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.)
Student Developed App Helps Singers
(WHAM TV 03/07/2014)
An app developed by University of Rochester students could help singers in voice training. Students at the Eastman School of Music, like other people taking singing lessons, learned how to sing vowels by following their teacher’s example. Fellow students in the University of Rochester’s Human-Computer Interaction class observed the lessons, and then developed the app Vowel Shapes. The app gives students taking voice lessons an added benefit. The program analyzes the vowel sounds produced by a singer, and provides a visual image of the sounds in real time. (Also reported by Phys.org)
New Horizons Band – 20 years and counting
(Iowa City Press-Citizen © 03/02/2014)
The 60-piece concert band is composed of “chronologically gifted” senior citizens ranging in age from their 50s to their 90s. The concept of a band for seniors was the brainchild of Roy Ernst, a professor at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. He had the idea that older adults might like to once again pick up the instrument they had played in their youth and had enjoyed so much but had not played since.
In 1991, with cooperation from the Eastman School of Music, a band was formed and quickly grew into a sizable group.
Soprano Julia Bullock delivers performance both beautiful and meaningful
(The Washington Post 03/03/2014)
Bullock is such a communicator that it was impossible to divorce the beauty of the notes from the content of what they were conveying. And there was plenty in that content to touch the heart.
(in the second half) Bullock opened with an homage to the iconic Josephine Baker (after joking about their common ground, starting with their hair, she said). This consisted of six songs arranged by Jeremy Siskind, from “Mon coeur est un oiseau des iles” by Vincent Scotto to “Dis-moi Joséphine” by Leo Lilièvre, in which Bullock gently and unobtrusively went back and forth across the stylistic line between popular and classical styles of singing: focusing on delivering the texts, but with the extra opulence of that shining vocal beauty. (Note: Julia Bullock is BM 09; Jeremy Siskind, also noted in the article, is BM 08.)
Free Concert by the United States Army Field Band & Soldiers’ Chorus Comes to Kodak Hall
(La Voz Rochester © 02/28/2014)
The United States Army Field Band of Washington, DC will be presenting free public performances with a concert at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre at 2 p.m., Sunday, March 23. The concert is sponsored by The Eastman School of Music and the City of Rochester.
St. James concert to feature a trio of Eastman organists
(Batavia Daily News © 03/05/2014)
The Rev. Steven Metcalfe met Abigail Rockwood during a service at St. James Episcopal Church. It was soon after that the church leader discovered Rockwood’s aptitude for music. She’s assistant organist and choirmaster at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Buffalo and an aspiring doctoral student at Eastman School of Music in Rochester. That chance meeting has led to an organ concert at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the church, 405 East Main St. Rockwood and two other seasoned Eastman School of Music students will perform works of Bach, Whitlock and Widor.