An Eastman Scholar in Italy
November 2007
Professor Patrick Macey, scholar of Medieval and Renaissance music and chair of Eastman’s musicology department, recently traveled to Bologna, Italy, to take part in Il movimento domenicano al femminile: storia, figure, istituzioni – an international conference on women and spirituality in the early middle ages and early modern period that brought together historians, theologians, and other scholars.
Patrick delivered a paper on music in Dominican convents. The conference took place in the Capella Ghisilardi of the Convento patriarcale San Domenico, “a 16th-century chapel that was added to the older church of San Domenico, which holds the 13th-century tomb of St. Dominic,” says Patrick, who adds “My paper was a great success, especially due to the recorded music examples from the CD in my book (Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy, 1998).”
Brazen Talent
October 2007
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s vaunted brass section has shone for many years in performances and recordings of music by Bruckner, Mussorgsky, Richard Strauss, Bartók, and many others. Much of that shine comes from the CSO’s trumpet section, three-fourths of which is Eastman-trained. Christopher Martin (BM ’97) was appointed CSO first trumpet in 2005, a position at the top of the orchestral trumpet world. Chris was formerly first trumpet of the Atlanta Symphony. Second trumpet John Hagstrom (BM ’87) joined the orchestra in 1996, and Tage Larsen was hired as fourth/utility trumpet in 2005. All three studied with former Eastman trumpet professors Charles Geyer and Barbara Butler.
You can read about Chris Martin and his life with the Chicago Symphony in a cover story interview in the September 2007 Instrumentalist.
A Little Ying Music
September 2007
It’s certainly not unusual for the acclaimed Ying Quartet to be featured in Strings magazine, as it is in the October 2007 issue. What is unusual is the composer under discussion – not Beethoven or Bartók, but Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim. At a recent “Wall to Wall” event at New York’s Symphony Space devoted to the composer of Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and other hit musicals, the Yings premiered Night Waltzes, an arrangement by Michael Starobin of three songs from Sondheim’s 1973 show A Little Night Music.
The Yings’ technical and interpretive insights into Sondheim’s music and Starobin’s arrangement are the subject of the Strings article. “He writes vocal lines that work beautifully for string instruments,” says the quartet’s violist, Phillip Ying, adding that the music contains “many different timbres and textures, which makes a perfect translation for chamber music.” The group is looking for another opportunity to perform Night Waltzes.
Sondheim’s musicals, by the way, are frequently performed at Eastman. The Opera Theatre has presented Passion, Sweeney Todd, Company, and Assassins – and A Little Night Music (without the Yings) is scheduled for November 2007.
Songs Sung Blue
August 2007
When your music is compared to the work of Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, and Aaron Copland — not to mention Ernest Hemingway — you’re probably doing something right. Judging from critical response to her newest album, Sky Blue, Grammy-winning jazz composer Maria Schneider (MM ’85) definitely did it right.
Four of the pieces on Sky Blue were commissioned by different venues, but all were to be premiered by the Maria Schneider Orchestra — “my favorite way to be commissioned,” she says. “Each of these pieces began when I cast out a few exploratory tones in search of meaningful sound … Experiences transmuted into sound, and in two cases, actually became sonic stories” (which may help explain that Hemingway reference).
Sky Blue was released July 24 and is available only at MariaSchneider.com, along with Maria’s previous albums and lots of other interesting information about her music and current projects. She’ll be all over the world in the next few weeks, performing in Bethlehem (PA), Italy, Tanglewood, and Brazil. In coming months, Maria will give residencies at the University of Miami and at Juilliard.
Play Mstislav For Me
July 2007
When the great Russian cellist, conductor, and human rights advocate Mstislav Rostropovich died in April of this year, Eastman cello students wasted no time in arranging a musical tribute to him. For the program, performed May 9 in Rochester’s Village Gate Square, eight Eastman-trained cellists performed all six Bach cello suites, as well as pieces written for Rostropovich by Britten, Lutoslawski, and Penderecki. Donations received at the concert were sent to the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation, founded in 1991 by the cellist and his wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, to improve children’s health care in the former states of the Soviet Union.
