Eastman School of Music Posts and Musings

Senior Recital: Getting with the Program

Andrew’s recital poster, designed by Karen Ver Steeg On Thursday, April 2, I had my senior recital. For most, that day was simply Rochester’s first nice Thursday of the year; for me it was terrifying — but exciting. Nothing can really prepare you to go out there and, in culmination of four years of hard…

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A Time to Remember …

On Sunday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music faculty members and students will perform works by select Jewish composers to mark Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). This program will include powerful works by Gideon Klein, Wladyslaw Szpilman, Erwin Schulhoff, and Paul Schoenfield which honor those who perished, those who…

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Maestro Steve Crowley puts down his…hammer for his final Eastman Opera Theatre production

With reluctance, the Voice and Opera Department announces the retirement of Steve Crowley after almost 30 years as Eastman Opera Theatre’s Technical Director/Producer. Steve joined Eastman Opera Theatre in September 1985, working with Richard Pearlman, after a varied career with Trinity Repertory Theater in Providence, Rhode Island, American Place Theater in New York, and other…

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“Our Town” at Our School

Ned Rorem’s Our Town, the opera based on the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Thornton Wilder, opens in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre tonight and runs through the weekend. Eastman Opera Theatre’s production is the first in upstate New York since the opera’s professional debut at the Lake George Opera in July of 2006. Wilder’s…

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“Eastman Became my Dream School”: Interview with Weijun Chen, Music Horizons Alumnus

Summer@Eastman’s internationally acclaimed Music Horizons program is for students currently in grades 9–12 who are seriously considering a career in music. The highly individualized program emphasizes solo performance (all orchestral instruments, piano, organ, voice, classical guitar, or composition). This program is for mature students of advanced performance levels who can work well in a focused…

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Viola Commissions Born At Eastman

Photograph taken at the 2012 International Viola Congress, held at the Eastman School of Music. Tonight at 8 p.m. in Howard Hanson Hall, there is a unique opportunity to attend a concert put on by two of Eastman’s best studios. Carol Rodland’s viola studio has collaborated with the ESM Composition Department and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez on…

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Prokofiev at War, by Barry Snyder

Portrait of Sergei Prokofiev, 1934 This weekend, Eastman professor Barry Snyder will be giving a once-in-a-lifetime performance of three incredibly powerful sonatas by Sergei Prokofiev. These sonatas contain some of Prokofiev’s most dissonant music for the piano. The composer’s biographer Daniel Jaffe has argued that Prokofiev, “having forced himself to compose a cheerful evocation of…

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Eastman Takes Trumpet Competition by Storm

Eastman trumpeters Andrew Psarris, Michael Kent, Steve Felix, Dovas Lietuvninkas, Samuel Huss Last weekend, March 19 through 21, I had the sincere honor of competing in the National Trumpet Competition with my fellow trumpet players. Every year we go down to this competition and we do well — but most important, we have a lot…

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