Joe Biden.

“But still, I wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor,” he says. “My father is a doctor.”

Sheeran ticks off her to-do list, talking about connecting classrooms with technology, linking what’s going on in academics to music, helping students with the business side of starting ensembles and incorporating. The school has an electronics project with Sony and partners with local radio stations.

His next thought was computer science. He passed the exams, but decided he loved the cello. “I think you have to have a math brain to be a good musician,” he says. “You have to be analytical.”

He studied at the Krakow Academy of Music, graduating with distinction in 1979. While there he met Aldo Parisot, the beloved cellist and teacher who has been at Yale since 1958, who had been invited to give a master class.

“It’s a 20th-century convention that musicians only play one kind of music,” Sheeran says. “The early great classical composters played in churches, composed for patrons, and performed many kinds of music. I think it’s a really exciting time to be in a music school and to help students find their own paths.”

“That was one of the most important moments of my life,” Łapiński says. “I realized what is the level of performance I must gain and that Professor Parisot is the only person who can help me to realize my plans. Yale and Professor Parisot, this extraordinary combination became my dream.”

Zdzisław Łapiński ’81

He kept playing in Poland. “I started to have some small success,” he says. “I started to work really hard, and quite fast I was first cellist in a chamber orchestra called Capella Cracoviensis.” In 1981 he was appointed first cellist in the Krakow Radio and TV Orchestra.

RECTOR, ACADEMY OF MUSIC, KRAKOW, POLAND Zdzisław Łapiński spent a year at the Yale School of Music, but it was a year that changed his life.

He grew up in Krakow, Poland, where he showed an aptitude for music. He became a cello student, attending a primary music school. “It wasn’t my decision,” Łapiński says. “If somebody has a good ear, they are assigned an instrument.”

Then some financing was worked out, a scholarship was awarded, and Łapiński’s dream came true. He was off to Yale to study with Aldo Parisot.

“He was like a father to me, always nice, smiling, helping but demanding,” he recalls. “I spent some weekends at his house practicing and having additional lessons. Now from a distance I am able to realize how good a pedagogue he was.”

As a child he liked his music studies, but he was just as happy to play soccer. He passed an entrance exam for the Liceum, a special high school that emphasized music. He started taking his practicing more seriously and began playing better. He was invited to perform in some concerts. His teacher was Leon Solecki, first cellist in the Krakow Philharmonica Orchestra.

He found a mentor.

Łapiński marveled at how each of his classmates had a different style, a different way of learning. And that Parisot responded by treating each of them a bit differently.

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Ronald Crutcher ’72 MMA, ’79 DMA

“He never pushed me beyond the limits of my ability in the moment, but the next time I had to go further. As a cellist he had an incredible technique. Nobody explained to me so clearly aspects of cello playing like him.”

PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND

But after a year at Yale, Łapiński returned to Poland. “I wanted to stay, but I was married. And there were some politics involved. I went home.”

Ronald Crutcher credits a mentor with setting his course in life as a professional musician and lifelong educator.

He returned to the Krakow Radio and TV orchestra, staying in the first chair until 1989, and he worked on his doctorate in music. Then he joined the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, about 50 miles from Krakow. “I held the first chair until 2005,” he says.

“I would call it an enchantment,” says Crutcher, who is in his first year as president and professor of music at the University of Richmond.

He is speaking about Elizabeth Potteiger, who taught music at Miami University of Ohio, and who saw great potential in a young cello student from Cincinnati.

He was invited to teach at his old school, the Academy of Music in Krakow. He continued to play cello, but slowly the idea of teaching became his priority. He became head of the department of cello and double bass, then vice dean of instruments for three years in the school that includes vocal and drama departments. In 2012 he was elected Rector, head of the school.

For Crutcher, who went on to earn a doctorate in cello from Yale, his love of music began in the black Baptist church when he was six years old.

“In the 1950s you did what the adults in your life told you to do,” he says. “I had no idea I was musical until my parents suggested I take piano lessons. Until the eighth grade, singing was my primary outlet.”

He is philosophical about his metamorphosis from player to administrator.

He excelled at Samuel Wells Junior High School, and his band teacher urged him to learn another instrument, because Crutcher had “almost perfect pitch.” He chose the cello.

“Honestly, I picked that because I was slightly overweight and I figured I could hide behind it,” he says. But “I just fell in love with the instrument.”

“When you grow up, you realize someday technique will go down slowly. I realized I should leave the playing to the younger players. Maybe I should be more organized in teaching. It was my decision. My future was in the academy, not in playing.”

He compares his job as rector to president of a college. It’s a different rhythm. “I am sitting in an office from morning to evening,” he says.

He worked diligently. In competition, he performed a Bach suite. He met Poetteiger.

“She offered to teach me free of charge on Saturdays, if I could travel the 35 miles to her college, Crutcher says. “That chance encounter changed my life.”

He does some traveling in his position. He met YSM dean Robert Blocker at a conference in Bejing in 2012.

“I would love to come back to Yale,” Lapsinski says, “but my day is full with administration.”

He traveled three hours each way on two bus lines. From Potteiger, he learned more than the notes on the score.

He still performs from time to time, and tries to pass on what he learned from Aldo Parisot.

“She had no children, her students were her children. She traveled. She was sophisticated,” says Crutcher. He learned what it meant to be part of a faculty, how to govern, and the benefits of an academic environment. When the university set up a scholarship in her honor after her death in 1998, Crutcher was mentioned as one of her star students.

“I have to show them some solutions on the instrument. I try to learn and perform at least one new piece a year.”

His parents were supportive. Crutcher was told he had outgrown his cello and needed a better one.

He went to a music store in downtown Cincinnati. The owner met him at the door. “He told me to pick out the one I wanted,” Crutcher says. The instrument cost $1500. His father took out a loan.

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“The first time I played for him in his master class I fell apart,’ Crutcher said. “It was shocking. I was out of control. I was embarrassed.” Parisot consoled him. “I was moping around.

He walked down the steps and told me I was a good player and that I needed to get over what happened.”

Parisot told him it was all right to be nervous, but not to let the nerves take over. It was a lesson in confidence. Crutcher never had that problem again.

He became the first cellist to receive a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale.

Like both of his mentors, Crutcher continues to perform.

Since 1980 he’s been part of the Klemperer Trio with violinist Erika Klemperer and pianist Gordon Back. He was a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, serves on the board of Richmond Symphony, and has served on the boards of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Berklee College of Music.

Before his current job, he was president of Wheaton College in Massachusetts, ran the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas, and served as dean of the Conservatory at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

“My parents trusted Liz Potteiger,” he says. “My father saw I was taking this seriously and he wanted to support me.”

His dad, Andrew, was an amateur musician who sang in the choir at the Zion Baptist Church, and was the first black manager at Milacron, a large machine tool company. His mother, Burdella, went back to work as a night nurse after having three sons.

It’s quite the resume. But Crutcher is most interested in talking about mentoring. He’s passing on the lessons learned from Potteiger and Parisot.

Their faith in him was rewarded.

He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Miami University, where his mentor taught. He graduated six credit hours short of a B.A. in German. He applied to Harvard because his advisor had gone there, but was warned it wasn’t “performance friendly.” His teacher, János Starker, encouraged him to go to Indiana University, but he thought the school was too large. He was invited to New York to interview for a Ford Fellowship.

“I have a group of 15 that meets at the house for dinner once a month,” he says. “We have a real opportunity to be a model for other universities. By 2027, we predict that 49 percent of freshmen will be students of color. We have to find a way to provide the skills, competencies, and experiences for our students. We have to figure out how to engage in respectful discourse. We have to balance passion and perspective.”

Crutcher has his eyes on the prize.

Crutcher wrote to cellist and professor Aldo Parisot at Yale and asked to see him. He went to the library and listened to Parisot’s recordings. He hauled his cello up to Yale on the train from New York City.

“Everything is intentional,” Crutcher says. “Life is a spiral staircase. Each time around, you want to be a little higher.” ||

Parisot liked him. “I was a Woodrow Wilson fellow, but that didn’t come with money,” Crutcher said. “Ford gave me a full ride.”

“I was in heaven at Yale,” Crutcher said. “For the first time I was surrounded by people who shared my views. No one questioned why I was playing the cello. After three weeks I was visiting professors’ houses. I had friends. I was confident.”

There were a few missteps.

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Music in Schools Initiative “FUN…SUPPORTIVE…NICE….” THESE ARE GABRIELA’S WORDS TO DESCRIBE HELEN, HER TEACHING ARTIST, FRIEND, AND MENTOR THROUGH THE YSM MUSIC IN SCHOOLS INITIATIVE. GABRIELA, a sixth-grader at John C. Daniels School of International Communication, has participated in the Music in Schools Initiative programs for three years. Her musical journey began when she was dropped off at school an hour earlier than her third-grade peers because her brother attended early morning band rehearsals. Sensing an opportunity, the school’s music teacher gave Gabriela a flute, added her to the ensemble, and connected her with a YSM teaching artist for weekly lessons. Today, Gabriela is an active participant in her school’s band program, as well as the Music in Schools Initiative’s All-City Honors Ensembles and Morse Summer Music Academy.

Like Gabriela, each student has a story to tell about the day music became part of his or her life. For most NHPS students, this experience occurs at school, in a classroom setting with a music educator. Central to the Music in Schools Initiative is its partnership with the New Haven Public Schools. To take part in the in-school mentorship program, students must also participate

in their school’s music program under the supervision of a certified music educator. They receive instrumentspecific instruction during their oneon-one lessons with YSM Teaching artists. The Music in Schools model is fundamentally collaborative: YSM teaching artists support and augment the work of NHPS music teachers in developing the district’s musical goals for each grade level. This academic year, over 300 students are participating in the in-school mentorship program.

Ranging from fourth- to twelfthgraders and hailing from twenty NHPS schools, these students reflect the diverse community and cultural vitality of New Haven.

The in-school mentorship program is staffed by 43 YSM teaching artists—over 20% of the YSM student population. Teaching artists marry superb artistry and musicianship with a profound understanding of how music exists and thrives in daily life. They work with NHPS music teachers, assisting and honoring them; with students, teaching and inspiring them; and with families, providing

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guidance about their children’s musical lives—from daily practice to instrument maintenance—and actively demonstrating the transforming power of serious musical practice. Teaching artists focus on building meaningful relationships with the community while developing teaching artistry, flexibility, and innovation. Spending hours a week on the schools gives YSM musicians the opportunity to discover for themselves the deep connections between music and social change and to experience firsthand how the world can be made better, one young musician at a time.

When asked about what music has brought to her life, Gabriela answers, “Happiness!” Her sincere statement resonates in a world desperately in need of joy and community. The work of the Music in Schools Initiative continues: there are many more young people who deserve happiness, and many more students in our cities waiting to learn and share the music in their lives.

SYMPOSIUM ON MUSIC IN SCHOOLS HIGHLIGHTS MUSIC PARTNERSHIPS YSM HOSTS FIFTH BIENNIAL SYMPOSIUM JUNE 4–7, 2015

Joanne Lipman

The School of Music hosted an invitational symposium of nearly 75 arts leaders and educators on the Yale campus last June. The Symposium on Music in Schools is one of the programs developed by YSM thanks to the major endowment gift that the Yale College Class of 1957 presented to the School to honor their 50th reunion in 2007.

