Edoardo Bellotti, Associate Professor of Organ. Bellotti has been Professor of Organ, Harpsichord and Improvisation in several musical institutions and universities including the Conservatory of Trossingen and the University of Bremen in Germany, and the University of Udine and the Conservatory of Trento in Italy. A virtuoso organist and renowned improviser, he performs at leading festivals and concert venues throughout the world. Bellotti is currently collaborating in a project of new organ music and visual art in Milan, in conjunction with the art installation of the American minimalist Dan Flavin. Belloti  has performed the complete works of César Franck, and has worked with orchestras in Italy and abroad, performing a wide spectrum of repertoire, including the Italian premiere of Satyagraha by Philip Glass. He is also considered a leading expert in the performance of renaissance and baroque keyboard music. He combines his international performing career with musicological research and teaching, publishing articles as well as new critical editions of music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Bellotti is a frequent guest lecturer at international conferences. He has made several critically acclaimed recordings on historical instruments, including Promenade (Loft Recordings), a recording of organ repertoire and original improvisations on Eastman’s Italian baroque organ at the Memorial Art Gallery.

Stephen Carr, Assistant Professor of Opera. Carr’s work in the world of opera, musical theatre, and operetta has taken him across the United States, Europe, and Asia. He received a BM in Voice Performance and an MM in Stage Directing at Eastman. He earned two additional post-graduate degrees in Musical Theatre in London at the Royal Academy of Music. At the invitation of Plácido Domingo, he trained as a stage director with the Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program. A member of Actor’s Equity, Carr’s performance credits include productions of Ragtime, Cabaret (Jack Lyons Theatre, London), Jesus Christ Superstar (European tour), and The Scarlet Pimpernel, as well as recent cabaret and concert hall performances throughout the Tokyo metropolitan area. He can be heard on recordings for the Newport Classics label.  Carr’s work as a stage director has encompassed nearly all genres of lyric theatre, from grand opera to Broadway musicals, with companies including Palm Beach Opera, Washington National Opera, Mercury Opera Rochester, Opera North, Ohio Light Opera, Center City Opera of Philadelphia, and Eastman Opera Theatre. His recent productions include Japanese translations of Company, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Little Shop of Horrors. Carr has served on the faculties of the Interlochen Summer Arts Institute and of Japan’s Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, where he helped to build one of the few successful undergraduate musical theatre programs in Asia.

Ted Goldman, Assistant Professor of Music Theory. Goldman is a composer, music theorist, performer, educator, and inter-disciplinary collaborator. He began his undergraduate studies in physics and graduated summa cum laude with honors in music from Columbia University. He received his MM and DMA in composition from The Juilliard School. Goldman’s compositions have received national and international recognition, including two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. His composition Scrudge was selected for the PARMA Recordings Anthology of Contemporary Music, digidigidha received the Society for New Music’s Brian M. Israel Prize, Cellular Automata won eighth blackbird’s MusicX Festival competition in Switzerland, Tynexia was a winner of the Beijing Modern Music Festival’s Young Composers Project, and A Fitful Sleep received the Hanson Young Composers Award, sponsored by Chamber Music Rochester and the Eastman School of Music.  Goldman has been commissioned by Alarm Will Sound, the Banff Centre in Canada, The Norfolk New Music Festival, the Contrasts Quartet, and twice by the New Juilliard Ensemble. For five years he was a radio host at WKCR-FM NY, where he discussed music both new and old.  At Juilliard, Goldman was a member of the Music and Medicine Initiative, a collaboration between Juilliard and Cornell University. As a pianist, Goldman has performed at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, The Mannes International Keyboard Institute, and the Mannes Beethoven Institute.

Renée Jolles, Associate Professor of Violin. Jolles enjoys an eclectic career as soloist and chamber artist specializing in a wide variety of styles from Baroque to contemporary. Hailed as a “real star” by The New York Times for her New York Concerto debut in Alice Tully Hall, she has premiered hundreds of works, including the American premiere of Schnittke’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Her concerto engagements have included orchestras such as Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, The Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey, The Cape May Festival Orchestra, and The Salisbury Symphony.  Jolles is a member of the Jolles Duo (harp and violin), Continuum, Intimate Voices, The New York Chamber Ensemble, and is a concertmaster of the world-renowned, Grammy Award-winning, conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. She has performed at festivals such as Marlboro, Cape May, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Rockport (Mass.), Norfolk, Taos, Riverrun, and The Chamber Music and Composers’ Forum of the East. Committed to recording new music, she can be heard as soloist and chamber artist on the Cambria, CRI, North/South Recordings, Albany, and New World record labels. Jolles has served on the faculty of The Juilliard School, Pre-College Division, The Mannes School of Music, Preparatory Division, Hoff-Barthelson Music School, and The Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. During the summer, she is on the faculty at the Bowdoin International Music Festival.  Jolles received her BM and MM degrees from Juilliard, where she received the school’s highest award, the William Schuman Prize.

