Dean Douglas Lowry

News and Updates

Convocation 2008

THE PLACE OF CONSTANT EDGES:
HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN E-SPACE

Eastman Dean Douglas Lowry gave his Convocation Speech for the opening of the 2008-2009 academic year on Thursday, September 4, 2008 in Kilbourn Hall. An edited version of his speech appears here.

So, here we are, in Kilbourn Hall, the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York, Thursday, September 4, 2008. The price of crude oil has dropped six bucks in the last two days, yet in that peculiar energy equation that none of us have figured out, the price of a gallon of gas plummeted only six cents. On the political front, we’re facing one of the more perplexing presidential elections in United States history. A 19-square mile chunk of ice just broke away from Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Arctic. Hurricane Gustav (not Mahler) thankfully stayed at Category 3. And in the music world, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra finally ‘fessed up to its own version of lip-synching during the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Olympics. Which baffles me -- knowing that we musicians are such inveterate gossips, I’m simply amazed that it took eight years for somebody to blab.

Meanwhile, the students of the Eastman School of Music – you -- have just been propelled into “E-space” – Eastman space – and now you’re propelled into one of your more interesting adventures. For this is a remarkable time for music, and indeed, for the Eastman School of Music.

We’ve embarked on the first major physical transformation of the School since George Eastman built the place. The Eastman Theatre will be a more aesthetically and acoustically generous concert hall of 2250 seats. In the spring of 2010 we’ll have some new faculty studios, a magnificent large ensemble rehearsal hall, and a recording nexus point that will not just enable remote audio recording, but also streaming and Internet2 transmissions. We’ll have an elegant atrium that will intersect the Eastman building and the new addition. And, as a sister to this grand old edifice, Kilbourn Hall, we’ll have an acoustically and aesthetically stirring 230-seat recital hall.

The Eastman Theatre will be re-named “Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre”, in acknowledgement of a profound $10 million commitment on the part of the Eastman Kodak Company. The new recital hall will be called Hatch Recital Hall, in honor of the Davenport-Hatch Foundation, a Rochester foundation that committed $2.9 million toward the overall expansion project. Both Eastman Kodak and the Davenport-Hatch Foundation gave extraordinary and historically record-breaking gifts because, I believe, they were inspired by our many growing partnerships, particularly our partnership with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and also by the dynamic vision that is energizing the Eastman School and the University of Rochester.

We’re evolving a strategic vision for the Eastman School of Music, a vision intended to accomplish two things. First, we’ll strengthen our core excellence -- which is to say, the assets that got us to where we are -- while maintaining Eastman’s competitiveness in a music school world that is changing at a breathtaking pace.

Of equal if not greater interest and excitement, though, is our focus on new ways of making music, studying music, performing music, presenting music, innovating music. Because rather than sitting idly by and watching the music world define itself, or remaining stuck in the way it’s always defined itself, we owe it to you, the students, to be inventing, innovating, and inspiring.

Eastman must be an international galvanizing force in this movement. We must utilize Eastman’s historic initiatives and premier legacy, not just so music can retain its “necessity” or its “urgency”, but also so that our culture feels compelled to experience the music we make in the way we make it. Like you, I don’t want music to become just one more entertaining distraction -- or worse, a sonic accompaniment to other distractions. Rather, I want great music to be a cultural and social force that inspires and binds a terribly fragmented world.

So, what about this “e-space?” Well, it’s no mystery that electronic messaging in every form, be it text, e-mail, graphic design, music composition, music editing, video, or any form of multi-media, is the medium of choice for getting pretty much any word out. But what should be clear as day for the musical establishment, and I include every traditional presentation mode imaginable, is that opportunities for musical artists of every stripe – performers, composers, scholars, teachers – to build whole new audiences are truly abundant. You all have opportunities to begin building, and building now, worldwide audiences -- opportunities that very few, if any, members of our Eastman faculty had when they were going to music school. Who would have ever thought that by building a dynamic website or getting some space on Facebook, you could generate intense interest in what you do? This is the revolutionary aspect of your E-space.