This year, the Symposium aimed to encourage strong partnetrships across the country, like the one Yale enjoys with the New Haven Public Schools.

Thirty-five partnerships, all between music organizations and public schools, sent two participants from their programs to New Haven June 4–7. The invitees heard keynote speakers, participated in seminars, and saw a performance by YSM alumni. In addition, the participants received the Yale Distinguished Music Educator Award. Nearly 80 institutional partnerships from around the country applied, from which the 35 distinguished partnerships were selected.

Our speakers presented eloquently about the topic. Sebastian Ruth, the Yale College Class of ’57 Visiting Lecturer on Community Engagement, started the Symposium with a provocative speech entitled “Music, Education, and Democracy: Possibilities for Our Shared World.”

He discussed the premise that quality music education will make a positive impact on the world beyond the music classroom.

After Ruth’s speech, author Joanne Lipman ’83 BA spoke about A Musical Fix for American Schools. School reformers have tried so many ways to “fix” education, Lipman noted, asking: why should they not try music, which has provided so many examples of transforming children’s lives?

Demaris Hansen and Thomas Duffy presented a thought-provoking workshop and dialogue about the Common Core and the role of arts partnerships. Jaclyn Rudderow, from VH1-Save the Music Foundation, and Leah Wilson of Opera America served as moderators for a session on the future of successful arts partnerships.

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An awe-inspiring keynote by noted composer and YSM faculty member David Lang closed the Symposium.

Professor Lang repeated several times: “Everything I am as a musician is because of my public school music teacher.” The attendees went wild with appreciation of a musician of his stature recognizing the important work that they all do.

Associate Dean Michael Yaffe, who directs the symposium, will be visiting several of the partnerships during the next year in preparation for the 2017 gathering, which will focus on the role that music should have for changing lives and improving society, particularly in urban school districts. || To watch the keynote addresses, visit: » music.yale.edu/media/music-in-schools/

To read more about the Symposium and the participants, visit: » music.yale.edu/community/symposium

CAREER &

TRANSFIGURATION

By Samantha Buker

L to R: Leona Francombe, Gerald Elias, Vivien Shotwell

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“I’M TRYING TO TELL A STORY AND TRANSPORT THE AUDIENCE. BEFORE THE WRITTEN WORD, STORIES WERE SPOKEN OR SUNG, AND WRITERS STILL CARE DEEPLY ABOUT THE MUSIC OF LANGUAGE.”

Gerald Elias VIOLINIST OF MYSTERIES A month after graduating from Yale, Gerald Elias ’75 BA, ’75 MM had no idea he’d become a writer. He knew he had just won a difficult audition for one of the best American orchestras: he was joining the first violin section of the Boston Symphony. What started as his sabbatical project in 1997, a book called Violin Lessons, ended up as The Devil’s Trill, the first of a mystery series that follows Daniel Jacobus, a blind violinist who solves murders plaguing the musical community.

Unlikely directions have Yale connections. Elias had wanted to educate violin students about difficulties they’d confront in their chosen careers. His own Yale mentor, Joseph Silverstein, concertmaster of the Boston Symphony for 22 years, was the model for what Jacobus says about the violin (but not for Jacobus’ irascible personality). Equally, Silverstein influenced Elias’ musical career as his colleague in the Boston Symphony and later as his music director in the Utah Symphony.

“You go in,” Elias says, “idealistic, caring only about the beautiful.” However, as his 36year symphony career taught him, there are roadblocks: contract negotiations and fierce competition can break a musician. Elias admits that had he written his original book of lessons — one chapter per challenge — his reader would “have fallen asleep in five seconds.”

But when weaving the lessons into a whodunit about a stolen Stradivarius, he knew he’d hit upon a way to expand the audience for the music he loves.

Without the help of another Yale friend and mentor, Katharine Weber, he would never have gotten beyond a draft in a drawer. Weber, who taught creative writing, helped him embark on an unlikely crash course in how to write. The Devil’s Trill took ten years but now he can write a book in a year.

The beauty of the blind violinist is that not only are his other senses (taste, touch, hearing) more acute, it also explains why Jacobus identifies clues others miss. Additionally, Elias notes that Jacobus sees more clearly than others the musical world for what it is, “the stuff that goes along with the music, marketing, PR, theatrics, hysterics and egos.”

His fans regularly write thanking him for opening a door to music for them.

Elias’ newest book, Playing With Fire, about the life and death of a violin-making shop, comes out in spring 2016. But Yale alumni may be most excited about the book he’s working on right now, since it takes place at a music school not unlike the one they attended.

Leona Francombe FROM PIANO TO TYPEWRITER AND BACK AGAIN Like most pianists, Leona Francombe ’81 MM started young. She also had a second love: escape through books. When she was thirteen or fourteen she decided to strike out and write one herself. Tapping away laboriously on her father’s old black Royal typewriter, she

27

“...WHEN WEAVING THE LESSONS INTO A WHODUNIT ABOUT A STOLEN STRADIVARIUS, HE KNEW HE’D HIT UPON A WAY TO EXPAND THE AUDIENCE FOR THE MUSIC HE LOVES.“

created her first “infant” novel. But her real beginning might have been at Yale, in a certain class called “Writing on Music.”

“We were asked to write an encyclopedia article about any composer we wanted,” reflects Francombe. “Since there was much more piano-playing than writing going on in my life at the time, I decided to flex my imagination and invent a composer for the assignment: Anton Belinsky, complete with a Soviet back-story and tragic death.” She admits that while her professor was not amused, she did manage to fool some of her classmates, who spent time in the music library looking up Belinsky. She later honored her ruse by giving this Belinsky a minor role in her first mature novel project: The Mist Catcher.

This one novel is especially close to her. Though unpublished, The Mist Catcher did make her a semi-finalist in an Amazon competition. It investigates one of the main aspects of music Francombe has been exploring: its mystery. How does it affect the mind and spirit?

How does it transcend, ennoble, and empower? “All burning issues,” she says, that “oddly enough, seem to interest few serious musicians these days.” We have all experienced it, that moment where music becomes this living force that unifies the hand, instrument, sound and listener. Maybe even for a whole concert.

“Alas,” says Francombe, “like all great magicians, music will probably never reveal how, exactly, she does this.”

Her deep passion for history also plays a huge role. For The Mist Catcher this meant mining an original manuscript in the Brussels Conservatory’s library: Joseph-Louis Roger’s Treatise on the Effects of Music on the Human Body, published in 1803.

Her latest novel, The Sage of Waterloo, takes us to the site of the famous battle. The protagonist, a philosophical rabbit, recounts the Battle of Waterloo while looking back on his own life and recalling the life teachings of his wise old grandmother. Its debut marked the 200th anniversary of the battle in June, 2015.

As all the YSM graduates in this story have learned, writing and music share deep links.

Francombe says, “Music and writing have shared a common source in me for so long that to do only one or the other wouldn’t be an option.”

For her, “phrasing, sonority, character, and structure” are essential to the handling of both words and notes. The practice of the two shift as the phases of the moon. One waxes as the other wanes, then vice versa — just as life, children, and teaching commitments change one’s priorities.

The links are so entwined that Francombe turned from writing about Waterloo to composing a piano meditation on the same subject after The Sage came out. Her music is a visceral response in sound to the ruin of Hougoumont Farm and the empty, brooding landscape around it. (She lives just down the road.) Her many wanderings inspired her to depict “what hangs on the silence there.” Today, the old farm has been renovated. But before that, her son, a digital arts student, made a video (available on YouTube) of his photo work there, which accompanies her Waterloo Meditation.

“Working on Waterloo Meditation,” she confesses, “has inspired me to compose other musical journeys through the landscapes and moods of my books. I’m really excited about this synergy. I’ve begun mapping such a piece for A Song of Deeds.” This is the work she’s shopping around to publishers currently. Her present music-centric writing project is also inspiring her to compose an accompanying musical journey.

28

“...’PHRASING, SONORITY, CHARACTER, AND STRUCTURE’ ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE HANDLING OF BOTH WORDS AND NOTES. THE PRACTICE OF THE TWO SHIFT AS THE PHASES OF THE MOON....”

Vivien Shotwell WRITING ON THE WINGS OF AN ARIA The seeds of Vivien Shotwell’s first novel were planted when her teacher at Williams College, Keith Kibler, gave her a Mozart aria to sing, “Ch’io mi scordi di te.”

Kibler suggested she might like to write a story about Anna Storace, the English soprano who sang this aria for Herr Mozart and made a huge splash in Italy and Vienna in their day.

Many years and mentors later, the story came out as Vienna Nocturne.

For Shotwell, writing and performing share the same goals. “With both vocations,” she says, “I’m trying to tell a story and transport the audience. Before the written word, stories were spoken or sung, and writers still care deeply about the music of language — its tone and rhythm.”

She credits Yale with a huge role in both careers, writing and music. “If I hadn’t attended the Yale School of Music,” she admits, “I probably would have quit singing and focused on writing and teaching.” But the faculty at Yale had such a strong belief in her that she decided to pursue both passions with equal dedication.

She adds, “I don’t think there is anyone on the faculty at Yale Opera without a love for poetry and theater.” As they helped her advance her singing career, they wanted her to keep writing. Yale Opera director Doris Cross read Vienna Nocturne as soon as it came out.

Richard Cross is always asking Shotwell when he can read the next one.

Shotwell is working on a new novel, set in 17th-century France. In the meantime, she’s also collecting essays about her journey as a singer. It’s also an exciting time vocally as she moves from mezzo-soprano to dramatic soprano, learning a few lighter Wagnerian arias and eyeing up Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos.

The strongest aspect that comes out in Vienna Nocturne is the deep joy, the amazing daring that comes from performing opera, detailing how those glorious sounds emerge.

Anna’s story, too, tells of a less delightful aspect of performance: losing your voice.

When Shotwell was eighteen, she had a vocal fold hemorrhage. This is an injury many singers know, but luckily heals with treatment, as it did for Shotwell. Still, that doesn’t diminish the fright of the experience, which Shotwell channeled into Anna’s brush with silence after the deep grief of losing a child.

Links: » geraldelias.com » vivienshotwell.com » leonafrancombe.com/music.html

Each of these YSM alumni can channel both the light and dark sides of their musical lives into a rich new vein of sharing: the novel. Gerald Elias credits Yale’s double degree program as the thing that set him on his path. “One of the challenges of being an orchestral musician,” he says, “is to avoid defining oneself by one’s position. They can play for thirty, forty, even fifty years and don’t retire, because without sitting in that seat, they don’t know who they are!”

For these three musicians, there’s limitless room to redefine themselves through their characters, as authors that create plenty of life after Mozart. ||

29

Alumni and Student News 2015 – 2016

Yehudi Wyner ’50 BA, ’52 BM, ’53 MM

has been elected president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He succeeds architect Henry N. Cobb and will serve a three-year term. In his comments, Wyner said he reacted to the news of his election with “Surprise, astonishment, disbelief, and finally delight.” He was inducted into the prestigious, 250-member organization in 1999 and has served on its award juries and board of directors. Wyner, who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his piano concerto Chiavi in mano, has written over 100 works, ranging from liturgical services to theater music to orchestra pieces. He is also a solo pianist and chamber musician and, since 1968, the keyboard player for the Bach Aria Group.