Henry Klumpenhouwer, Professor of Music Theory. Klumpenhouwer is a graduate of the University of Alberta (BMus Composition, MMus Theory) and Harvard University (AM, PhD Music). He taught at the University of Alberta from 1991 to 2012.  Klumpenhouwer’s published work involves the analysis of atonal music, the history of music theory, and analytical methodology. His formulation that came to be known as the “Klumpenhouwer Network” led to “K‑net analysis” becoming a standard technique, discussed and developed by American and overseas theorists in many dozens of books, articles, and dissertations. His most recent work deals with harmonic dualism and with questions of form in Beethoven.  His publications have appeared in Intégral, Journal of Music Theory, Music Analysis, Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, Perspectives of New Music, Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie, the Oxford Handbook of Neo‑Riemannian Music Theories, and elsewhere. Among his published essays contributing to his international impact as a historian of music theory are “Music Theory, Dialectics, and Post-Structuralism” (1997), “Late Capitalism, Late Marxism, and the Study of Music” (2001), and “Harmonic Dualism as a Structural and Historical Imperative” (2011). From 2007–2009, Klumpenhouwer was the editor of Music Theory Spectrum. He served as a faculty member at the Third and the Eleventh Mannes Institutes for Advanced Studies in Music Theory.

Nathan Laube, Assistant Professor of Organ. Laube has quickly earned a place among the organ world’s elite performers for his brilliant playing and creative programming of repertoire spanning five centuries. He was a featured performer at the 2009, 2011, and 2012 national conventions of the Organ Historical Society; the American Guild of Organists’ 2010 national convention in Washington, D.C.; and the Guild’s 2012 national convention in Nashville. He has performed with numerous orchestras, chamber ensembles, and choruses. Many of his live performances have been featured on American Public Media’s series Pipedreams. Laube has won top prizes at several distinguished competitions and currently is Artist-in-Residence at the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris, France. He frequently serves on the faculty for Pipe Organ Encounters in the United States and has also taught at the Oberlin Summer Organ Academy in Ohio and at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Summer Organ Academy in Philadelphia. As a recipient of a William Fulbright Grant, Laube spent the 2010-2011 academic year studying with Michel Bouvard and Jan Willem Jansen at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Toulouse, where he earned Prix de Spécialisé and the Prix François Vidal from the city of Toulouse. He earned his BM at the Curtis Institute of Music, where received the Landis Award for Excellence in Academics and the Aldwell Award for Excellence in Musical Studies.

# # #

The Gold Medal prize added to the list of national honors this year for Project Fusion, a saxophone quartet composed of doctoral students Dannel Espinoza and Matt Evans, master’s degree student Michael Sawzin, and Matt Amedio BM ’13. The group, which is coached by Assistant Professor of Saxophone Chien-Kwan Lin, received the Grand Prize in the 2013 Plowman Chamber Music Competition and first place in the 2013 Music Teachers National Association Chamber Music Wind Competition.

At the Fischoff Competition, Project Fusion performed Alexander Glazunov’s Quartet for Saxophone, Op. 109, David Maslanka’s Recitation Book, Eugene Bozza’s  Nuages, and Fuminori Tanada’s Mysterious Morning.

The Midic Winds is composed of Johanna Gruskin ’13, flute; June Kim ’14, oboe; Rebecca Tobin ’14, clarinet; Quinn Delaney ’14, bassoon; and Russell Rybicki ’13, horn. At the Fischoff Competition, they performed John Harbison’s Quintet for Winds; Henri Tomasi’s Cinq Danses pour Quintette à vent; Samuel Barber’s Summer Music, Op. 31; and Theodor Blumer’s Quintett für Blasinstrumente, Op. 52. The ensemble is coached by Professor of Oboe Richard Killmer.

As part of their prize, Project Fusion will be participating in a tour of the Midwestern United States for concerts and master classes in the fall. Project Fusion’s Fischoff Gold Medal is the third such win in eight years by Eastman students: the ViM Saxophone Quartet and the Red Line Saxophone Quartet were awarded gold in 2006 and 2009, respectively.

Established in 1973, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition is the largest chamber music competition in the world and attracts the finest young instrumentalists from around the globe. This year’s event was held May 10 to 12 at the University of Notre Dame.

# # #

Jennifer Bellor, Paulo Perfeito, and Marc Schwartz are winners of DownBeat Student Music Awards.

