The Eastman School of Music has announced the following faculty appointments:
Michael Burritt, Professor of Percussion. Having performed on four continents and nearly 40 states, Michael Burritt is one of the world’s leading percussion soloists. He is in frequent demand performing concert tours and master classes throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Canada. Burritt has been soloist with the Dallas Wind Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Ju Percussion Group (Taiwan), Percussion Art Quartet(Germany), Amores Percussion Group (Spain), Peaux (Sweden) and the Tempus Fugit Percussion Ensemble of Pittsburgh. Burritt has three solo recordings: Perpetual, Shadow Chasers, and Waking Dreams. In 1992, he presented his New York solo debut in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall and in 1998 performed his London debut in the Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall. Burritt is also active as a composer, with two concertos to his credit, numerous solo and chamber works for marimba and percussion as well as two books of etudes. Prior to his appointment at Eastman, Burritt was Professor of Percussion at Northwestern University from 1995 to 2008.
Katherine Ciesinski, Professor of Voice. Mezzo-soprano Katherine Ciesinski has sung leading roles at the Metropolitan, Covent Garden, Paris, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Houston Grand Operas. A soloist with the Berlin, Vienna, London, Staatskapelle Dresden, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, among many others, she has served as artist-in-residence at major festivals in the United States, France, Taiwan, Austria, Finland, and Italy. She was a Grammy Nominee in 1992 and has recordings on the Decca, Erato, BMG, Music Masters, RCA, Columbia, Nonesuch, and CRI labels. Her television appearances have included four PBS Great Performances programs, as well as numerous National Public Radio World of Opera broadcasts. Ciesinski has directed Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, her second full-length opera production for the Moores Opera Center, in addition to concert performances, master classes, adjudicating Metropolitan Opera Auditions, and an appearance as Aunt Cecilia March in Little Women with Opera Delaware. Before joining Eastman, Ciesinksi was on the faculty at the Moores School of Music for 14 years.
Carol Rodland, Associate Professor of Viola. Praised by Fanfare magazine for her “delicious” playing and for her tone, which is “larger than life, sweetly in tune, and infinitely variegated,” Carol Rodland enjoys an international career as a concert and recording artist and pedagogue. Recent performances have taken her to Brazil, Germany, and throughout the United States, and her solo recordings on the Crystal and Neuma labels have been critically acclaimed. A Fulbright Scholar, she received degrees with highest honors from the Juilliard School and the Musikhochschule Freiburg, where she studied with Karen Tuttle and Kim Kashkashian. She made her solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra as a teenager. Rodland has held professorships at the Musikhochschule “Hanns Eisler” Berlin, Arizona State University, and as guest faculty at the Juilliard School. Before joining Eastman, Rodland was on the viola faculty of the New England Conservatory, where she received the Krasner Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Michael Anderson, Assistant Professor of Musicology. Michael Alan Anderson specializes in a wide range of issues related to sacred music from the central Middle Ages through the 16th century. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. in the history and theory of music from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on symbolism in late medieval music for John the Baptist and St. Anne. Still an active performer, Anderson directs the Schola Antiqua of Chicago, a professional vocal ensemble he founded in 2000 that is dedicated to the study and performance of medieval plainchant and early polyphonic music. He also sang baritone with the Chicago Symphony Chorus for three seasons.
John Fetter, Assistant Professor of Music Education. John Fetter holds a Bachelor of Music degree in string music education from the University of Northern Iowa and a Master of Music degree in music education from Eastman School of Music, where he is completing his Ph.D. Previously, he taught music in the public schools in Greeley, Colo. Fetter has been on the faculty of the Hochstein School of Music and Dance since 2002 and on the faculty of the Eastman Community Music School since 2006.
José Oliveira Martins, Assistant Professor of Music Theory. José Oliveira Martins has degrees in music theory and violin performance from the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 2006), Northwestern University (M.M. 1996), and Instituto Politécnico do Porto, ESMAE, Portugal (B.M. 1992). Before joining the Eastman School of Music, he taught at the University of Iowa and Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco, ESART, Portugal. His current research interests include the modeling of musical systems, involving in particular medieval scale-theory and 20th-century modality; analytical approaches to the music of Bartók, Milhaud, Kurtág, and Lutosławski; and musical structure and expression in Portuguese Fado. Oliveira Martins is the recipient of the Arthur J. Komar Award from Music Theory Midwest and the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award from the Music Theory Society of New York State. He has presented his research at various national and international venues and has been a fellow at the John Clough Memorial Symposium and the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory.
Seth Monahan, Assistant Professor of Music Theory. Seth Monahan received his bachelor’s degree in music composition from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts in 1998 and a master’s degree in music theory at Temple University in 2002. In 2008, he completed his Ph.D. in music theory at Yale University, with a dissertation that examines the intersection of form and meaning in Gustav Mahler’s music. His other research interests include musical kinetics and gesture in the music of Wagner; intersections of music and narrative theory; critical theory; and the uses of metaphor and figurative language in music-analytic discourse. He regularly presents research on these and other topics at regional and national conferences, and recently published an article, “Inescapable Coherence and the Failure of the Novel-Symphony in the Finale of Mahler’s Sixth,” in the summer 2007 issue of 19th-Century Music. From 2005-2007, Monahan taught harmony, counterpoint, and popular music history at Yale College and worked as a consultant and coordinator for Yale’s Graduate Teaching Center. He is a recipient of Yale’s Prize Teaching Fellowship.
Jan Opalach, Visiting Teacher of Voice. Bass-baritone Opalach is one of America’s most versatile performers on the operatic and concert stage today. He has been a principal artist of the New York City Opera since 1980. He recently had a major critical success singing the title role of G. Verdi’s Falstaff during the 2008 spring season. Among the roles he has performed with the company are the title role in Le nozze di Figaro, Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Bartolo in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Wesener in A. Zimmerman’s Die Soldaten,and the Forester in The Cunning Little Vixen. He has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera (War and Peace), Opera Theater of St. Louis (Nixon in China), Santa Fe Opera (La Boheme), Seattle Opera (Cosi fan tutte), Washington Opera (Cendrillon), Canadian Opera Company (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Netherlands Opera (L’italiana in Algeri), and Sweden’s Drottningholm Royal Court Theater (L. Rossi’s Orfeo). Among the many conductors with whom Opalach has collaborated are Marin Alsop, Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Sir Simon Rattle, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, Edo de Waart and David Zinman. He has won the prestigious Walter M. Naumburg Vocal Competition, Metropolitan Opera National Auditions, International Vocalisten Concours of s’Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Soloist Recital Grant.
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