Dr. Ronald A. Crutcher ’72 MMA,

’79 DMA has been elected the 10th president of the University of Richmond. He was elected in February, 2015 by the university’s Board of Trustees and began his appointment on July 1. Crutcher is President Emeritus of Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where he served as President from 2004

to 2014, and a former provost of Miami University of Ohio. In addition, he is the founding co-chair of the Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Nina Deutsch ’73 MMA was named

a “Notable Leonian” by the Leonia Library Archives department of local history for her contributions to the musical community. Deutsch, a pianist, has given the Chinese premieres of several classic American works. Her 1982 recording of the Ives Concord Sonata in Beijing, China is housed in the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, and in 2009 she recorded a collection of Bob Dylan’s songs for solo piano.

Ian Hobson ’74 MM, ’75 MMA, ’78 DMA

has been appointed to the faculty of the Florida State University College of Music. The pianist and conductor comes to the College of Music from the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, where he has served as the Swanlund Professor of Piano since 2000. In the 2015–2016 season,

Hobson has embarked on a six-concert series in New York City’s SubCulture and Merkin Hall. Preludes, Etudes, and Variations — Downtown/Uptown presents outstanding examples of each genre and expands the genres by presenting world premieres by Yehudi Wyner and others.

Gerald Elias ’75 BA, ’75 MM, who

studied violin performance at Yale, will publish his fifth novel in spring 2016. Tentatively titled Fire Music, the forthcoming novel will continue in the Daniel Jacobus series of books which take place in the dark corners of the classical music world. The debut book in the series, Devil’s Trill, won Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers recognition in 2009. Fire Music will be published by Severn House.

Jonathon Levi ’76 BA, ’81 March

married Kay Tanfield at First Church in Boston on June 27, 2015. Groomsman Robert Beaser (’76 BA Scholar of the House, ’77 MM, ’81 MMA, ’85 DMA) led the choir in his Song of the Ascents (Psalm 121). Music director Paul Cienniwa ’97 MM, ’98 MMA, ’03 DMA played organ works of Duruflé, Glass, Messiaen, and Pärt, and led the choir in works of Finzi and Pärt.

The church building was designed by architect Paul Rudolph, chair of Yale School of Architecture 1958–1965.

Jahja Ling ’80 MMA, ’85 DMA plans

Yehudi Wyner ’50 BA, ’52 BM, ’53 MM

Susan Merdinger ’85MM

Antonio Underwood ’87 MM

Mesut Özgen ’93 MM, ’94 AD

Jason Weinberger ’96 BA, ’97 MM

Miki Aoki ’02 MM 30

to step down as music director of the San Diego Symphony at the end of the 2016–2017 season. Ling was

Gregory Spears ’02 MM

honored with the Yale School of Music’s Distinguished Service Award in 2014.

Kim Cook ’81 MM currently serves

as Professor of Music in Cello at the Penn State School of Music. In 2014 she released a recording with the Philharmonica Bulgarica on MSR Classics.

W. Thomas Jones ’82 MM has been appointed University Organist at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina. In addition to his Yale degree, he holds an Associate’s Diploma from the Royal College of Organists in London, obtained after a period of study with Arthur Wills at Ely Cathedral. He taught musicianship skills at the University of Chicago, and later studied with Marilyn Keiser at Indiana University, where he was an Associate Instructor in Music Theory.

Joe Waters ’82 MM, an active composer

and a member of the music composition faculty at San Diego Staue University, has a eclectic virtuoso ensemble called SWARMIUS. Consisting of soprano sax, alto sax, vibraphone, and electronics, the ensemble performs widely, including appearances in New York City and internationally. The group released its third recording, SWARMIUS III — Trans-Classical, in February. » swarmius.com

Ian Howell ’04 MM

Kirsten Vogelsang (Eyerman) ’84 MM,

who studied composition at YSM, was hired as Adjunct Professor of Music at Palomar College in San Marcos, California. In her position there, she will be developing a cello studio, assisting with the orchestra program, and teaching composition and music theory. » www.kirstenvogelsangmusic.com

Steinway Artist Susan Merdinger ’85 MM has formed a new piano ensemble called Pianissimo!, comprised of four female concert pianists: Merdinger, Irina Feoktistova, Svetlana Belsky, and Elena Doubovitskaya. They made their Chicago debut in September 2015 at the Merit School of Music. In addition, Merdinger served on the faculty at Summit Music Festival for its 25th anniversary season in 2015. She was invited to give a master class on the Chopin mazurkas for the Chicago Amateur Piano Guild last September, and performed on Live from WFMT with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra. She will present the complete Beethoven piano and violin sonatas with violinist Cyrus Forough on Live from WFMT in three recitals starting on June 20, 2016. » www.susanmerdingerpianist.com

The opera Yue Fei by An-Lun “Aaron” Huang ’86 MM received its world premiere in the Tianjin Grand Theatre, China, on November 27, 2015. The four-act opera, which was written in

Kimberly Dunn Adams ’05 MM

Enrico Sartori ’05 MM 31

1985 while Huang was still at Yale, is based on the historical tragedy of the general Yue Fei in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279). The the Tianjin Conservatory of Music presented the performance, which involved more than 300 performers. With support from the National Art Fund of China, there will be two more performances at Beijing’s National Grand Theatre in June 2016.

Johann Sebastian Paetsch ’87 CERT, ’91 MM is principal cellist of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. He lives in Lugano, Switzerland with his wife Yoko Miyagawa ’90 MM and their three children—Raphaela, Valentina, and Dominic—all of whom play stringed instruments. Paetsch has published two editions of solo works for the cello, both by Friedrich Hofmeister Musikverlag.

Antonio Underwood ’87 MM, tuba, has

received a Fulbright Grant that will allow him to travel to Serbia, where he will assist and collaborate in developing of a jazz program at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. Underwood has released a new solo CD, Tone Poem VI: Wondering Places, produced by his own company, Tone East Music LLC, and mastered by NBC Universal, Studio City. He looks forward to a forthcoming video project highlighting the tuba as a solo instrument in the popular genre. » www.toneeastmusic.com

Inbal Segev ’93 CERT, ’98 MM

Jacob Adams ’06 MM, ’07 AD

Alumni and Student News 2015 – 2016

album In Truth: Lucas Richman. In 2015 she gave a workshop performance of a new commission, Legend of Sigh for cello and electronics, by composer Gity Razaz at VisionIntoArt’s second annual FERUS Festival in Brooklyn, NY. Other highlights include tours in China and Israel, a Bach recital at Lincoln Center’s Kaplan Penthouse, and a performance in Krakow as part of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Inbal’s summer season included performances at the Kreeger Museum Chamber Festival with the American Chamber Players and at An Appalachian Summer Festival with the Broyhill Ensemble.

Mark Crociati ’88 MM, clarinet, is

Genevieve Feiwen Lee ’89 MM,

part of the I Musicisti Trio, which performed at the Orleans Historical Society in June of 2015. I Musicisti is a group of musicians from the Cape and greater Boston area whose mission is to educate and continue the performance of classical music.

’90 MMA, ’94 DMA and fellow pianist Nadia Shpachenko received a 2016 Grammy nomination in the category of Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for their recording of Tom Flaherty’s Airdancing, for toy piano, piano, and electronics. This piece appears on Shpachenko’s new album Woman at the New Piano, released by Reference Recordings, which is also nominated in the category of Best Classical Compendium. The album also includes a duo piano performance

by Lee and Shpachenko. The CD was among several that won the Marina and Victor Ledin a nomination for Producer Of The Year, Classical.

» www.inbalsegev.com

Mesut Özgen ’93 MM, ’94 AD, guitar,

Stéphane Lévesque ’95 MM has been

Conductor Dante Anzolini ’89 MM, ’90 MMA, ’07 DMA was selected as a juror for the 2015 Besançon International Conducting Competition, which took place in September 2015. His solo piano transcription of Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra had its world premiere in Tokyo, Japan, on July 12, 2015, performed by pianist Hiroaki Ooi. Anzolini’s transcription is the first piano solo arrangement of Schoenberg’s famous work. Dante wishes to send “deep thankful acknowledgment” to his alma mater. » www.danteanzolini.com Steven Dube ’89 MM, trumpet, is

beginning his seventh year on the faculty of the International School in Basel, Switzerland. He previously taught at Pechersk School International in Kyiv, Ukraine. He has had several chances to conduct at festivals, where he has worked with international students in Prague, Moscow, Budapest, and Warsaw. After graduating from Yale, Dube spent several years performing with the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM in Mexico City and with the Mexico City Philharmonic.

Owen Dalby ’06BA, ’07MM

has joined the faculty of the Florida International University School of Music after fifteen years of teaching at the University of California Santa Cruz. He will be the director of guitar studies and of the FIU Miami Guitar Orchestra. Winner of a 2007 Telly Award for his multimedia concert video New Dimensions in Classical Guitar, Özgen has been busy with concertizing, recording, composing, conducting, and teaching. His latest CD, Anatolian Fantasy, features entirely his own compositions. » www.mesutozgen.com

Cellist Inbal Segev ’93 CERT, ’98 MM released a solo recording, Inbal Segev: Bach Cello Suites, on Vox Classics, and was a soloist on the Albany Records

Matthew Plenk ’06 MM, ’07 AD

Mei Rui ’06 BA, ’06 MM, ’07 ADa 32

principal bassoonist of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) since 1998. He has appeared as a soloist with the orchestra on multiple occasions and in November 2015, he was again featured as soloist with the OSM in a performance of Richard Strauss’ Duet-Concertino for clarinet, bassoon, strings, and harp, with clarinetist Todd Cope and guest conductor Alexis Hauser. Lévesque is also Assistant Professor at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University.

Conductor Jason Weinberger ’96 BA, ’97 MM has taken on a unique dual role with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony (wcfsymphony) as artistic director and CEO, after a number of years as the orchestra’s music director.

Shannon Thomas ’06 MM

Dennis Kim ’98 MM

Under Jason’s artistic leadership, the orchestra has been recognized for its performances of a wide variety of new and recent American music, its creative style of concert presentation, and its impactful work with youth. In his first three years in the CEO role, Jason has led a turnaround of the organization’s finances and refocused its agenda as both a community asset and industry leader. He lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa with his wife Jenette and sons Benjamin and Levi. » jasonweinberger.com Dennis Kim ’98 MM has been named

the new concertmaster of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. The appointment follows a week-long trial in 2014 in which Kim led a concert of music by Sibelius and gave a recital for the orchestra. Previously, Kim served as concertmaster of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland, as well as the Hong Kong and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestras. As a guest concertmaster, he has worked with the London, Bergen, Qatar, and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestras and the KBS orchestra in Seoul.

John Kline ’98 MM, ’98 MMA,

composition, was hired as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Connect For Education. C4E is a digital publisher for the field of higher education focusing on music.

John Kaefer ’01 MM finished the

score for Remedy Entertainment and Microsoft Studios’ “Quantum Break,”

set to release for Xbox One on April 5. The game features a live-action TV series that interacts with the gameplay based on the player’s choices. Kaefer’s other recent work in film and TV includes the score for the original TV series Sequestered (Crackle/Sony Pictures) and three soundtrack albums for Discovery Music Source. His music continues to be featured in series on the major networks (CBS, NBC, etc), including his thematic music for ABC’s 20/20. Recent concert works include Nocturne: Evening Fire for solo piano, and Just Out Of Reach for electric viola and laptop. Kaefer is represented

by Evolution Music Partners in Los Angeles and maintains studios in both New York and Los Angeles. » www.composerjohn.com

appearances in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, with a program including works from her forthcoming CD, Mélancolie. » www.miki-aoki.com Nigel Potts ’02 MM, organ, and Sarah Rose Taylor, mezzo soprano, have performed duo concerts throughout the United States and the Bahamas, and at prestigious concert venues such as Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City; Grace Cathedral in San Francisco; and Longwood Gardens for the Delius Society of Philadelphia.