The concert was arranged by Lauren Radnofsky (BM ’03), who stated, “Rostropovich has been an enormous influence for all the cellists presenting this concert, and for many of us the inspiration behind our decisions to pursue a life in music. The moment I decided to become a cellist was after hearing Rostropovich play with the Boston Symphony when I was growing up. I skipped school twice that week to see him play in rehearsals and concerts.”
Old Friends and Lots of Love
June 2007
Before he came a world-famous jazz composer and performer, Chuck Mangione was an Eastman student (BM ’63) and teacher (1968-1972). The event that made his name was a 1970 Eastman Theatre concert of his music called Friends and Love, which led to a record, a hit single, a TV special – and in time many Grammy nominations, two Grammys, and an Emmy. On Memorial Day weekend, Chuck returned to the scene of his original triumph, and triumphed again, selling out the 3,000+-seat Eastman Theatre for a recreation of the Friends and Love concert with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and many of the original performers, including drummer Steve Gadd (BM ’68), bassist Tony Levin (BM ’68), and saxophonist Gerry Niewood (BM ’70).
One award Chuck hadn’t yet received was an Eastman Alumni Achievement Award, but May 27, interim dean Jamal Rossi presented a visibly moved Chuck with the award before a full Eastman Theatre audience. The text of the award reads:
Eastman School of Music
Alumni Achievement Award
CHARLES F. (CHUCK) MANGIONE
Chuck Mangione has often recalled that his father, a tremendous jazz fan, invited touring musicians who were performing in Rochester home for a good Italian dinner and some wine. While he was still a boy, Chuck had met a Who’s Who of 1950s jazz royalty, including such great artists as Art Blakey, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Ron Carter, and the man he claimed as a “musical father,” Dizzy Gillespie.
With so much great music in his childhood, it is no surprise that Chuck began recording jazz albums with his brother Gap while they were still in their teens, or that Chuck attended the Eastman School of Music, playing trumpet and graduating in 1963 with a Bachelor’s degree in music education.
In 1968, Chuck Mangione returned to Eastman, this time as a member of the faculty. He taught at Eastman until 1972, directing the Eastman Jazz Ensemble and taking part in the dramatic growth of Eastman’s jazz program. When he left, he was well on his way to “household name” status as a composer, arranger, flugelhorn player, and bandleader. He led the now legendary Friends and Love concert and recording in 1970, and the following year received a Grammy nomination for the single from that album, “Hill Where the Lord Hides.”
Within the next ten years, Chuck had won many more Grammy nods, two Grammy awards, and an Emmy. His albums and singles — including Feels So Good, one of the most successful jazz albums ever produced — climbed the pop and jazz charts, resulting in several gold and platinum records. An estimated 90,000,000 people heard Chuck perform at the closing ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. An honorary doctorate from the University of Rochester in 1985 put Chuck Mangione in the company of such American musical icons as Aaron Copland, Isaac Stern, and Rudolf Serkin.
At the height of his chart-topping fame, in 1978, Newsweek began its profile of him: “Chuck Mangione makes jazz that sounds the way he looks – ingenious, upbeat, and instantly likeable.” For his own part, Chuck has said, “If you’re honest and play with love, people will sit down and listen … My music is the sum of all I have experienced.”
For his dedication to music, his tremendous talent and equally great success, and his continuing ability to make music from the heart, the Eastman School of Music is proud to present Chuck Mangione with its Alumni Achievement Award.
Someone’s in the Kitchen
May 2007
Last month, we featured Instrumentalist “cover girl” and Eastman alumna Sandra Dackow. This month, another important music magazine is prominently featuring an Eastman alumna. The May 2007 issue of Chamber Music magazine features an article about New York City’s Music Kitchen, founded by violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins (BM ’93) in 2005. at her home church of Holy Trinity Baptist in Manhattan. “My mission,” she has said, “is to share the inspirational, therapeutic, evocative, and uplifting power of music with New York City’s disenfranchised homeless shelter population.” Kelly and her many musician friends perform regular chamber music concerts for the church’s homeless shelter and Olivieri Center women’s shelter. Recent guest artists have included pianists Emanuel Ax (pictured with Kelly during a performance) and Roy Eaton, the David Bixton Jazz Quartet, flutist Bart Feller, and cellist Tara Chambers. You can find more information about Music Kitchen, and a link to the Chamber Music article, at www.MusicKitchenNYC.org.
