Here are some select clippings from the past week 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.)
Top 25 Music Schools for Composing for Film and TV
(Hollywood Reporter 11/16/2018)
The Hollywood Reporter polled more than 600 entertainment pros to compile the annual ranking of the world’s elite music programs, from London to Los Angeles. […]
6/25 Eastman School of Music – Rochester, New York
Eastman‘s Beal Institute for Film Music and Contemporary Media offers a two-year graduate program established in 2015 by Emmy-winning composer and Eastman alumni Jeff Beal (House of Cards) and his wife, Joan. Currently run by composer Mark Watters, the highly selective program allows only six students to participate a year, limiting the entire program to only a dozen students. The intent is to graduate composers who are not only proficient and familiar with music recording and production technology, but are also well-rounded in music and experienced in working with and conducting live musicians. […]
Classical review: Leila Josefowicz and John Novaeck
(City Newspaper 11/14/2018)
Kilbourn Concert Series at Eastman School of Music took a decidedly raw turn on Tuesday, when violinist Leila Josefowicz and pianist John Novaeck took the stage. […]
MODERN CLASSICAL | Musica Nova and Charles Wuorinen
(City Newspaper 11/14/2018)
Charles Wuorinen is not your typical composer of prickly contemporary classical music. Sure, there are plenty of emotionally charged, dissonant harmonies, but there’s also a rich lyricism that makes his atonal compositions more than purely visceral exercises. On Friday, the Eastman School’s Musica Nova, led by conductors Brad Lubman and Edo Frenkel, will perform an all-Wuorinen program to honor the Howard Hanson Visiting Guest Composer during his 80th birthday year. The free concert will feature “New York Notes,” “Arabia Felix,” and the music to the ballet “The River of Light.” Wuorinen will be in attendance.
Cantata by renowned composer marks anniversary of Kristallnacht
(Toledo Blade 11/17/2018)
Samuel Adler remembers well the night of Nov. 9, 1938. … The night would be remembered as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, which historians today look back on as a tipping point toward the Holocaust. […]
When Mr. Adler was commissioned by synagogues in 22 cities to compose an anniversary piece in 1988, when he was living in New York as chair of University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, he said he in part reflected on his own memories of Kristallnacht. […]
(Iowa Public Radio 11/15/18)
“The American Rhapsody” features classics from Bernstein, Classen, and Grofé. Dr. Réne Lecuona, piano professor at the University of Iowa is featured on two Gershwin favorites.
A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Dr. Réne Lecuona is highly regarded for not only her performance accomplishments, but also her teaching abilities. …
Ted Piltzecker brings the vibraphone to life on “Brindica”
(LemonWire 11/16/2018)
Vibraphonist Ted Piltzecker had not planned on becoming a vibraphonist at all. Instead, on the way to being the best trumpet player he could be, he stumbled into the vibraphone. Not literally, but a set of “vibes” as he calls them, were left in his dorm room at the Eastman School of Music. Already committed to trumpet, Piltzecker played the vibes in between his stints with the school’s Jazz Ensemble. Years later, that accidental meeting between Piltzecker and the vibraphone comes to bear on the album “Brindica.” […]
Acclaimed Bettendorf native to perform Sunday at Redstone
(Quad-Cities Online 11/16/2018)
Mike Conrad, a 30-year-old Bettendorf native, comes back home this weekend to perform at Polyrhythms’ Third Sunday Jazz Workshop & Matinee Series […]
He got a master’s in jazz composition and arranging from the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, N.Y.
It was while Conrad was at Eastman that he and his fellow composition grad student Reuben Allen were asked (through recommendation of a professor) by the Obama administration to write pieces to be performed by an Eastman student string quartet. Conrad’s arrangement of “The Genesee” was done at President Obama’s second inaugural luncheon in January 2013.
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