Composer Gregory Spears ’02 MM was named by BMI as one of two 2015 winners of the Carlos Surinach Commissions, a program that funds the creation of new works by former winners of the BMI Student Composer Awards. Award recipients have their works premiered by leading contemporary orchestras, chamber music groups, and classical soloists.

The commissions are often awarded in partnership with the Concert Artists Guild (CAG). This year, trumpeter Brandon Ridenour of the

Pianist Miki Aoki ’02 MM was joined the roster of Price Rubin and Partners Concert Management (United States) in 2015. Last summer she performed with violinist Dami Kim at the International Violin Masterclasses and Concerts in Kronberg, and joined violist William Coleman for a performance at Mattheiser Sommer Akademie. In September 2015 she played four solo piano recitals, presented by the Music Center Japan, in her home country. Aoki also performed Shostakovich at the St. Petersburg (Russia) Philharmonic Hall, which she called “an unforgettable experience.” Other performances last fall included Matthew Barnson

Benjamin Lulich ’07

’07 MM, ’08 MMA, ’12 DMA

Yoshiaki Onishi ’07 MM, ’08 AD

Marianna Prjevalskaya ’07 MM, ’10 AD

Dantes Rameau ’07 MM 33

Zachary Wadsworth ’07 MM

Christopher Cerrone ’09 MM, ’10 MMA, ’14 DMA

Alumni and Student News 2015 – 2016

Canadian Brass, a CAG Victor Elmaleh Competition winner, will premiere Spears’ forthcoming double trumpet concerto at the 2016–2017 CAG series at Carnegie Hall.

Andrew Parker ’03 MM joined the

faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in the fall 2015 as the new professor of oboe. He previously taught at the University of Iowa.

Benjamin Berghorn ’04 MM has

been invited to perform on a new music recital at the 2016 International Trumpet Conference in Anaheim, Calif. this June. He will perform a work by Yale college alumnus Eric Nathan ’06 BA entitled Toying.

Joseph Gregorio ’04 MM, along with

Seattle-based choral ensemble The Esoterics (founded and directed by Eric Banks ’90 BA), was awarded a commissioning grant from the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music to support the composition of a choral cycle on the poetry of John Gould Fletcher. Gregorio was also recently commissioned by the male choral ensemble Cantus. Currently pursuing a DMA in composition at Temple University, he is the director of choirs at Swarthmore College and the founding director of the chamber choir Ensemble Companio. » www.josephgregoriomusic.com

Merideth Hite ’09 MM

Ji Hye Jung ’09 MM

Ian Howell ’04 MM, countertenor, has

Kimberly Dunn Adams ’05 MM is

been appointed to the voice faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In his capacity as Director of Vocal Pedagogy, Howell oversees the master’s-level vocal pedagogy program, teaches a number of vocal pedagogy classes, and leads research in NEC’s new Voice and Sound Analysis Laboratory.

Director of Choral Activities at the Western Michigan University School of Music in Kalamazoo, where she conducts the University Chorale, Collegiate Singers, and Grand Chorus. She also teaches choral literature, advanced choral conducting, and a graduate program in choral conducting. In 2014, Kimberly conducted the premiere of Paul Lansky’s Contemplating Weather; the piece was subsequently recorded and released as the centerpiece of a new album of works by Lansky on Bridge Records. In 2015, she traveled to Sweden and Denmark to represent the U.S. as a delegate for the American Choral Directors Association’s (ACDA) International Conductors Exchange Program. In addition to her work as a conductor, Kimberly is enjoying her new status as mother to her son, Charlie, who was born in October 2014.

Kate Sheeran ’04 MM was appointed

Provost and Dean of San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Previously Assistant Dean at Mannes School of Music of The New School, Sheeran took up her new position on July 1, 2015. She succeeds Robert Fitzpatrick, who retired from the Conservatory after serving in that role in an interim capacity since January 2014. As the institution’s chief academic officer, Provost and Dean Sheeran will oversee all aspects of the school’s academic program, and will ensure compliance with the standards of the WASC Senior College and University Commission.

She will lead, support and build the faculty and work with them to implement curricular modernization and development. In addition, Sheeran will oversee the assessment of student learning outcomes and academic performance and seek to attract students of the highest caliber to the school.

Andrew Norman ’09 AD 34

Italian flutist Enrico Sartori ’05 MM has won the principal flute position with the BBC Scottish Symphony. Sartori maintains an full concert schedule as a soloist in Europe and the U.S., and in 2009, made his Carnegie Hall debut as a winner of the Artist International Competition.

Kensho Watanabe ’09 BS, ’10 MM

Alexander (Smith) Svensen ’10 MM

Jacob Adams ’06 MM, ’07 AD has been

appointed Assistant Professor of Viola at the University of Alabama School of Music in Tuscaloosa. The appointment began in fall 2015. Adams also published an article entitled “What’s in a Name? Ladislav Vycpálek and his Suite for Solo Viola” in the Journal of the American Viola Society.

New York-based violinist Owen Dalby ’06 BA, ’07 MM was named the new second violinist with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, joining the group in June 2015. Dalby has won acclaim as both a soloist and chamber musician.

“I’ve always considered string quartet playing as the pinnacle of what I could possibly do with my musical career,” said Dalby in press materials, “so for me, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Tenor Matthew Plenk ’06 MM, ’07 AD has been appointed Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of Denver Lamont School of Music.

Last season, Mr. Plenk performed at the Metropolitan Opera as Arturo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and in its productions of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

He has also appeared in the Cleveland Orchestra’s performances of Strauss’ Daphne.

Reena Esmail ’11 MM, ’14 MMA

Matthew Russo ’12 MM

Pianist Mei Rui ’06 BA, ’06 MM, ’07 AD won the bronze medal in the 2015 Cincinnati World Piano Competition.

In the final round, she performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Cincinnati Symphony. Rui also recorded music for solo piano

by Eric Nathan ’06 BA for his album Multitude Solitude, released by Albany Records in 2015. » meiruipiano.com Shannon Thomas ’06 MM was recently

appointed Assistant Professor of Violin at Florida State University. Previous faculty appointments include the University of Southern Mississippi and Lee University. Dr. Thomas spends her summers as education director of the Innsbrook Institute Summer Music Academy and Festival in Innsbrook, Missouri and is on faculty at the Kinhaven Music School in Weston, Vermont. » www.shannonthomasviolin.com

Composer Matthew Barnson ’07 MM, ’08 MMA, ’12 DMA received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship. In its ninety-first competition for the United States and Canada, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and scientists; Barnson was one of only eleven composers to receive the honor this year.

Derrick Wang ’08 MM 35

Benjamin Lulich ’07 was appointed

acting principal clarinet of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. His first performances with the orchestra began in September, 2015 under the baton of music director Franz WelserMost. “I am very happy to perform with the Cleveland Orchestra this coming season,” Lulich wrote in a statement. “I grew up listening to recordings of [the orchestra], and I attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, so it is a dream come true.”

Previously, Lulich was principal clarinet of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and before that, the Pacific Symphony.

Yoshiaki Onishi ’07 MM, ’08 AD was

appointed Associate Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, Japan. Onishi was previously a Teaching Fellow at Columbia University in New York, where he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 2015. Onishi is also in demand as a conductor; recent engagements include a concert with Nieuw Ensemble in Amsterdam.

Previously he served as an assistant conductor to the Columbia University Orchestra from 2011 to 2013.

William Gardiner ’13 MM, ’15 MMA

Henry Kramer ’13 AD, ’15 MMA

Alumni and Student News 2015 – 2016

Marianna Prjevalskaya ’07 MM,

’10 AD gave her New York debut recital at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall on February 23, 2015 as winner of the 2013 Cincinnati World Piano Competition.

In 2015, her CD devoted to the music of Rachmaninoff was released by Fanfare Cincinnati. Previously, Naxos released a 2012 CD that included works

by Scarlatti, Haydn, Schumann, and Zarate. » www.prjevalskaya.com

Zachary Wadsworth ’07 MM accepted

Dantes Rameau ’07 MM, co-founder

of the Atlanta Music Project (AMP), answered a knock one day to find the rapper Common at the door. Common was there as a guest host for the TV show Knock Knock Live, and the surprise also included presents for AMP. The non-profit organization, which provides intensive, tuition-free music education for underserved youth, received a customized 15-passenger van to help transport students to and from performances. In addition, the van was filled with string, brass and keyboard instruments, and AMP received $50,000. Rameau called the gifts a “game-changer” for AMP, which launched in 2010 with seven students and now serves 200 students at four sites.

Staff Sgt. Jonathon Troy ’07 MM, clarinet, performed on the Late Show at Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City on April 30, 2015 as a member of The President’s Own United States Marine

Corin Lee ’13MM

Band. Troy performed with the band during the show’s taping with the First Lady of the United States in the guest chair. Prior to joining The President’s Own, he was principal clarinet of the Las Vegas Philharmonic. Troy performs with the Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra at the White House, in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and across the country during the band’s annual concert tour.

Ashley William Smith ’13 MM, ’14 AD

a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. His appointment began in fall 2015. The 2015–2016 season also includes a performance of Wadsworth’s music by the Richmond Symphony and a premiere at the national conference of the American Guild of Organists. In addition, his music will be included on recordings by the Northwestern University Cello Ensemble, Luminous Voices, and tenor Dennis Tobenski. » www.zacharywadsworth.com Derrick Wang ’08 MM saw the world premiere of his opera Scalia/ Ginsburg in July 2015. The Los Angeles Times wrote: “Funny…sweet and touching…Could we please make it a constitutional requirement that no one can be sworn into office in the White House or Congress without first having seen Scalia/Ginsburg?”

» www.derrickwang.com

Sean Chen ’14 AD 36

Composer Christopher Cerrone ’09 MM, ’10 MMA, ’14 DMA has been named the winner of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize for 2015–2016, announced the American Academy in Rome.

The annual Rome Prize Fellowship supports advanced independent work in the arts and humanities in a unique residential community in Rome.

Cerrone is using his time in Rome to compose new works inspired by Italian architecture, art, and acoustics.

Merideth Hite ’09 MM joined the faculty of North Carolina School of the Arts as the new professor of oboe in the fall of 2015. Previously, she had been serving on faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Ji Hye Jung ’09 MM was appointed

Associate Professor of Percussion at Vanderbilt University. Her former position as Associate Professor of Percussion at the University of Kansas will be filled by Michael Compitello ’09 MM, ’12 MMA, who has been serving as Director of Percussion at Cornell University.

