Eastman News Highlights July 21, 2014

Here are some select recent clippings showing the variety of hits/mentions identifying musicians and scholars as Eastman School of Music alumni, faculty or students. (Note: Some links may have expired.)

Michael Burritt: Percussionist Extraordinaire

(PercusScene July August September 2014 Australia)

Internationally recognized percussionist, composer and educator Michael Burritt is currently Professor of Percussion and head of the department at the Eastman School of Music . . . visits Australia this August to participate as artist-in-residence . . . He received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees, as well as the prestigious Performers Certificate from Eastman.

Learn about the Science Behind Music with Walking Mountains
(Vail Daily © 07/15/2014)

This month’s Science Behind is a collaboration with Bravo! Vail and will feature the ensemble Third Coast Percussion. During this special event, attendees will explore the science behind sound waves, and the audience will have the opportunity to interact with instruments and oscilloscopes.

The members of Third Coast Percussion – Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore – hold degrees in music performance from Northwestern University, the Yale School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory and Rutgers University.

Music Institute of Chicago offers a Summer Sing-Along
(Winnetka Talk © 07/17/2014)

Sing along with Vivaldi? Mozart? Why not, declares Daniel Wallenberg, who has been conducting the Music Institute of Chicago Chorale for 27 years. For more than a decade of summers, Wallenberg has been inviting the public to join classical sing-alongs with his community chorus.

Ideal for capture on social media, the concerts will take place in unexpected venues and embody the Music Center’s message that engagement with music is a life-long joy and pursuit. The initiative will open with a performance by the Ying Quartet, resident quartet at the Eastman School at the University of Rochester, and will conclude with a performance by the Cavani String Quartet, resident quartet at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Interlochen Arts Academy adds four teachers for fall

(Northwest Michigan Second Wave 07/15/14)

Four new faculty members will be joining the staff at Interlochen Arts Academy for the fall of 2014.

Laura Osgood Brown will teach voice and opera workshop, and recently completed a doctoral degree in voice performance and literature from the Eastman School of Music. She’s most recently taught at Eastman, as well as at several other schools. She also is an award-winning and active performer.

Bringing music to the neighborhood
(Rochester City Newspaper © 07/16/2014)

When Alexander Pena asks about 15 students to show him their “ready” position, the students sit up straight in their seats. Pena, a thin young man with scrolls of long dark hair, is the director of RocMusic, and the students are participating in the summer session.

The program, which launched in 2012, is a partnership of the Hochstein School of Music and Dance, Eastman School of Music, Eastman Community Music School, Rochester school district, and the City of Rochester.

Public invited to international pianists festival

(Clearwater Gazette 07/17/2014)

The 2nd Annual Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival will be held at the University of South Florida’s School of Music this month. Penneys is an American-born pianist of Russian-Jewish descent. She is considered a world-class recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral soloist, educator, and adjudicator. In 1965, she was the youngest contestant to have ever entered the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland, and has taught international students at the Eastman School of Music for thirty-five years.

Stringed Instrument Services has an active rental inventory of 1,200 stringed instruments. Founded by Paul Strelau in 1988, the repair shop has morphed into a diversified business offering retail and wholesale stringed instruments as well as rentals.

Strelau, a native of Owatonna, Minn., turned a love for music into an apprenticeship with a violin maker after receiving an undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. He moved to Rochester to enroll at the Eastman School of Music for his masters degree in 1985 and remained after meeting his wife, Nancy, at a gig.

The “something special” was a surprise tribute to the director – Robert Morgan – honoring him in the wake of his decision to retire as director of the Clifton High School (CHS) Mustang Marching Band after 42 years of exemplary service. Seated with the audience next to his wife, Michele, Morgan became misty eyed as he listened the Community Band perform the world premiere of “Dedication to Band” by world renowned composer and Clifton resident Joseph Turrin, which was written to honor Morgan at this event.

A member of the CHS Class of 1965, Turrin studied composition at the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He currently teaches at Montclair State University, and the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford, Conn.

The local trio known as Jazz Out the Box hits the Winchester Cultural Center Friday for an evening of freewheeling jazz.

With Julian Tanaka on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Nick Schmitt on bass and Eric Schauer on drums, the trio takes a playful approach to their collaboration, often improvising on children’s tunes. Friday’s concert ranks as a Vegas farewell of sorts for Tanaka, who’s heading to Rochester, N.Y., to earn a graduate degree at the Eastman School of Music.