Jennifer Bellor, Paulo Perfeito, and Marc Schwartz of the Eastman School of Music have received DownBeat honors in the magazine’s 36th annual Student Awards competition.

Schwartz was recognized in the Jazz Soloist/Graduate College category for a recording that included an alto saxophone performance on “Stella By Starlight,” and in the Jazz Arrangement/Graduate College category for his arrangement of “The Two Lonely People.” Perfeito received the top award for Jazz Group/Graduate College for a performance by his group Paulo Perfeito’s Eastman 6tet. Bellor won in the Original Composition, Orchestrated Work/ Graduate College category for her work “Midnight Swim.”

Bellor is graduating this month with a Ph.D. in music composition. Her winning piece “Midnight Swim” is a 10-minute big band work which features a soprano saxophone solo. The piece was premiered in April 2012 in Kilbourn Hall by the Eastman New Jazz Ensemble under the direction of Dave Rivello, with Colin Gordon as the featured soloist.

Following Commencement, Bellor will be composing a 20-minute opera, commissioned by the Washington National Opera American Opera Initiative, for a fall premiere at the Kennedy Center.  In June, she will be participating in the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute readings in New York City, where her new orchestra piece “Crystal Skies” will be played by the American Composers Orchestra. She will also continue her faculty position as Lecturer in Music Theory at Nazareth College in the fall.

Originally from Massena, N.Y., Bellor received her Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Cornell University in 2005 and her Master of Music degree in composition from Syracuse University in 2007.

Perfeito, a trombonist and a native of Portugal, is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in the Jazz & Contemporary Media department. DownBeat recognized him for his group’s performance of Portuguese composer Carlos Azevedo’s “2-4” and of his own composition “Wander Lust” at his degree recital in November 2012.

Paulo Perfeito’s Eastman 6tet, which is composed of fellow award-winner saxophonist Marc Schwartz; Dave Chisholm DMA ‘13, trumpet; Reuben Allen BM ‘10 MM ‘13, piano; sophomore Emiliano Lasansky BM ‘15, bass; and junior Eric Metzger BM ‘14, drums, will be performing on the Jazz (Gibbs) Street Stage at 6 p.m. Saturday, June 29, during the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival.

After receiving his Bachelor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music in 2001, Perfeito taught jazz at ESMAE, a college-level performing arts institution in his hometown of Porto, Portugal, before returning to the United States and earning his Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory in 2007.

Schwartz is graduating this month with his Master of Music degree in jazz composition. His jazz soloist award from DownBeat recognized his performance of Victor Young’s “Stella by Starlight,” as arranged by Bill Holman, with the Eastman Jazz Ensemble in December 2012 in Kodak Hall. The arrangement contains both a ballad and up-tempo portion.

Schwartz’s arrangement of Bill Evans’ “The Two Lonely People,” which earned him his second DownBeat award, was his first arrangement for an ensemble larger than standard big band instrumentation. The eight-and-a-half-minute arrangement was recorded by the Eastman Studio Orchestra, which combines the typical big band with a string section, harp, percussion, and extra woodwinds.

In addition, Schwartz also nets a DownBeat award as a member of Paulo Perfeito’s Eastman 6tet.

Originally from East Northport, N.Y., Schwartz received his bachelor’s degree at Eastman in jazz saxophone performance in 2011. Following Commencement this month, he will move to New York City to work as a freelance performer/composer/arranger.

The Student Music Awards were announced in the June issue of DownBeat, one of the country’s most respected jazz magazines and often called “the bible of jazz.” Entries for the annual Student Music Awards are judged on musicianship, creativity, improvisation, technique, sound quality and balance, excitement, authority, and other criteria. The judges include editors of DownBeat, professional musicians, and educators.

 # # #

Filming of the The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is returning to the Eastman area Thursday May 9th, from 8 a.m to 5 p.m., and both Main Street and East Avenue will be closed to traffic west of Scio Street. I have attached a PDF of the closure areas for your information.

Street Closings

Main Street will close from South Avenue to Scio Street, and East Avenue will close from Main Street to Scio Street; Gibbs Street between Main and East Avenue will also be closed. There will be no street parking in these locations.

Chestnut Street will be closed intermittently, and we expect that the closings will be brief—no more than 10 minutes at a time.

Scio Street will remain open to traffic. The East End Garage will be accessible from Scio Street and will be open the entire day.

Map of Street Closings

Red Line Bus

We have coordinated bus service logistics with the University’s Transportation Department. The Red Line bus will be rerouted to use Chestnut Street, but pick-up and drop off locations and times will remain the same. We have another bus on stand-by that can be added to the Red Line loop if we run into delays.