Violinist Kyung Jun Kim ’09 CERT has collected top prizes at two international competitions in August 2015: the Korea International Music Competition and the Nishinihon International Music Competition, where he won first prize and sixth prize, respectively. » kyung-jun.co.kr

Jake Fridkis ’14 MM

Isabel Lepanto Gleicher ’14 MM

Andrew Norman ’09 AD was named

Alexander (Smith) Svensen ’10 MM

the new Director of the Composer Fellowship Program (CFP) at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Norman will cultivate the talent of young composers through intensive, firsthand experiences, including lessons, reading sessions, lectures, LA Phil concerts, and encounters with today’s most notable composers.

has been appointed section bass in the Springfield Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts. Based in New Haven, Conn., Svensen is enjoying a diverse career as a classical, jazz, and pop bassist, playing both upright and electric bass. In addition to his position with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, he performs with the Connecticut Chamber Virtuosi, Connecticut Lyric Opera, and Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, and maintains a busy freelance career across the Northeast.

Kensho Watanabe ’09 BS, ’10 MM

has been appointed the inaugural conducting fellow of the San Diego Symphony. Watanabe, who had just completed his tenure as conducting fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music, was chosen for a similar role in San Diego, where he will conduct a limited number of concerts. Jahja Ling ’80 MMA, ’85 DMA is the current music director of the San Diego Symphony.

Composer Polina Nazaykinskaya ’10 MM, ’13 AD received the 2015 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. She is one of thirty selected from a wide variety of fields to receive the fellowship, which provides tuition and living expenses for a graduate degree program. Nazaykinskaya was also among the six composers selected for Copland House’s June 2015 emerging composers institute, CULTIVATE. She currently is pursuing her doctorate in composition at the City University of New York.

Benjamin Hoffman ’14 MM

Alison King ’14 MM

» www.svensendoublebass.com Reena Esmail ’11 MM, ’14 MMA,

composition, is an artistic director of Shastra (www.shastramusic.com), an organization that features musicians working at the intersections of Indian and Western music. Shastra’s 2015 Festival was held at New York’s (le) poisson rouge on April 26, 2015, and featured a wide variety of innovative music connecting the great musical traditions of India and the West.

Emil Khudyev ’11 MM has been appointed as the new Instructor of Clarinet at Interlochen Arts Academy.

Prior to this, he served as the Associate Principal/second and E-flat clarinetist with the Kansas City Symphony. In addition, Khudyev was named a Super Teacher by the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. The title indicates a music educator who transforms lives and nurtures

Charles Richard-Hamelin ’13 MM 37

successive generations of musical artists and citizens.

Joseph Peters ’11 MM has been named

Principal Oboe of the Minnesota Orchestra. He had previously been serving as Principal Oboe of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and as Music Director of the SUNY Buffalo State Philharmonia Orchestra.

Originally from the Twin Cities, Peters has frequently performed with the Minnesota Orchestra prior to his appointment; he can be heard on their recording of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1, and he participated in their recent historic tour to Cuba. During the summers he conducts the Taneycomo Festival Orchestra.

Matthew Russo ’12 MM joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut as instructor of trombone; his appointment began in the 2015–2016 academic year. Russo was also recently named Principal Trombone with the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra. Russo currently serves on the faculty at the Hartt School in the Community and Instrumental Studies divisions, where he is director of the Hartt Trombone Ensemble.

Jia Cao ’13 MM, ’14 AD has been

appointed principal cello of South Dakota Symphony Orchestra.

Composer William Gardiner ’13 MM, ’15 MMA, a current DMA candidate, was chosen as one of three winners of the American Composers Forum National

Scott MacIsaac ’14 CERT

Aleksandra Romano ’14 MM

Alumni and Student News 2015 – 2016

Composition Contest. Gardiner’s award granted him a commission to write for the Los Angeles-based music collective wildUp. The piece was premiered in September 2015, in L.A. Michael Gilbertson ’13 MM was

among the six composers selected for Copland House’s June 2015 emerging composers institute, CULTIVATE. The all-scholarship creative workshop and mentoring program takes place at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home in Cortlandt Manor and at the Merestead estate in nearby Mount Kisco.

Pianist Henry Kramer ’13 AD, ’15 MMA was appointed the Iva Dee Hiatt Visiting Artist in piano at Smith College (Massachusetts). A winner of Astral Artists’ 2014 National Auditions, Mr. Kramer was also a top prizewinner in the 2010 National Chopin Competition, the 2011 Montreal International Music Competition, and the 2012 China Shanghai International Piano Competition, as well as the recipient of the Harvard Musical Association’s 2014 Arthur Foote Award.

Violinist Corin Lee ’13MM is the new violinist in the string quartet ETHEL. An acoustic, electric, and baroque violinist, Lee incorporates technology into traditional music to push the limits of how music can be performed. He has performed his electronic arrangements across the United States, including prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium. Outside

Samuel Suggs ’14 MM

Brian Vu ’14 MM, ’15 AD

of performing, Lee runs Liberated Performer, a program that helps musicians with performance anxiety.

Charles Richard-Hamelin ’13 MM won

silver at the The Canadian pianist also won silver at the prestigious 17th International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland. He also won the Krystian Zimerman prize for the best performance of a sonata.

Last September, he released a CD on the Analekta label featuring works by Chopin.

Clarinetist Ashley William Smith ’13 MM, ’14 AD won Performance of the Year at Australia’s prestigious 2015 Art Music Awards. The awards were presented in Sydney this past August.

Ashley won for his performance of Lachlan Skipworth’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Baldur Brönnimann. Smith is currently an Artist-in-Residence and Lecturer at the University of Western Australia.

Pianist Sean Chen ’14 AD was among five emerging artists who received grants from the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts in 2015. The fund awards $50,000 a year for up to two years to artists who have demonstrated great talent and are on the cusp of a professional breakthrough. » www.katrinendrikat.com

Kevin Schaffter ’15 MM 38

Jake Fridkis ’14 MM has been appointed

principal flute of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He previously served as principal flute of the South Dakota Symphony.

Isabel Lepanto Gleicher

’14 MM, flute, won first prize in the thirtieth annual Myrna W. Brown Artist Competition, as well as the prize for Best Performance of the Newly Commissioned Work. The event, held by the Texas Flute Society, took place in Denton, Texas in May 2015. The winner of the competition receives a cash prize and is invited to appear as a guest artist at the Texas Flute Festival the year following the competition.

Violinist Benjamin Hoffman ’14 MM, a DMA candidate at the Yale School of Music, was selected as a fellow in the New York Philharmonic’s (NYP) Global Academy Fellowship Program.

Hoffman is one of ten Music Academy of the West Zarin Mehta Fellows who were selected to travel to New York in January 2016 to participate in the program. Now in its second year, the NYP Global Academy Fellowship Program offers career-building

Georgi Videnov ’15 MM

Bixby Kennedy ’16 MM

Carl Stanley ’15 MM

Ian Tuski ’15 MM

opportunities to train and play with Philharmonic musicians under conducted by music director Alan Gilbert, backed by a full scholarship.

Soprano Alison King ’14 MM was a first place winner in the 2016 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Upper Midwest Region. She advances to the national semifinals, which take place on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera on March 6.

Pianist Scott MacIsaac ’14 CERT was the grand prize-winner of the 2015 Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal (OSM) Manulife Competition. In addition to his first place win, Macisaac won a number of additional prizes. MacIsaac’s prize includes a performance with the OSM, a concert tour with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas to six Nordic and Baltic countries, a concert with the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, four solo recitals, a professional recording and Radio Canada broadcast, and a number of residencies and scholarships for further study.

Aleksandra Romano ’14 MM, mezzo-

soprano, sang Mercedes in Carmen and Hansel in Hansel and Gretel at Washington National Opera. In addition, Romano won one of seven Career Development Grants from the Sullivan Foundation.

Suliman Tekalli ’16 AD

Samuel Suggs ’14 MM, a DMA

candidate, won first prize in the 2015 International Society of Bassists (ISB) Competition. The top award, named the Gary Karr Prize, includes a monetary award, a bow, and an expenses-paid recital to open the 2017 ISB Convention. When Suggs was named New Artist of the Month

by Musical America last October, the article noted that Suggs had “wooed the judges not only on the strength of his playing, but also with creative programming that managed to adhere to the competition requirements while drawing unexpected connections between works.”

Brian Vu ’14 MM, ’15 AD was a recipient

of the Sullivan Grant, a $12,000 award to aid young artists in career development. In addition to the cash award, he will participate in a five-year program of continued financial aid for coaching in new roles, which is one of the unique features of the Sullivan awards.

Tianyu Zhang ’14 MM has been

appointed bass clarinetist of the National Center for Performing Arts Orchestra in Beijing, China.

Clarinetist Kevin Schaffter ’15 MM is the founder and director of MusAid, a nonprofit organization that supports music programs around the world by providing teacher training and donated instruments. Since its founding, MusAid has supported programs

Harold Meltzer ’97 MMA, ’00 DMA

Polina Nazaykinskaya ’10MM, ’13AD 39

in Haiti, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Belize, and Burma. In March 2015, MusAid held a week-long workshop in New Haven for eight exceptional musicians from the Youth Orchestra of Central America (OJCA). The musicians worked with Yale faculty members and graduate students in preparation for a joint MusAid-OJCA benefit concert. The students also participated in a sideby-side reading with the Greater New Haven Youth Orchestra.

Carl Stanley ’15 MM, trumpet, has been

appointed to the West Point Band at the U.S. Military Academy. Stanley was previously principal trumpet with the United States Air Force Heritage of America Band in Hampton, Virginia.

Deploying to the Middle East, Mr. Stanley was also able to perform in the AFCENT Band, which utilized music as a partnership-building tool to better U.S. relations in war-torn regions.

Stanley left the Air Force in 2013 to study at YSM. Ian Tuski ’15 MM, guitar, has been honored with a Yale-Jefferson Public Service Award. The awards recognize those who inspire the Yale community through innovative, effective, and sustained service for the greater good.

Tuski was selected for his establishment of a graduate teaching artist program in the Fair Haven Public Schools. Tuski devoted much of his time at Yale to teaching guitar to middle- and high-

Noël Wan ’16 MM

Yen-Chen Wu ’16 MM

Alumni and Student News 2015 – 2016 JULIA WOLFE WINS PULITZER school students, especially immigrants and refugees. He and his students participated in concerts and other artistic events in New Haven, including performances at City Hall. The program, which Tuski began through his own initiative, is now supported by the Yale Class of ’57 Music in Schools Initiative at YSM. The annual YaleJefferson Public Service Awards were launched in 2012 by the Association of Yale Alumni, Students and Alumni of Yale (STAY), and the Jefferson Awards for Public Service.

Georgi Videnov ’15 MM was appointed

Assistant Timpanist and Percussionist for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for the 2015–2016 season.

Clarinetist Bixby Kennedy ’16 MM took second prize in the Ima Hogg Competition, winning a silver medal, a cash prize, and the opportunity to perform with the Houston Symphony.

Kennedy performed Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with the orchestra in June 2015 at the Miller Outdoor Theatre.

Violinist Suliman Tekalli ’16 AD, who won second prize in the 2015 Seoul International Music Competition, was invited to perform as a soloist in Washington D. C. for the president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye. The performance took place at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in October 2015 with the International Sejong Soloists during President Park’s visit with President Obama.

Meera Gudipati ’17 MM

Harpist Noël Wan ’16 MM won second prize in the Young Professional Division of the first-ever Korea International Harp Competition.

The competition was held in Seoul in May 2015.

Bassoonist Yen-Chen Wu ’16 MM won second prize in the Serge and Olga Koussevitzky Young Artist Award Competition; the finals took place in April 2015 at the Liederkranz Hall in New York City. This year’s competition, which is open to instrumentalists ages 18–30, was for winds and brass players.

