We are excited to welcome a wide-ranging group of guest artists and lecturers to the Eastman campus this month! Keep reading for information about each event and visit esm.rochester.edu/events for further details. All events are free and open to the public.
Jon Christopher Nelson, composer
EMuSE Composition Symposium: Thursday, November 2 at 3:30 PM | ESM 209
EMuSE Concert: Thursday, November 2 at 7:30 PM | Hatch Recital Hall
Jon Christopher Nelson’s electroacoustic music has been performed widely throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America, and has been honored with numerous awards including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Fulbright Commission. He is also the recipient of a Bourges Prize, Luigi Russolo Prize and numerous electroacoustic commissions.
Richard Harris, trombone
Guest Masterclass: Thursday, November 2 at 8:30 PM | Annex 902
Whether it’s performing on OSCAR wining soundtracks such as “Joker,” the GRAMMY award winning album “Twelve Little Spells” with Esperanza Spalding or recording solo and chamber music CD’s, Richard Harris has crafted an eclectic musical career. As a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral performer, educator and advocate, his performances have taken him all across North & South America, Europe and Asia.
Knar Abrahamyan, music theorist
Theory Colloquium: Friday, November 3 at 4:00 | ESM 305
Knar Abrahamyan (Columbia University) is a music scholar whose work examines the historical and political entanglements of cultural production. Her book project, Opera as Statecraft in Soviet Armenia and Kazakhstan, re-envisions Soviet music history by analyzing the power dynamics between the state and its ethnic and racial Others. It explores opera as a contested imperial space through which the Soviet state pursued colonial subjugation under the guise of cultural modernization. Abrahamyan has presented at major national and international conferences, and her work on Soviet music and politics appeared in the DSCH Journal and a collected volume, Analytical Approaches to 20th-Century Russian Music.
Quince Ensemble, treble voice quartet
Guest Recital: Monday, November 6 at 7:30 PM | Hatch Recital Hall
Eastman’s Composition department, supported by funds from the Eastman Departmental Diversity Initiative (EDDI), welcomes Quince Ensemble to Eastman. A treble voice quartet dedicated to changing the paradigm for contemporary vocal chamber music, Quince has been described as “the Anonymous 4 of new music” by Opera News. This quartet continually pushes the boundaries of vocal ensemble literature by performing almost exclusively the music of living composers, and actively commissioning works with a broad and curious aesthetic ear. Seeking to create a landscape of contemporary vocal music that is embodied, complex, and expressive, they employ a musical boldness and virtuosity that is often reserved for instrumental groups. The November 6 program includes works by Saariaho, Scelsi, Bansal, and Zohn-Muldoon.
Michael Barone, host of “PipeDreams Live!”
Guest Recitals: Friday, November 10 – Sunday, November 12 | Various Times and Locations
“Pipedreams Live!” presents three concerts with Michael Barone, host of American Public Media’s “Pipedreams,” featuring organists from Eastman and beyond. This series is co-sponsored by WXXI.
Randall Hawes, bass trombone
Guest Masterclass: Sunday, November 12 at 7:30 PM | Hatch Recital Hall
Randall Hawes was bass trombonist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) from 1985 to the fall of 2020. In the fall of 2020, he began his position as guest bass trombonist with the Cleveland Orchestra. Hawes began his relationship as lecturer with the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music in 2004. He has taught master classes and performed as a soloist, orchestral and chamber musician in Australia, Asia, Europe and throughout North America.
Kevin Fitzgerald ’13E, guest conductor
Sally Lamb McCune, guest composer
Eastman Wind Ensemble: Monday, November 13 at 7:30 PM | Kodak Hall
The Eastman Wind Ensemble performs Jennifer Higdon’s contemplative blue cathedral and gives the consortium premiere of Sally Lamb McCune’s new work, Spiral, with the composer in attendance. Guest conductor Kevin Fitzgerald ’13E, recent winner of the 2023 Mahler Competition’s Prize for Contemporary Music Performance, leads in a performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum – a seminal 20th century work intended for “vast spaces, cathedrals or even the high mountains.”
Christopher Doll, music theorist
Eastman Theory Colloquium: Friday, November 17 at 4:00 PM | ESM 305
At Rutgers since 2007, Christopher Doll teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in music theory, analysis, composition, and the history of popular music. His scholarly interests include tonality, intertextuality, pedagogy and forensic musicology, on which he has spoken at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Experience Music Project, and various universities here and abroad. He is the author of the monograph Hearing Harmony: Toward a Tonal Theory for the Rock Era (University of Michigan Press), and his recent articles and reviews appear in Music Theory Online, SMT-Pod, Die Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie Proceedings, Music and Science, The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis, BACH and SMT-V.
Itamar Zorman, violin
Guest Masterclass: Monday, November 20 at 6:30 PM | Hatch Recital Hall
Violinist Itamar Zorman is the winner of the 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition. Zorman studied at the Jerusalem Academy, The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, and the Kronberg Academy, and has performed as a soloist with many internationally renowned orchestras. Eastman’s Dean Jamal Rossi has described Zorman as “an artist with an authentic voice, who expresses himself through the perfect coupling of extraordinary intelligence and deep emotion.”