The Eastman School of Music has announced the following faculty appointments for the 2009-2010 academic year:
Frank Huang, Associate Professor of Violin; Associate Professor of Chamber Music. Frank Huang is the new first violinist for the Ying Quartet, Eastman School’s string quartet-in-residence. First prize winner of the 2003 Naumburg Violin Competition and the 2000 Hannover International Violin Competition, Huang has established a major career as a violin virtuoso. He has performed with orchestras throughout the world, including the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, NDR-Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of Hannover, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra and the Genoa Orchestra. He has performed on NPR’s Performance Today, Good Morning America, and CNN’s American Morning with Paula Zahn. He has had great success in competitions since the age of 15, with top prize awards in the Premio Paganini International Violin Competition and the Indianapolis International Violin Competition. He received Gold Medal Awards in the Kingsville International Competition, the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and the D’Angelo International Competition. In addition to his solo career, Huang is deeply committed to chamber music. He has attended the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia’s Steans Institute, The Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and the Caramoor Festival, and frequently participates in Musicians from Marlboro tours. He was also selected by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to be a member of the prestigious Chamber Music II program. Currently, Huang is the concertmaster and leader of the Sejong Soloists, a conductorless chamber orchestra based in New York. Recent performances with Sejong include a tour of Taiwan, China, and South Korea with Cho-Liang Lin and a tour in the United States and Asia with Gil Shaham. Huang studied with Robert Mann at The Juilliard School, Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and with Fredell Lack.
Robert Hasegawa, Assistant Professor of Music Theory. Music theorist and composer Robert Hasegawa’s scholarly interests include the music of György Ligeti, the French “spectralist” composers, and American experimentalists like Harry Partch, Alvin Lucier, and James Tenney. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where he studied theory and composition with Laurence Wallach, and a master’s degree in music theory from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in 2008 at Harvard University, where he worked with theorists David Lewin, David Cohen, Christopher Hasty, and Alexander Rehding. In his dissertation, Hasegawa explored how recent findings in the psychology of aural perception can be used to analyze harmony in music by composers from Debussy to La Monte Young. In addition to his theoretical work, Hasegawa remains active as a composer: recent compositions include works performed by White Rabbit, cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, Stephen Drury, and the Callithumpian Consort. He is a recipient of the Music Analysis 25th Anniversary Competition Award for his article “Gérard Grisey and the ‘Nature’ of Harmony,” which will appear in the journal this year. Other recent projects include a chapter on extended just intonation for the book Théorie et composition musicales au vingtième siècle, and editing a special issue of Contemporary Music Review on the work of the American composer/theorist James Tenney. Before joining Eastman, he was a lecturer at Harvard.
Lisa Jakelski, Assistant Professor of Musicology. Lisa Jakelski’s research focuses on the intersections between musical expression and social and political practices in 20th and 21st century composition, with an emphasis on music post-1945. Her current project examines musical life in late 20th-century Poland, touching on issues such as cultural diplomacy during the Cold War, the history and reception of the postwar European avant-garde, and socialism and the arts. Her future work will continue to probe these topics, and will also reflect her interests in subjectivity and Polish film music, jazz, and musical theater. Her essay on the negotiation of avant-garde music in cold-war Poland appeared in the spring 2009 issue of the Journal of Musicology, and she presented her research at the conference “Polish Music Since 1945” held at Canterbury Christ Church University in May 2009. Jakelski majored in music and in English at the University of Georgia, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 2001. She received her master’s degree in the history and literature of music in 2004 from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded her Ph.D. in 2009. She taught classes in Western Music at UC Berkeley and received numerous honors and awards for her work, including a Townsend Fellowship at the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities and a Chancellor’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship.
Jan Opalach, Assistant Professor of Voice. Bass-baritone Jan 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 and he received major critical acclaim 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. Opalach 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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