Meera Gudipati ’17 MM has joined

the New Haven Symphony Orchestra as principal flute. Gudipati is a firstyear student at YSM, studying with Ransom Wilson.

Molly Joyce ’17 MM had her piece Amplify, for piano and electronics, performed by Dutch pianist Gerard Bouwhuis as part of the American Composers Orchestra’s SONiC Festival at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City.

Pianist Ronaldo Rolim won both the third prize and the Schumann prize at the Géza Anda International Competition. Rolim is a DMA candidate at the Yale School of Music, where he studies with Boris Berman.

The competition, founded in memory of Hungarian pianist Géza Anda, is held every three years in Zurich.

Ronaldo Rolim 40

Julia Wolfe ’86 MM has won the

Pulitzer Prize in music for her piece Anthracite Fields.

The Pulitzer jury described the piece as “a powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coalmining life around the turn of the twentieth century.” The piece was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia through Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program. The Mendelssohn Club and the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiered the work in Philadelphia 2014; the piece was later included in the New York Philharmonic’s inaugural NY Phil Biennial festival. Wolfe, a co-founder of Bang on a Can, is the second composer from the group to win a Pulitzer (after David Lang ’83 MMA, ’89 DMA in 2008).

Wolfe’s piece Steel Hammer was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010.

Alumni and Student News 2015 – 2016

YALE OPERA ALUMNI MAKE MET DEBUTS Four alumni of the Yale Opera program make their Metropolitan Opera debuts this season. On the season’s opening night of September 21, 2015, tenor Chad Shelton ’96 MM, ’97 AD made his debut as Rodrigo in Otello (Verdi).

On December 4, 2015, soprano Mireille Asselin ’10 MM sang the role of Adele on the opening night of Die Fledermaus (Johann Strauss). The New York Times praised the “young Canadian coloratura soprano with a light, sweet voice and abundant charm,” and the New York Classical Review said she “stole the evening.”

Baritone David Pershall ’10 MM, ’11 AD made his debut on December 29 as the Barber in Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini). And on February 12, tenor Zach Borichevsky ’08 MM sang the role of Edmondo in the Met’s Manon (Massenet).

COMPOSERS RECEIVE MORTON GOULD YOUNG COMPOSER AWARDS Three Yale School of Music composers are among the recipients of the 2015 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards: Timo Andres ’07 BA, ’09 MM; Katherine Balch ’16 MM; and Brian Heim ’16 MM. The award recipients were recognized at the annual ASCAP Concert Music Awards at Merkin Concert Hall in New York on May 21, 2015. Established in 1979, the ASCAP Foundation Young Composer Awards program grants cash prizes to Concert Music composers up to 30 years of age whose works are selected through a juried national competition.

CANTATA PROFANA RECEIVES ADVENTUROUS PROGRAMMING PRIZE Cantata Profana, the New York-based vocal chamber ensemble founded by Jacob Ashworth ’13 MM, ’14 MMA, was honored at this year’s Chamber Music America Conference Awards with a prize for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. In addition to Ashworth, the theatrical and versatile ensemble is also home to several other YSM alumni, including Hannah Collins, cello; Arash Noori, guitar; Gleb Kanasevich, clarinet; Lee Dionne, keyboard; Doug Perry, percussion; Annie Rosen, voice; Daniel Schlosberg, piano; and John Taylor Ward, voice, as well as Ethan Heard, a graduate of Yale School of Drama. The award was presented at the Chamber Music America National Conference on January 10, 2016.

ALUMNI WIN AWARDS FROM AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS Harold Meltzer ’97 MMA, ’00 DMA and Kevin Puts ’96 MM were among four

winners of the Arts and Letters Awards in Music. The $10,000 prize honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledge composers who have arrived at their own voices. Each will receive an additional $10,000 toward the recording of one work.

In addition, Paul Kerekes ’12 MM, ’14 MMA received the Walter Hinrichsen Award for the publication of a work by a gifted composer. This award was established by the C. F. Peters Corporation, music publishers, in 1984.

Polina Nazaykinskaya ’10 MM, ’13 AD and Emily Cooley ’12 BA were among the recipients of the Charles Ives Scholarships of $7500, given to composition students of great promise. ||

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Donna Yoo ’09 MM appointed Director of Communications and Alumni Affairs In December 2015, Donna Yoo was appointed the inaugural Director of Communications and Alumni Affairs at the Yale School of Music. Dean Robert Blocker commented, “This new position will enable the School to bring an overarching perspective to all YSM constituencies and continue to extend the YSM brand through all media outlets. Equally important is the task of connecting and engaging YSM alumni with the School and the University.”

Donna brings to this role an understanding of the School through her experiences as a student in horn performance, a staff member at the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and Concert Program Coordinator and Box Office Manager at YSM. In addition to her degree from YSM, Donna holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from SUNY Stony Brook. She has served as the Executive Director of the Essex Winter Series, as a faculty member at the Long Island Conservatory, and as a Teaching Artist at the Morse Summer Music Academy.

Donna continues to remain active as a professional musician.

“I am thrilled to have the privilege of connecting and engaging with fellow YSM alumni,” Yoo says. “It is my mission to make connections with all of our alumni, whether they have stayed in the music industry or not, and I look forward to helping shape and build a vibrant community for all.”

Recordings + Publications

Peter Hedrick ’61 MM has published a new book, An Early Hautboy Solo Matrix: Solos for the Hautboy before 1710 based on a Symphonia/Sonate by Johann Christoph Pez that Demonstrates a Performance Practice of Adaptation (Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle, UK, 2015). The book deals with a significant yet hitherto unexamined topic, filling an important gap in the area of historical performance practice.

Hedrick, an oboist, had a long teaching career at Michigan State University and Ithaca College. Before his retirement in 2009, he and his wife Libby founded and ran NYS Baroque, a period instrument orchestra based in upstate New York.

Jeff Fuller ’67 BA, ’69 MM released two recordings in 2015. The Call From Within, a jazz trio album with Darren Litzie on piano and Ben Bilello on drums, features Fuller’s arrangements and original compositions. In addition, Fuller’s Brazilian jazz group with pianist/vocalist Isabella Mendes and guitarist Joe Carter, released its first recording, Sambeleza Live!. » www.jefffuller.net

In November 2015 Clipper Erickson ’86 MM, ’88 MMA released a new twodisc album on Navona Records, titled My Cup Runneth Over. The album focuses on the complete piano works of composer R. Nathaniel Dett, who is regarded as one of the most important musicians in American history. In his lifetime, Dett was lauded as the first American composer to fuse African American folk idioms with the European art music tradition in a sophisticated way.

Composer Julia Wolfe ’86 MM has released Anthracite Fields, which was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music and is one of the most ambitious in her collection of works based on the lore of Appalachia. Released on Cantaloupe Music in September 2015,

the oratorio harkens back to the plight of the coal miners in northeastern Pennsylvania and was created after extensive research Wolfe gathered, including materials from oral histories to children’s rhymes. The fivemovement work was recorded by the Choir of Trinity Wall Street and the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Maya Beiser ’87 MM released her latest album, Uncovered, in August 2014 on Innova Records. The album features classic rock tunes re-imagined and re-contextualized in multi-layered performances. Consisting almost entirely of Beiser’s multi-tracked cello with drums and bass added by collaborators Glenn Kotche (Wilco) and Jherek Bischoff, these “uncovers” feature new arrangements by Evan Ziporyn ’81 BA of works by Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Janis Joplin, Howlin’ Wolf, 42

King Crimson, Muddy Waters, and AC/DC. Johann Sebastian Paetsch ’87 CERT, ’91 MM has published two editions of solo works for the cello: a transcription of Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor, arranged and edited for violoncello solo (2014), and three pieces by J. S. Bach including the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Chromatic Fantasia in D minor, and the Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor (2015). Both editions were published by Friedrich Hofmeister Musikverlag in Leipzig, Germany, FH 2487 and FH 3021 respectively.

comic originally written by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Released in August 2015, the soundtrack has been widely praised, including being described as “beautiful” and “action-driven and propulsive” by Classical MPR. Cellist Inbal Segev ’93 CERT, ’98 MM is a featured soloist on the Albany Records album In Truth: Lucas Richman. The album features Segev’s performance of Richman’s Three Pieces for Cello and Orchestra, recorded in February 2015 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Vox Classics released Segev’s solo recording, Inbal Segev: Bach Cello Suites, which features the complete cello suites recorded in New York City’s Academy of Arts and Letters with Grammy-winning producer Da-Hong Seetoo. Both albums were released in September 2015.

Antonio Underwood ’87 MM released his most recent album Wondering Places in 2015, featuring his large work Tone Poem VI. He is working on his ninth CD, Third Eye Continuum, to be released on Tone East Music this spring.

Tone East Music is Underwood’s own label, which he created after years as performer and orchestrator.

Pianist Genevieve Feiwen Lee ’89 MM, ’90 MMA, ’94 DMA and fellow pianist Nadia Shpachenko received a 2016 Grammy nomination in the category of Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for their recording of Tom Flaherty’s Airdancing. This piece, which is scored for toy piano, piano, and electronics, appears on Shpachenko’s album Woman at the New Piano, released by Reference Recordings in September 2014, which is also nominated in the category of Best Classical Compendium. The album

also includes a duo piano performance

by Lee and Shpachenko. The CD was among several that won the Marina and Victor Ledin nomination for Classical Producer of the Year.

Composer and pianist Tim Olsen ’88 MM, ’89 MMA, ’95 DMA has released Creature of Habit, a record featuring nine original jazz compositions performed by the six-piece Tim Olsen Band. Produced by Grammy winner Tom Bellino, the album was released by the Planet Arts organization in July 2014.

Oscar-nominated composer Marco Beltrami ’91 MM had his score to Twentieth Century Fox’s Fantastic Four released by Sony Classical. Co-scored with iconic composer Philip Glass, the film is a contemporary re-imagining of Marvel’s first, and longest-running superhero team, based on the Marvel 43

Guitarist Mesut Özgen ’93 MM, ’94 AD has released his latest album, Anatolian Fantasy. The album exclusively features his own compositions, both for solo guitar and chamber music with guitar, flute, cello, kemenche, and soprano.

It was released on Turquoise Guitar Editions in January 2013.

Pianist Miki Aoki ’02 MM will release her third record, Mélancolie, in the spring of 2016 on German label Profil Hänssler. The album features selected piano works by Poulenc, Satie, Milhaud and other Les Six composers who were active in Paris in the 1920s.

Nigel Potts ’02 MM, organ, and Sarah Rose Taylor, mezzo-soprano, released an album featuring music of Wagner and Elgar on the MSR Classics label in August 2015. The album includes two complete song cycles, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Elgar’s Sea Pictures, as well as “The Angel’s Farewell” from Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius and the Prelude to Act I from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. All works were transcribed by Nigel Potts

Recordings + Publications

take us with him. My advice to you— drop everything and go!”

and recorded on the Schoenstein & Co. organ at Christ and Saint Stephen’s Church in New York City, where Potts is organist and choirmaster. Several tracks include harp, performed by Grace Cloutier ’05 MM. Michael Mizrahi ’03 MM, ’04 MMA, ’08 AD releases his sophomore album of solo piano works in late March on New Amsterdam Records. The album brings together six new American piano works, most written for Mizrahi himself. Currents includes music by Patrick Burke ’03 MM, ’04 MMA, ’09 DMA; Sarah Kirkland Snider ’05 MM, ’06 AD; and Missy Mazzoli ’06 MM, among others.

