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.)
Soprano Superstar Renée Fleming on the Power of Music (and Why She Loves Rap and The Grateful Dead)
(Parade 10/21/2016)
Soprano Renée Fleming understands firsthand how important it is for young people to have music in their lives and to express themselves creatively. As a child of two public school vocal music teachers, she studied all kinds of music from an early age.
“In fact, my mother still teaches voice, and heads the Vocal Department of the Eastman Community Music School,” says the four-time Grammy winner who was awarded the National Medal of Arts, America’s highest honor for an individual artist. “Music was like air in our household. I assumed every family was like ours, or the von Trapp family, singing in four-part harmony on road trips in the car.”
Extraordinaire Billy Aukstik’s Dala Records Has the Charles Bradley Seal of Approval
(The Village Voice 10/21/2016)
But unlike his Brooklyn predecessors in the analog label game (Daptone, Truth & Soul, and Dunham all come to mind), Aukstik keeps his catalog fluid, attracting talent from across New York’s Americana and jazz scenes. The roster includes 26-year-old songwriter and jazz percussionist John Fatum, who channels the traditions of Delta Blues, midwestern styles, and contemporary Americana as a solo artist, as well as his touring brass band, The Rad Trad’s.
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The two met in their hometown of Chicago when Fatum needed a trumpet player for his sibling band, the Fatum Brothers Jazz Orchestra. After graduating from Eastman School of Music, Fatum moved to the city, where Aukstik enlisted him to sing on some of his own demos. Before long, the pair were recording a full-length record on 4-Track in Aukstik’s old East Village apartment. “John has been the artist that has grown right alongside the label every step of the way,” says Aukstick. “I would consider him the most integral element to us being who we are today.”
A composer’s journey to the bottom of the world
(WXXI News 10/24/2016)
A Rochester composer is getting ready to pitch a tent on the ice in the coldest place on earth, Antarctica.
Glenn McClure, who teaches music at SUNY Geneseo and the Eastman School of Music, will team with scientists to collect infra-gravity waves that measure the thickness of the ice. They’re not audible, but the composer plans to make the data audible in a piece of music.
(NWAOnline 10/21/2016)
Richard DeLaney’s voice bears almost no trace of his childhood in Lima, Peru.
But his hands remember the rhythms he heard growing up, and over the 47 years since he came to the U.S. as a college student, he’s broadened and shared his musical knowledge in television, film, on stage and in the concert hall. …
DeLaney holds a master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, has been teaching at the Hochstein School Of Music since 1985, has directed …
Around Pleasanton: Community Concert Band a little-known gem
(East Bay Times 10/20/2016)
If you’re going to build a bandstand, then you might as well form a band, right?
That was the thinking in 1975 when the Pleasanton Bicentennial Festival Committee decided to build a bandstand in Lions Wayside Park. The Pleasanton Bicentennial Band was formed soon after, with 35 charter members.
At the time, Bob Williams was playing with the Livermore Amador Symphony when his colleague, Lee Webber, told him the new band needed a horn player. He joined, and the rest is history. The band’s name may have changed a couple times, but Williams has consistently served as its conductor for 34 of its 41 years. …
Williams has found that music connects people in unpredictable ways. A Pleasanton resident since 1972, he’s originally from Philadelphia and attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra Presents Barber, Dvorak, and Theofanidis, 11/12
(Broadway World 10/20/2016)
About the concert: Stories behind the music
Dreamtime Ancestors
Christopher Theofanidis (1967- )
Christopher Theofanidis is one of the top American composers active today. With an education from Yale, the Eastman School of Music and the University of Houston, Theofanidis has remained close to the academic scene as well as the world of professional classical music. …
Guest artists to perform at Eastman School of Music
(Greece Post 10/19/2016)
Paola Prestini, composer; Jeffrey Zeigler, cello; and Molly Barth, flute, will perform at 8 p.m. Nov. 3 at the Eastman School of Music Hatch Recital Hall, 26 Gibbs St., Rochester.
The program will feature two new works with electronics by Prestini played by Zeigler. Barth will perform a new work for solo flute by Luca Cori and music by Eastman faculty composer Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.
Zeigler holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and …
The Caltech-Occidental Concert Band Presents their Fall Concerts with Concert Band Director, Dr …
(Pasadena Now 10/19/2016)
He has conducted many renowned soloists, including Evelyn Glennie, Christian Lindberg, Ney Rosauro, Jens Lindemann, Alain Trudel, Roger Webster, Kenneth Tse, Adam Frey, Simone Rebello, David Campbell, John Marcellus and Michael Burritt. …
A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, his profession as a noted percussionist gradually yielded to his career as a conductor, which included studies at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Japan and the Tanglewood Music Center in the U.S., as well as in Europe and Russia.
RPO American Music Festival is the sound of our lives
(Democrat and Chronicle 10/19/2016)
Guided by nuanced storytelling, American classical music undeniably … The festival also includes pieces by composers like David Diamond and Christopher Rouse, who called the Rochester area home. When the RPO plays Rouse’s Iscariot on Oct. 23, listen and see if you can’t hear Fairport in the work. He was living there when he wrote Iscariot in the late 1980s when he was on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music. (Also reported by City Newspaper)
Tony-winner Kelli O’Hara sings Carnegie show here first
(Democrat and Chronicle 10/19/2016)
Keith Elder, director of concert activities for the Eastman School of Music, said he kept two things in mind when developing this season’s concert series: exceptional talent, and expecting the unexpected.
ME2/Orchestra Expands Its Mission
(Seven Days 10/19/2016)
Six years ago, Ronald Braunstein landed in Vermont as the new conductor of the Vermont Youth Orchestra. … Yet Braunstein simultaneously struggled with bipolar disorder, buffeted by the manic cycle that defines the illness.
That experience solidified Braunstein’s feeling that discrimination against persons with mental illness in the orchestra world was a problem that needed intervention, he recalls. So in 2011, with his soon-to-be wife, Caroline Whiddon, he founded a new Burlington orchestra dedicated to erasing the stigma placed on mental illness — by musicians and the public.
Whiddon, a French horn player who trained at the Eastman School of Music, gave up a career as a professional musician when her generalized anxiety disorder led to panic attacks at performances. She worked in music administration for the next 18 years and was executive director of the VYO when Braunstein arrived. During Me2/Orchestra’s second year, she picked up the horn again and still plays with the group.
Me2/ strives to eliminate stigma around mental illness in part by playing in alternative venues, such as mental hospitals, community centers and airports. Increasingly, the founders and musicians receive invitations to give talks,
5 Things To Do This Week
(The Shawnee News Star 10/17/2016)
- Dr. Silviya Mateva, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church Music Ministries director and organist, will perform an “inaugural” organ recital at 7 p.m. Friday in celebration of the console restoration of the church’s Aeolian-Skinner, Opus 1387 organ. Mateva, from Plovdiv, Bulgaria, moved to the U.S. 12 years ago and completed her undergraduate degree at Stetson University, DeLand Fla., a master’s degree at Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY and in May earned her doctorate from OU. All of her degrees are in organ.
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