…for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s presentation this week of Howard Hanson’s rarely performed opera (in fact, his only opera), Merry Mount. This three-act piece was written when Hanson was director of the Eastman School of Music, and premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1934. The Rochester Philharmonic’s concert performance, conducted by Michael Christie, previews a…
Dariusz Terefenko, associate professor of jazz studies and contemporary media at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, has published Jazz Theory: From Basic to Advanced Study. Accompanied by a DVD and a companion website, the comprehensive 490-page textbook is designed for use in the classroom or at home by individual musicians. As a…
Works by Jewish composers who died in or survived the atrocities of World War II will be performed by Eastman School of Music faculty and students in a concert to mark Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) on Sunday, April 27. Titled “A Time to Remember . . .”, the concert was spearheaded and organized by…
Eastman musicians provide accompaniment for silent movies not just on DVD soundtracks, like Donald Hunsberger (see the Hunchback of Notre Dame posting before this one), but also live. This Thursday, April 10, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s landmark film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), considered one of the great works of silent cinema, will be…
A new Blu-Ray DVD release of the 1923 silent movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Lon Chaney and (literally) a cast of thousands, features a background score by Donald Hunsberger (BM ’54, MM ’59, DMA ’63), Eastman professor emeritus of conducting and longtime director of the Eastman Wind Ensemble. In a New York…
Maria Schneider: Going Her Own Way (All About Jazz © 04/03/2014) Schneider learned from the best. She honed her composing, arranging, and band leading skills at the University of Minnesota, the University of Miami, and The Eastman School of Music, and then worked closely with Gil Evans and studied intensively with Bob Brookmeyer. But she…
A landmark silent film will be accompanied by live musical improvisation in a program presented by Eastman School of Music musicians and Christ Church Schola Cantorum at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 10, at Christ Church. Produced in France in 1928, The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc) was directed by Carl…
Is it possible that we die “not for ourselves alone, but for each other”? This is one of the questions at the heart of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, this French composer’s most ambitious work and one of the great 20th-century operas. Set during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the opera tells the true…
