Eastman School of Music Posts and Musings
Violist Alex McLaughlin and conductor Peter Folliard rehearse Nicolas Bacri’s Piccolo Concerto Notturno with the Eastman Viola Ensemble in Kodak Hall. (Photograph by Carol Rodland.) It’s rare to see the Eastman Student Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia share the stage in Kodak Hall, but Maestro Neil Varon wanted to feature both orchestras during this special “homecoming”…
Mary Jo Heath in the broadcast booth The Eastman School of Music boasts prominent alumni in virtually every field of music: performers, teachers, composers, theorists, conductors, and so on. What better time of the year to celebrate the career paths of our distinguished alumni than the days leading up to Meliora Weekend at Eastman? As…
Conductor Neil Varon rehearsing the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra in 2006. The first concert of the year seems to always be a jitter-filled one for students of all ages and instruments. This is especially true for first-years here at Eastman, who this past weekend performed in their first major ensemble concerts in Kodak Hall. On…
It’s a rare occurrence when a young person has an opportunity to be directly encouraged and taught by a person who is not only a leader in their field, but also whose celebrity transcends that field. Imagine having a basketball lesson with Michael Jordan, a discussion about entrepreneurship with Mark Zuckerberg, or a tennis lesson…
Ossia and Eastman Musica Nova teamed up with Ensemble Signal to present Steve Reich’s Tehillim in Kilbourn Hall in April 2014. Ossia New Music, a student-run organization committed to contemporary music performance, is holding its first concert of the year on Thursday, October 1 in Kilbourn Hall at 8:00pm. The concert program includes music by…
Summer@Eastman Director Sylvie Beaudette is pleased to announce the hiring of Eastman alumna Andrea Schuler as the new Summer program coordinator. Andrea holds undergraduate and graduate viola performance degrees (’91 and ’93) from the Eastman School of Music, where she was a student of George Taylor and James Dunham. She returns to Rochester after more…
Junior voice performance major Aaron Bigeleisen, this summer at the Colburn School’s Songfest, with pianist Nathan Harris. Eastman prepares us to do great things. It says so right there in the admissions packet. So, in addition to the education we receive, we are encouraged to go out and explore performance opportunities during the summer. As…
For many student musicians, the opportunity to travel with an ensemble abroad and perform in new countries and venues is a memorable one. The Eastman BroadBand Ensemble held residencies at contemporary music festivals in Europe this past July: the SoundScape Festival in Maccagno, Italy and the Valencia International Performance Academy (VIPA) Festival in Valencia, Spain.…
This Sunday, September 20, Eastman students and conductors will be performing two church cantatas by J.S. Bach at 3 p.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church: BWV 70: Wachet! Betet! Betet! Wachet! (Watch! Pray!) and BWV 75: Die Elenden sollen essen (The miserable shall eat). This weekend’s performance is part of an ongoing series of Bach Cantata…
We all know how dire the situation is in Iraq. Every day new reports surface conveying the conditions there, and we—American citizens—wonder constantly: will it ever end? If Zuhan Sultan ever has her way, it will. Pianist Zuhan Sultan, pictured above, who at age 17 founded the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, is currently using…