The days of the traditional models of promotion are over. And I would challenge you that the most imaginative presenters will have the best shot at advancing their own artistic work. Be it on Facebook or on a website, opportunities for engagement are those bigger than any PR firm or record company could furnish you. I encourage you – no, implore you – to seize this moment immediately. Many of you already have.

That’s the technology part. There’s another aspect to this discussion, however, that’s a little more difficult to get our arms around. Promotion alone doesn’t really do the trick. Changing music will, though. Changing music will require us to push some edges, including our own -- to open up our own cultural gates. This futuristic look is our responsibility because that particular frontier is the one you, our students, will occupy.

This is very much in line with what’s happening now in this place, the Eastman School of Music, and at all its partners at the University of Rochester. All of us are being challenged to energetically push against edges.

It’s in this spirit that I address you today: this spirit of innovative energy, of not only creating your own authentic e-space at Eastman, but of energizing your e-space at Eastman. A few years down the line, when you’re hopefully finished with this chapter in your academic lives, you’ll be taking stock; but the “stock” I hope you’ll be taking will have less to do with what you accomplished – your triumphs and failures – as much as it will have to do with the patterns you’ve developed, the patterns of your musical lives.

Your success in terms of accomplishments will be highly unpredictable, and a lot of it frankly will be out of your control. But how you go about what you do, the way you dealt with challenges, the sometimes dreary day-to-day necessities of warm-ups and scales and etudes, yes, discipline and ritual, the way you shaped your behavior, this process is integral to the Eastman experience.

Yet this also means that we have to be very wary of cultural boundaries and biases and borders -- those created by others, and those created by us. Strict, historically accepted definitions of what great music is and should be are no longer valid, especially in a world coming to terms with its incredibly empowering ethnic, intellectual and artistic diversity, a realization due, in part, to this web connectivity.

We know that the Eastman School of Music will give you a formidable foundation in music. As a faculty, though, we’re wary of blind allegiance to forms and conventions, reminded of true stories of artists like the poet Laura Riding, who actually abandoned poetry at one point because she felt the stodgy, rule-bound literary world had come to see poetry as “stimulating the desire for truth and yet obstructing truth by its formal patterning.” At Eastman we’ll teach you about forms, and a decent respect for tradition and its formidable riches. If we do our job right, we won’t lash you to the mast of their conventions, but rather encourage you to deploy those conventions inventively.

Our goal, frankly, is to help you create a framework, and then spur you to push the edges of your own personal E-space, for your personal authenticity has to evolve in your E-space. Although we can give you our opinions on what music is and means and is, how it should be performed and composed, you all walk in here with an individual DNA, an individual perspective, an individual voice that must, if you are to survive and flourish in the world outside of Eastman, be cultivated, nourished and, yes, pushed to the limits.

Great artists always talk about these spatial edges, what I call the “discomfort zone.” So do poets, scholars, creators, thinkers, leaders. Inevitably the discussion turns to energy, and pushing against edges, about how life is made up of bursts of energy. How that energy gets formed and expressed in one sense forms the image of our lives. The place of constant edges.

Oh, there’ll be conflicts. There always are when you lean against the edges. It’s the basic nature of that “leaning.” Conflicts with your fellow students, maybe a teacher, or even one of those dreary administrators. But if music is about energy, about a larger goal, it’s never a good idea to get obsessed with the fight if there’s a much larger goal at stake. I’m continually amazed at how many people would prefer to win a dinky battle while frittering away a bigger, nobler ambition. In other words, jump the arc of conflict and glide through it or over it or shirk it. I’m reminded of a great line in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, an admonition against getting in fights. Metaphorically or otherwise, fights usually involve the throwing of dirt. And McCarthy’s saying goes like this: “Any time you’re throwin’ dirt you’re losin’ ground.”

This is a decidedly exciting time at Eastman. We encourage you to push the edges of your E-space. Expand those edges to include the riches of the River campus, its students and faculty and activities; to the George Eastman House, the Memorial Art Gallery, theater and cultural geography. We encourage you to move freely through the threshold. Lean against and push through the edges of your e-space.