Cover Girl
April 2007
Making the cover of Time may be exciting, but if you are a conductor and music educator, it probably ranks a few rungs below making the cover of The Instrumentalist, as Sandra Dackow (BM ’73, MM ’77, PhD ’87) did for the magazine’s March 2007 issue.
Sandra, who is currently music director of the Hershey (PA) Symphony Orchestra and Hershey Symphony Festival Strings, is a prolific arranger and author, an award-winning conductor, and a very experienced music educator and adjudicator. In her Instrumentalist interview, titled “Stirring Souls,” Sandra gives some fond reminiscences of Eastman Wind Ensemble founder and longtime director Frederick Fennell. She offers her views on community support for school orchestras and on inspiring students to consider a career in music education, and gives advice to new teachers – among many other subjects.
Tony and the Tony Winners
March 2007
Photos © 2007, Los Angeles Opera
Tenor Anthony Dean Griffey (MM ’01) appeared in the recent Los Angeles Opera production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, sharing the stage of LA’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with two Tony Award-winning Broadway stars, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald. Critics mostly found Mahagonny heavy-handed and obvious, but their opinions of Griffey’s portrayal of Jimmy MacIntyre, the anti-hero, were unanimous.
The New York Times called him “an impressive young artist with an unusual tenor voice that boasts heroic heft and lyrical sweetness.” The Los Angeles Times called him “brilliant…the perfect Jimmy.” And the TheaterMania.com web site said, “Griffey’s voice is magnificent; he puts his arias across with consummate power and polish, and his characterization of the likable, doomed hero is credible and emphatic.”
It was recently announced that Tony, a pupil of John Maloy (recently named professor emeritus of voice) will also appear in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2007-2008 season, singing the title role in Britten’s Peter Grimes. The March 15, 2008 matinee of this opera will also be shown live in high definition video and sound at movie theaters throughout North America, Europe, and Japan.
→ For more about Tony’s career, visit www.anthonydeangriffey.com
Helping Others Find a Voice
February 2007
Baritone Jeffery Norris (MM ’84) is one of only two arts teachers — and the first voice teacher — in the United States to be named a 2007 Coca-Cola Company/NFAA Distinguished Teacher in the Arts. Jeffery, who is in his 21st year teaching voice at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, credits Eastman (where he studied with John Maloy) for a major part of his success.
While he has had a continuous professional career since the age of 19, Jeffery has had an even deeper calling to teach. “I try to draw each student’s authentic voice out of him or her by asking questions,” he says, “so the student is able to find the techniques that best suit his or her voice, abilities, and developmental stage.” He adds, “I try to give each student a little bit of the grace that was shown to me by people who’ve made a remarkable difference in my life.”
Marimba Master
January 2007
In November 2006, Leigh Howard Stevens (BM ’75) was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Percussive Arts Society, the world’s largest organization of percussion performers, educators, and drummers.
Stevens studied with another PAS Hall of Famer, Professor John Beck (inducted in 1999), and was unusual among percussion students at that time for his concentration on a single instrument: the marimba. The young percussionist was determined to make the marimba a respected concert instrument. He did so soon after his graduation, when he made a splash with a solo classical recital at New York’s Town Hall.
Since then, Leigh Howard Stevens has become a widely respected teacher (who has developed his own “Stevens Technique” for marimba), and an active recitalist and soloist, commissioning new works from such composers as Jacob Druckman, David Maslanka, and Joseph Schwantner. Stevens also owns and operates the Malletech Marimba Factory in Neptune, New Jersey.
Eastman is well represented in the PAS Hall of Fame: besides Stevens and Beck, members include legendary Eastman teacher William Street, Bill Cahn (BM ’68) of Nexus, the late composer Warren Benson, and jazz and rock drummer Steve Gadd (BM ’68).