Safety and Security

Throughout the day, we will have officers from the Rochester Police Department on site to assist in traffic and pedestrian control, as well as University of Rochester security and other coverage provided by Eastman administrative departments. Rest assured that everyone will work together to ensure that students, faculty, and staff can access the Eastman School of Music’s facilities in a safe and efficient manner.

Concerts and Performance Hall Access

Please note that we expect film crews to be done by 5 pm, in time for the evening’s Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra concert.

Remember: Stay Safe and Be Informed

While the filming is sure to provide some additional excitement to our Eastman campus, it’s important that we keep safety and security a priority.

Please be aware that traffic patterns during filming are intermittently being disrupted. It may take you a bit longer this week to get to and from the Eastman campus. You may want to allow yourself a little extra travel time.

While shooting is underway, detailed road closure information, including maps, will be posted on the City of Rochester’s website. The website also has helpful a helpful set of FAQs.

You can get information and updates on Twitter by following @cityrochesterny and using #SpideyRoc, or like the City on Facebook at facebook.com/cityofrochesterny.

If there are any questions or concerns please let me know.

Best regards,

Michele Gibson

Senior Associate Dean for Administration and Finance

Eastman School of Music

University of Rochester

26 Gibbs Street

Rochester, NY 14604

Vincent Lenti

This year’s graduates of the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music will receive parting advice from alumnus, faculty member, and School historian Vincent Lenti, who will offer his perspective on Eastman’s past 60 years and its future. Lenti, who was recently feted for five decades of service to the School, will speak at the School’s 88th Commencement ceremony at 11:15 a.m. Sunday, May 19, in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre.

A pianist, Lenti received his bachelor’s degree in 1960 and his master’s degree in 1962 at Eastman, where he was a student of the noted Italian pianist and pedagogue Orazio Frugnoni. He was one of the last faculty members appointed by legendary Eastman director Howard Hanson and has been honored for his service by both the university and Eastman.

The May 19 ceremony is for students receiving their bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The doctoral ceremony for students receiving a DMA or Ph.D. degree will be held at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, May 17, in Kodak Hall. Approximately 257 candidates will receive bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees at Eastman this term.

In addition to serving as Eastman School Historian, Lenti is Professor of Piano and Coordinator of Primary and Secondary Piano, and also supervises doctoral teaching assistants. He was director of Eastman’s Community Education Division, now known as the Eastman Community Music School, for 26 years.

In 2010, the University of Rochester awarded Lenti the Charles Force Hutchison and Marjorie Smith Hutchison Medal, the highest honor given to an alumnus/a in recognition of outstanding achievements and service to community, state, or nation. In 2002, he was the recipient of Eastman’s Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching.

During his career, Lenti coordinated and lectured at Eastman School piano teacher workshops, served on the board of the New York State Music Teachers Association (NYSMTA), and lectured at conventions of the Music Teachers National Association.  In 1986, NYSMTA honored him with the 25th Anniversary Award for Outstanding Service. He has written dozens of articles on church music and liturgy that have appeared in such journals as The American Organist, Pastoral Music, The Hymn, Cross Accent, Studia Liturgica, Worship, and Sacred Music.

In the greater Rochester community, Lenti has served on the boards of St. Bernard’s Seminary, St. Bernard’s Institute, Young Audiences of Rochester, and the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra.

Lenti is writing a three-volume history of the Eastman School of Music. The first two volumes, For the Enrichment of Community Life and Serving a Great and Noble Art, were published in 2004 and 2009.

Lenti’s many perspectives on the Eastman School experience are enhanced by many family connections to the School.  His wife Christina and his daughters Elizabeth and Anna all earned bachelor’s degrees at Eastman; his brother Tony and sister-in-law Marianne each earned their bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees at the School – a grand total of 11 degrees in the family completed at Eastman.

# # #

Members of the ECMS Youth Ensemble are, sitting from left: Oksana Miller and Addie Kurchin; standing, from left: Neil Ryan, John O’Leary, Luke Robbins, and David Steinhardt.

The Eastman Community Music School’s Guitar Program will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a concert featuring current students and teachers as well as alumni and former faculty at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 17, in Hatch Recital Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Approximately 150 area students have studied in the program over the past two decades, which was launched by Eastman School of Music Professor of Guitar Nicholas Goluses. Almost 50 students, ranging in age from elementary school to adult, currently study guitar in the Community Music School.

“The guitar program boasts variety and quality,” said Peter Kodzas, co-chair of the Strings, Harp, and Guitar department in the Eastman Community Music School (ECMS).  “We have students of all ages from local school districts, as well as adult performers who are teachers, engineers, and medical doctors.