And by all means, cultivate your own authenticity, even if it means defying convention. After all, you have only one thing to lose: your own authentic self.

This will make for some very exciting years for you at Eastman. Now go for it. Make your own E-space. Thank you.

May 18, 2008

2008 Commencement Remarks, Dean Douglas Lowry

October 27, 2007

"The Alchemy of the Muse"

Inaugural Address from the Investiture of Dean Douglas Lowry

October 26, 2007

"Composing the Future for Eastman School"

Rochester Business Journal Profile of Dean Douglas Lowry

September 6, 2007

“EASTMAN TURNS UP THE HEAT”

Convocation Address, September 2007, by Dean Douglas Lowry

August 23, 2007

Interview with Dean Douglas Lowry Broadcast on WXXI-TV

The Friday, Aug. 24, episode of WXXI-TV’s weekly news program “Need to Know” features an interview with Dean Douglas Lowry. The program airs at 9 p.m. and will repeat at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, August 26, on WXXI Channel 21 (cable channel 11).

More info: Need to Know on WXXI

August 15, 2007

Dean Lowry Outlines Administrative Appointments at Eastman

Eastman School of Music Dean Douglas Lowry has announced the appointments of Jamal Rossi as Eastman’s Senior Executive Associate Dean and Donna Brink Fox as Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs.

“This re-configuration in the senior administrative structure of Eastman is a logical step as we embark on a major strategic planning exercise, quicken the pace of the Eastman Theatre renovation and expansion project, and engage in an ambitious slate of internal and external activities geared at strengthening Eastman’s leadership position in its various domains,” said Lowry. “The new organizational structure will enable us to better serve faculty, staff, and most importantly, the students.”

Rossi was appointed senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor of woodwinds at Eastman in 2005 after a national search. He served as interim dean of Eastman from April 2006 through July 2007. Before coming to Eastman, Rossi was dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina, associate and assistant dean of Ithaca College’s School of Music, and chair of the music and theater department at Northern State University in Aberdeen, S.D.

As senior executive associate dean, Rossi will oversee day-to-day operations as well as faculty affairs, including recruitment and retention; department chairs; academic and student affairs; the Sibley Music Library; admissions and financial aid; the Office of the Registrar; and the Eastman Community Music School.

Fox, who has been serving as interim senior associate dean for academic affairs, taught at Ohio and Illinois State Universities before joining Eastman’s faculty in 1984. In 1985, she created and has since directed Eastman’s nationally recognized early childhood music program, MusicTIME, offered through the Eastman Community Music School. She became the first Eastman faculty member to hold a named professorship when she was named Eisenhart Professor of Music Education in 1998.

As associate dean of academic and student affairs, Fox will oversee academic affairs, student and residential life, student orientation, and summer session, and will supervise the academic diploma and certificate programs. She will also assist with faculty and student awards programs and the hiring of part-time faculty.

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Conductor, Composer Douglas Lowry Named Dean of Eastman School of Music May 21 — Lowry Assumed the Post on August 1

Douglas Lowry began his tenure as sixth dean of the Eastman School of Music on August 1, 2007. Prior to his arrival at Eastman, he served for 7 years as Dean and Thomas James Kelly Professor of Music at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. While in Cincinnati, Lowry was a periodic host of WVXU’s Around Cincinnati, a radio series focusing on the arts and entertainment in the Greater Cincinnati area. He also served on the boards of the Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati Opera and the School for Creative and Performing Arts. He continues to serve on the board and co-chair the artistic directorate of the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. Previously he served as Associate Dean and Chair of the Conducting Department at the Flora L. Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California.

As a composer, Lowry has written for a wide variety of media. Recent commissions and premieres include works for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Louisville Orchestra, Cincinnati Playhouse, St. Louis Repertory Theater, the CCM Chamber Players in performance at the University of Michigan, and the Cincinnati Pops. His compositions appear on recordings issued by Summit Records and BIS.

Born in Spokane, Washington in 1951, Lowry holds degrees in composition, conducting and music performance from the University of Arizona and the University of Southern California.

He serves on the boards of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and Rochester’s Mercury Opera.