Sarah Kirkland Snider ’05 MM, ’06 AD released her sophomore album, Unremembered, in September 2015.

Released on New Amsterdam Records, of which Snider is also co-artistic

director, Unremembered features performances by Padma Newsome ’99 MM, ’00 MMA; DM Stith; Shara Worden; and the Unremembered Orchestra conducted by Edwin Outwater. It was included in multiple best-of-2015 lists, including The Washington Post, which called it “an ambitious Gothic song cycle with a wide range of techniques instrumental, vocal, and electronic.”

Guitarist Yuri Liberzon ’07 MM released his debut album, Ascension, in July 2015. The solo instrumental album includes the Chaconne from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 In D minor, as well as Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert Part IIc and music from the Beatles. Critic Dan Cohen at The Muse’s Muse wrote: “…he’s all about melody, all about communication, all about heart. It’s his Ascension, to be sure, but he wants to 44

Composer, singer, and bandleader Ted Hearne ’08 MM, ’09 MMA released his modern-day oratorio The Source on New Amsterdam Records in October 2015. The data-obsessed work, written for seven instrumentalists and five singers (including Hearne himself and Mellissa Hughes ’06 MM), The Source explores the life and story of U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning, and the content and implications of the hundreds of thousands of classified military documents she infamously leaked to WikiLeaks. The album was lauded by The New York Times and The New Yorker as one of the best classical music recordings of 2015.

In December 2015, MSR Classics released LAST LAP: 21st-Century Music for Trombone Ensemble, which includes performances by trombone alumni Jennifer Griggs ’09 MM and Craig Watson ’11 MM as part of the ensemble TROMBOTEAM!. The album is a collection of pieces commissioned by TROMBOTEAM!, including works by composers Polina Nazaykinskaya ’10 MM, ’13 AD and Kathryn Salfelder ’11 MM. Flutist Ginevra Petrucci ’12 MM, ’13 AD released her latest disc The World of Yesterday for Dynamic Records in 2015. The recital CD, with pianist

praise for creating “gorgeously perplexing soundscapes” (Boston Globe) and “an arresting space where electronics and acoustic instruments commingle with cinematic vibrancy” (NPR Music).

Canadian pianist Charles RichardHamelin ’13 MM has devoted his debut solo album to the works of Frédéric Chopin. Recorded in May at Domaine Forget’s FrançoysBernier Concert Hall in SainteIrénée, Quebec, Richard-Hamelin focuses on works from the end of Chopin’s life, written during a period of declining health and personal conflicts: the Polonaisefantaisie, the two last Nocturnes, and the Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor. The album was released in September 2015.

Bruno Canino, includes Gabriel Pierné’s Sonata Op. 36, Mario Pilati’s Sonata, Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s Suite Pointillistique, Op. 135, and Jean-Michel Damase’s Variations. The title of the album quotes Stefan Zweig in an homage to the artistic heritage of the beginning of the twentieth century.

New Amsterdam Records released Holographic by Daniel Wohl ’12 MMA in January 2016. The album was coproduced with Paul Corley and features contributions from Caroline Shaw ’07 MM and the Bang on Can All-Stars, among other ensembles. In a new model, Holographic was commissioned by pioneering organizations Liquid Music (of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra), MASS MoCA, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Indianapolis Museum of Art. The album has won

Faculty Recordings Ransom Wilson, Peter Frankl Ransom Wilson, flute, and Peter Frankl, piano, have teamed up to record Works for Flute and Piano, released in June 2015 on the Nimbus label. The recording includes duos by Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann.

The disc opens with Beethoven’s Serenade for flute and piano in D major, Op. 41, an arrangement of the Serenade, Op. 25. This is followed by Schubert’s Introduction and Variations on “Trockne Blumen” from the song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin, D. 802.

Concluding the recording is a collection of Schumann pieces: Three Romances, Op. 94; the songs “Widmung,” Op. 25, No. 1, and “Meine Rose,” Op. 90, No. 2; and another Romanze (No. 5 from Spanische Liebeslieder, Op. 138).

German guitarist Katrin Endrikat ’14 MM released her debut solo recording Between the Worlds in February 2015. The record features original and arranged works for classical guitar, including music by Augustin Barrios, Lennox Berkeley, Alexandre Tansman, J.S. Bach, and Isaac Albéniz.

Mélanie Clapiès ’15 AD, violin, has released an album of violin and cello duos titled Les Pierrots Lunaires with cellist Yan Levionnois. The recording, released on the Fondamenta label in 2015, includes works by Ligeti, Ravel, Villa-Lobos, Xenakis, Mařatka, and Schulhoff. ||

Sarita Kwok, Wei-Yi Yan Pianist Wei-Yi Yang ’95 MM, ’96 AD, ’99 MMA, ’04 DMA and violinist Sarita Kwok ’05 MMA, ’06 AD, ’09 DMA teamed up to record Interchange: Violin and piano duos of the 20th century on the Genuin label. The disc, which will be released worldwide in May 2016, features duos by Janácek, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Ravel.

The album opens with Janácek’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, followed by Stravinsky’s Duo Concertante (1932). Prokofiev is represented by the Five Mélodies, Op. 35 bis. Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in G major closes the album.

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CONVOCATION 2015

Clockwise, from top: Dean Robert Blocker addresses the incoming class; Dean Blocker greets members of the Board of Advisors; Rabbi James Ponet blows the shofar while giving the Invocation; Ruben Rodriguez ’11 MM greets Lester ’51 BA and Enid Morse; Scott Hartman, trombone, and Peter Frankl, piano, perform Schubert’s “An die Musik.”

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In Memoriam GIFT HONORS WENDY SHARP, ENDOWS CHAMBER MUSIC FELLOWSHIP The Yale School of Music announced in March a new endowment to support the Chamber Music Fellowship program. The endowment is part of funds raised in honor of Wendy Sharp, the director of chamber music at the Yale School of Music, and her husband Dean Takahashi. Takahashi is a graduate of the Yale School of Management who serves as senior director of the Yale University Investments Office.

The Chamber Music Fellowship program at the School of Music supports one- to two-year residencies by talented young string quartets. The current Fellowship ensemble is the Argus Quartet, which is mentored by the Brentano Quartet. Previous Fellowship ensembles included the Jasper String Quartet and, in the mid-1980s, the Franciscan String Quartet, of which Sharp was a member.

Gunther Schuller, member of the Yale composition faculty 1964–1967 Estelle M. Banks ’35 Anna L. Bowman ’35 CERT Blaine Butler ’56 BA, ’58 BM, ’59 MM Louis J. Curran Jr. ’56 BM Thomas Francis Fay ’67 MM Brian Leo Fennelly ’65 MM, ’68 PhD Robert A. Grillo June D. Jones ’58 BM, ’59 MM Paul Jordan ’67 MM Idar Laurits Karevold ’71 Wendy Sharp, center, with her current and former undergraduate violin students, at the Yale Symphony Orchestra’s 50th reunion

Additional gifts made in honor of Sharp and Takahashi will endow a new professorship at the School of Management named for Dean Takahashi, and a scholarship for students in Yale College. In appreciation for the family’s longtime commitment to the university, the Berkeley College common room was recently named for the Sharp-Takahashi family. Both of their children have attended Yale College as members of classes of 2014 and 2016.

The Yale School of Management noted in an article, “The funds for the gifts were raised through a special initiative to honor Takahashi’s 30 years of service to Yale… Numerous friends, classmates, and colleagues participated in the effort to raise funds in honor of Takahashi and… Sharp.” ||

Anne Parsonnet Lieberson ’50 BM Marion G. Litsky ’27 CERT Virginia S. Luce ’41 Thomas Oscar McCollom ’57 BM, ’58 MM William Thomas McKinley ’69 MMA Fabius Mirto ’33 Robert Rene Nadeau ’54 Claire Ellen Murphy Newbold ’83 MM Swight L. Oarr ’60 MM Herbert Payson ’50 BA, ’51 BM Louis William Pontecorvo ’62 Bruce Prince-Joseph ’46 BM Ezra G. Sims Jr. ’52 BM Albert Coy Sly ’48 BM, ’49 MM

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Contributors to the YSM Alumni Fund

1940s Anonymous Charlotte M. Corbridge ’62 Josephine C. Del Monaco ’43 Emma L. Diemer ’49 BM, ’50 MM Charles F. Fraker ’46 BM Jane S. Lee ’48 BM Henry N. Lee ’49 BM Marie B. Nelson Bennett ’49 BM Reinhard G. Pauly ’48 MM, ’56 PhD Eckhart Richter ’49 BA, ’52 BM, ’53 MM Albert C. Sly ’48 BM, ’49 MM (Deceased) Florence G. Smith ’44 BM

The School of Music is grateful for the generous support of the School’s educational and artistic endeavors.

To make your gift, please visit » www.yale.edu/giveMusic

1950s Sandra P. Andreucci ’57 BM, ’58 MM Elena G. Bambach ’55 BM, ’56 MM Galen H. Deibler ’54 BM, ’55 MM Leonard Felberg ’53 BM, ’54 MM Joanna B. Gillespie ’53 BM, ’54 MM Joseph L. Gilman ’56 BM Linda W. Glasgal ’56 BM, ’57 MM Renee K. Glaubitz ’51 BM Norine P. Harris ’52 BM Robert C. Hebble ’55 BM Edward H. Higbee ’52 BM, ’53 MM Michael M. Horvit ’55 BM, ’56 MM Hannelore H. Howard ’51 Thomas B. Jones ’51 BM, ’52 MM Joyce B. Kelley ’56 BM, ’57 MM Alice K. Kugelman ’59 BM Donald G. Loach ’53 BM, ’54 MM Richard W. Lottridge ’58 BM Joan M. Mallory ’59 BM Marjorie J. McClelland ’50 Donald G. Miller ’55 BA, ’60 MM Joan F. Popovic ’57 BM, ’58 MM Dorothy C. Rice ’57 Linda L. Rosdeitcher ’59 BM Willie H. Ruff ’53 BM, ’54 MM Ronald D. Simone ’57 BM, ’58 MM Margaret A. Strahl ’56 BM, ’57 MM Cynthia T. Stuck ’52 BM Pablo B. Svilokos ’57 BM David W. Sweetkind ’54 BM, ’55 MM Robert K. Thompson ’58 BM William F. Toole ’50 BM, ’52 MM Armin J. Watkins ’53 BM, ’54 MM Anne Yarrow ’57 BM, ’58 MM Robert K. Thompson ’58 BM William F. Toole ’50 BM, ’52 MM Armin J. Watkins ’53 BM, ’54 MM Anne Yarrow ’57 BM, ’58 MM 48