“Last year, our high school ensemble was the only pre-college ensemble selected to perform at the Guitar Foundation of America Convention. Student David Steinhardt won first prize in the 2012 Montreal Guitar Competition and in the 2013 American String Teachers Association National Competition,” said Kodzas, who is also ECMS Senior Instructor in Guitar and Assistant Professor of Chamber Music at Eastman.

In addition, Steinhardt and Annie Jacob Perkins won first prize in the chamber music division of the 2013 Rochester Virtuosi Competition sponsored by the Pittsford-based International School of Music and Arts. Kodzas also noted that former Eastman School of Music students who were teaching assistants in the ECMS guitar program have gone on to teach at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, the International School of Music, Edith Cowan University, the Avalon Music Center, and Mansfield University.

The May 17 concert will feature the premiere of “Three Dances for Guitar Quartet” by Justin Jaramillo, a freshman composition major in the Eastman School of Music. The work was commissioned for the anniversary celebration and consists of three movements, Prelude, Panomara, and Jolt, that reflect the past and present inherent in anniversaries through the juxtaposition of baroque musical forms and harmonies with modern ones. Jaramillo was a student at ECMS, traveling weekly from his hometown of Utica, N.Y., to study piano, composition, theory, and music history at the school.

Performers in the concert include Kodzas, current ECMS teaching assistants Mark Appling, Josinaldo Costa Filho, and Sungmin Shin, as well as former teaching assistant Matthew Ardizzone, Associate Dean of Admissions at the Eastman School of Music, and Anton Machleder, director of the guitar programs at Monroe Community College and Houghton College.

# # #

Downtown Rochester will host the filming of the major Hollywood movie The Amazing Spider-Man 2 from Tuesday, April 30 to Thursday, May 9, and during this time Main Street and some surrounding streets will be shut down between 6 AM and 9 PM. Action sequences that include car chases and other special effects will be filmed on Main Street between South Plymouth and East Avenues; please note that detours and delays will affect both vehicular and pedestrian traffic, as well as bus routes.

May 1: Filming at Eastman

Starting at noon on Wednesday, May 1, both Main Street and East Avenue will be closed to accommodate filming in our area. Production crews will be in our area beginning at around 8:30 AM, and streets will re-open at approximately 9 PM.

Street Closures

Map of Closure Areas

Main Street will close from South Avenue to Scio Street, and East Avenue will close from Main Street to Scio Street; Gibbs Street between Main and East Avenue will also close at noon. There will be no on street parking on May 1 in these locations.

Chestnut Street will be closed intermittently, when crews roll cameras on shots, and we expect that the closings will be brief—no more than 10 minutes at a time.

Scio Street will remain open to traffic. The East End Garage will be accessible from Scio Street and will open the entire day.

Redline Bus

We have coordinated bus service logistics with the University’s Transportation Department. The Red Line bus will be rerouted to use Chestnut Street, but pick- up and drop off locations and times will remain the same. We have another bus on stand-by that can be added to the Red Line loop if we run into delays.

Safety and Security

Throughout the afternoon of May 1, we will have officers from the Rochester Police Department on site to assist in traffic and pedestrian control, as well as University of Rochester security and other coverage provided by Eastman administrative departments. Rest assured that everyone will work together to ensure that students, faculty, and staff can access the Eastman School of Music’s facilities in a safe and efficient manner.

Concerts and Performance Hall Access

For the Eastman Wind Ensemble performance at 8 PM on May 1, the Swan Street entrance to the Main Hall will be open and will be the main access point to Eastman Theatre for our patrons. the East End garage will be open and accessible from the Scio Street entrance. We will have signage, UR security, and usher staff on hand to help provide directional assistance to our patrons. The Swan Street entrance for the Eastman East Wing (EEW) will remain on card access only.

Remember: Stay Safe and Be Informed

While the filming is sure to provide some additional excitement to our Eastman campus. it’s important that we keep safety and security a priority.

Please be aware that traffic patterns during filming are intermittently being disrupted. It may take you a bit longer this week to get to and from the Eastman campus. You may want to allow yourself a little extra travel time.

While shooting is underway, detailed road closure information, including maps, will be posted on the City of Rochester’s website. The website also has helpful a helpful set of FAQs.

You can get information and updates on Twitter by following @cityrochesterny and using #SpideyRoc, or like the City on Facebook at facebook.com/cityofrochesterny.

If there are any questions or concerns please let me know.

Best regards,

Michele Gibson
Senior Associate Dean for Administration and Finance
Eastman School of Music
University of Rochester
26 Gibbs Street
Rochester, NY 14604