1960s Charles C. Aschbrenner ’63 MM Howard N. Bakken ’67 MM Raymond P. Bills ’62 MM Jean S. Bills ’63 MM George S. Blackburn ’64 BA, ’67 MM Robert K. Carpenter ’65 BA, ’68 MM Frank V. Church ’68 MM, ’69 MMA Garry E. Clarke ’68 MM W R. Clendenin ’67 MM Rosemary Colson ’65 MM Lucy E. Cross ’66 MM Ralph P. D’Mello ’62 MM Ernesto Epistola ’61 MM Helen B. Erickson ’69 MM Roger Ermili ’62 MM Ethel H. Farny ’66 MM Paula B. Fearn ’67 MM Grace A. Feldman ’63 MM John M. Graziano ’66 MM, ’70 MPhil, ’75 PhD Richard F. Green ’68 MM, ’69 MMA, ’75 DMA Eiji Hashimoto ’62 MM William L. Hudson ’61 MM Helen K. Hui ’69 MM W M. Johnson ’63 Roderic M. Keating ’65 MM Richard E. Killmer ’67 MM, ’71 MMA, ’75 DMA Linda T. Lienhard ’62 MM Vincent F. Luti ’67 MM, ’70 MMA, ’78 DMA Maija M. Lutz ’63 MM Paige E. Macklin ’69 MM Sheila A. Marks ’60 MM Bruce G. McInnes ’64 MM Mallory Miller ’69 Robert W. Molison ’60 MM James R. Morris ’62 MM Joan M. Moss ’67 MM Patricia G. Nott ’66 MM, ’69 MMA, ’76 DMA Florence F. Peacock ’62 MM Lois W. Regestein ’61 MM Gerald M. Rizzer ’65 MM Hildred E. Roach ’62 MM Alvin Shulman ’65 MM Bryan R. Simms ’66 BA, ’69 MM, ’70 MPhil, ’71 PhD Rheta R. Smith ’65 MM M L. Spratlan ’62 BA, ’65 MM Timothy M. Sullivan ’66 MM, ’71 MMA, ’79 DMA Joyce M. Ucci ’63 MM Althea M. Waites ’65 MM Abby N. Wells ’67 MM Donald F. Wheelock ’66 MM Joseph L. Wilcox ’66 MM

1970s Marita Abner ’78 MM David B. Baldwin ’73 MM, ’74 MMA, ’79 DMA Geoffrey W. Barnes ’74 MM David A. Behnke ’77 MM William B. Brice ’73 MM Nansi E. Carroll ’75 MM, ’76 MMA, ’82 DMA Gene Crisafulli ’73 MM Ronald A. Crutcher ’72 MMA, ’79 DMA Preethi I. De Silva ’71 MMA, ’76 DMA Deborah Dewey ’79 MM Joan O. Epstein ’76 MM Daniel S. Godfrey ’73 BA, ’75 MM Hall N. Goff ’75 MM Jacquelyn M. Helin ’75 Janne E. Irvine ’74 MM Jeffrey J. Jacobsen ’73 MM David B. Johnson ’72 MMA Boyd M. Jones ’77 MM, ’78 MMA, ’84 DMA Richard A. Konzen ’76 MM, ’77 MMA, ’84 DMA Mark R. Kroll ’71 MM Theresa E. Langdon ’79 MM Anthony M. Lopez ’75 MM Anita L. MacDonald ’70 MM Shmuel Magen ’77 MM Chouhei Min ’72 MMA William A. Owen ’79 MM Susan Poliacik ’74 MM Joseph W. Polisi ’73 MM, ’75 MMA, ’80 DMA, ’14.D.H. Jan Radzynski ’79 MM, ’80 MMA, ’84 DMA Dale T. Rogers ’76 MM Donald S. Rosenberg ’76 MM, ’77 MMA Permelia S. Sears ’74 MM Frank W. Shaffer ’73 MM, ’75 MMA, ’80 DMA Jill Shires ’70 MMA Kenneth D. Singleton ’74 MM, ’75 MMA, ’81 DMA Frank A. Spaccarotella ’73 MM Philip D. Spencer ’77 MM Julie M. Stoner ’72 MM Michael C. Tusa ’75 BA, ’76 MM Antoinette C. Van Zabner ’74 MM, ’75 MMA John P. Varineau ’78 MM Allan D. Vogel ’71 MMA, ’75 DMA Elizabeth Ward ’70 MMA Marvin Warshaw ’79 MM, ’80 MMA Robert W. Weirich ’76 MM, ’81 DMA Barbara M. Westphal ’76 CERT Rodney A. Wynkoop ’73 BA, ’80 MMA, ’85 DMA

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Contributors to the YSM Alumni Fund

1980s Anita M. Ashur-Wakim ’85 Eliot T. Bailen ’80 MM, ’82 MMA, ’89 DMA James R. Barry ’83 MM M. T. Beaman ’81 BA, ’82 MM Jeffrey E. Brooks ’83 MM, ’84 MMA, ’89 DMA Barbara P. Cackler ’81 MM David Calhoon ’82 MM Bonnie H. Campbell ’87 MM Violeta N. Chan-Scott ’84 MM Wayman L. Chin ’83 MM Gary Crow-Willard ’80 MM Edward H. Cumming ’84 MM, ’85 MMA, ’92 DMA Steven F. Darsey ’85 MM, ’86 MMA, ’90 DMA Irina F. DePatie ’89 BA, ’90 MM Kathryn K. Engelhardt ’87 MM Pamela Geannelis ’81 MM Andrew F. Grenci ’84 MM Barbara J. Hamilton Primus ’86 MMA, ’93 DMA Edward D. Harsh ’88 MM, ’92 MMA, ’95 DMA Maureen Horgan ’83 MM Aaron J. Kernis ’83 David M. Kurtz ’80 MM Elizabeth S. Lane ’88 MM Genevieve F. Lee ’89 MM, ’90 MMA, ’94 DMA David L. Loucky ’84 MM Peter M. Marshall ’80 MMA, ’80 MM, ’85 DMA David P. Ouzts ’87 MM Kevin J. Piccini ’85 MM Robert J. Redvanly ’80 MM Daniel W. Reinker ’81 MM Jody A. Rodgers ’83 BA, ’84 MM Melissa K. Rose ’85 MM Susan Rotholz ’81 MM Susan L. Royal ’81 MM Rebecca L. Schalk ’81 MM Shannon M. Scott ’87 MM Regan W. Smith ’81 MM Nicholas R. Smith ’86 MM Jennifer L. Smith ’88 MM Jo-Ann Sternberg ’89 Marija T. Stroke ’82 BA, ’82 MM Timothy D. Taylor ’85 MM Carol K. Ward ’85 MM Christopher P. Wilkins ’81 MM Julia A. Wolfe ’86 MM Kyung Hak H. Yu ’87 MM

The School of Music is grateful for the generous support of the School’s educational and artistic endeavors.

To make your gift, please visit » www.yale.edu/giveMusic

50

Christopher M. Lee ’02 MM Colin D. Lynch ’06 MM Robert M. Manthey ’01 MM Katherine M. Mason ’04 MM Michael D. Mizrahi ’03 MM, ’04 MMA, ’08 DMA John-Michael Muller ’05 MM Paul D. Murphy ’06 MM Hando Nahkur ’06 CERT Sarah M. Perkins ’07 MM Denis Petrunin ’09 MM, ’10 AD Joan J. Pi ’00 MM, ’01 AD Dantes Y. Rameau ’07 MM Elizabeth B. Schurgin ’07 BA, ’08 MM James A. Smith ’08 MM Thomas J. Stellmacher ’09 MM Jonathan H. Taylor ’04 MM Derrick L. Wang ’08 MM Donna Yoo ’09 MM

1990s Ole Akahoshi ’95 CERT Kristin L. Ammon ’97 BA, ’98 MM Carolyn A. Barber ’92 MM Julie A. Bates ’94 MM Amy F. Bernon ’91 MM Siu-Ying S. Chan ’90 MM David J. Chrzanowski ’95 MM Eva M. Heater ’91 MM Yeon-Su Kim ’98 MM Eduardo Leandro ’99 MM Seunghee Lee ’92 MM, ’94 DMA Robert H. Levin ’93 MM Thomas G. Masse ’91 MM, ’92 AD Pamela G. Mindell ’99 MM, ’00 MMA, ’05 DMA Peter M. Miyamoto ’96 MM, ’97 AD Jill A. Pellett Levine ’93 MM, ’94 AD Kirsten Peterson ’90 MM Karen D. Peterson ’96 MM, ’97 DMA Svend J. Ronning ’91 MM, ’93 MMA, ’97 DMA Tram N. Sparks ’98 MMA, ’03 DMA Ayako Tsuruta ’95 MM, ’96 AD Ferenc X. Vegh ’92 MM Cheryl R. Wadsworth ’95 MM Ian R. Warman ’94 MM Gregory C. Wrenn ’92 MM Wei-Yi Yang ’95 MM, ’96 AD, ’99 MMA, ’04 DMA

2010s Robert P. Bennesh ’14 MM Philip W. Browne ’14 Miles W. Canaday ’12 MM Minsol Cho ’13 MM, ’14 DMA Melanie Clapies ’14 MM Noah J. Cotler ’14 MM Reena M. Esmail ’11 MM Michael J. Gilbertson ’13 MM Andrew J. Hayhurst ’13 MM Timothy J. Hilgert ’13 MM Benjamin P. Hoffman ’14 MM Kristin R. Kall ’13 MM, ’14 DMA Brittany M. Lasch ’12 MM Jean Laurenz ’13 MM, ’14 DMA Jessica Li ’13 MM Scott A. MacIsaac ’14 CMUS Jane Mitchell ’13 MM Robert Moser ’14 MM Paul G. Nemeth ’12 MM Molly K. Netter ’14 MM Tian Hui Ng ’10 MM Alan M. Ohkubo ’14 MM Heewon Uhm ’14 MM John T. Ward ’12 MM, ’13 MMA Lauren K. Yu ’13 MM

2000s Philip H. Alejo ’08 MM Laura C. Atkinson ’09 MM Eric B. Beach ’07 MM Emily M. Boyer ’06 MM Joel A. Brennan ’06 MM, ’07 MMA, ’11 DMA Vincent A. Carr ’06 MM Paul W. Cho ’09 MM, ’10 DMA Michael P. Compitello ’09 MM, ’12 MMA Dominick DiOrio ’08 MM, ’09 MMA, ’12 DMA Austin P. Glass ’03 MM Jie Gong ’07 MM Marisa W. Green ’06 MM Andrew E. Henderson ’01 MM Alexander E. Henry ’02 BA, ’03 MM Mary W. Huff ’01 MM Paul A. Jacobs ’02 MM, ’03 AD Wenbin Jin ’09 MM Jennie E. Jung ’01 MM, ’02 AD Daniel D. Kellogg ’01 MM, ’03 MMA, ’07 DMA Hsing-Ay H. Kellogg ’01 MM Sarita K. Kwok ’05 MMA, ’06 AD, ’09 DMA Christian M. Lane ’08 MM

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Yale School of Music Commencement, May 18, 2015 52

Editor Dana Astmann Writers Dana Astmann Samantha Buker Molly Joyce Donna Larcen Ruben Rodriguez Valerie Sly Michael Yaffe Photography Thomas Ahern Christopher Ash Dana Astmann Bonica Ayala Maren Celest Henry Chan Matthew Fried Bob Handelman Tim Mar Mike Marsland Susan Naumann Mark Shelby Perry Sian Richards Harold Shapiro Michiko Tierney Waterstones Brussels Cover Photo: Henry Chan Design Paul Kazmercyk granitebaydesign.com Music at Yale is a publication of the Yale School of Music P.O. Box 208246 New Haven CT 06520-8246 music.yale.edu musicnews@yale.edu

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