The Full Version of Magazine - Carnegie Mellon School of Music

Transcription

Carnegie Mellon University SCHOOL OF MUSIC 2013
for ALUMNI & FRIENDS
“What’s a play list?”
“I still feel 19.”
The First
100
YRS
The
Centennial
Celebration
Concerts
p2
September
Concert
Premiere
p6
Andrew
Carnegie’s
School of
Music
p8
“Happy Birthday,
School of Music.
”
CONTENTS
2-3
100 Years On
Spring 2012
Centennial Concerts
4-5
Friends of the
School of Music
Cynthia Friedman
6-7
Dear Friend of the School of Music,
You are holding in your hands a very special edition of the Carnegie Mellon School
of Music magazine. Last year, 2012, was the 100th anniversary of the school’s founding,
and this edition is dedicated to marking the occasion. Inside you will find a dollop
of history, a bit of news, a cordial invitation, and a plateful of pomp and circumstance.
The centerpiece of the magazine is a fascinating article by Assistant Professor
of Musicology Robert Fallon chronicling Andrew Carnegie’s viewpoint on music
September Concert
Premiere
8-19
FEATURED:
Andrew Carnegie’s
School of Music
20-21
and the arts.
Practice Room
Renovations
If you’re an alumnus of the School of Music, please take a moment to visit our website
22-25
and share your recollections and anecdotes, and in so doing add important detail
to the history of our school.
You are very cordially invited to attend the upcoming performances by students
who are kicking off the school’s next 100 years. If you haven’t heard them lately,
I think you will be impressed, and I hope they make you as proud as they make me.
Walking the marble halls of the College of Fine Arts, I am constantly struck by the
exceptional nature of this place. Countless gifted musicians have honed their craft
Student News
First Grad from Music
& Technology Program
Starling String Quartet
in Qatar
26-31
Alumni News
here, and myriad selfless teachers have shared, encouraged and challenged students
32-35
in these rooms, to be the best musicians and people they could be. This is a place
Faculty News
where relentless dedication to the art gave rise to literally tens of thousands
of memorable performances.
Our school has a history that I am humbled by, and I cherish. It was a transcendent
36-37
Honoring Maestro
Robert Page
honor to serve as its head in this noteworthy year.
Happy birthday, School of Music.
The School of Music would like
to thank the following contributors
to the magazine:
Sincerely,
Jennifer Bouton
Carnegie Mellon
University Archives
Dana Casto
Denis Colwell
Denis Colwell
Head, School of Music
Robert Fallon
Hilary Gamble
Alisa Garin Photography
Timothy D. Kaulen
University Photographer
Riccardo Schulz
Hannah Whitehead
100
YEARS ON
We’d like to
think that
somewhere,
somehow,
Andrew
Carnegie is
smiling.
To mark the 100th anniversary year of the School of Music, the Carnegie Mellon
Philharmonic and Combined Choirs performed gala concerts at the Benedum
Center in Pittsburgh and Carnegie Hall in New York City in late March and
early April of 2012.
The concerts featured prominent alumni performers Liam Bonner (A’03),
Jeffrey Behrens (A’03), Howard Wall (A’72), Peter Rubins (’86), Lisa Vroman
(A’81), Graham Fenton (A’05), and Christiane Noll (A’90). Sharing the conducting
duties were Ronald Zollman, Robert Page, and Dale Clevenger (A’62). Representing
the current student body among the soloists was violinist Emma Steele (A’12),
and the personable master of ceremonies was Manu Narayan (A’96).
The soloists were brilliant, orchestra and choirs magnificent, and the audience
made their appreciation known with heartfelt standing ovations in both halls.
We think Andy would be happy to see how far his School of Music has come
in its first century.
2
FRIENDS
OF THE
SCHOOL
OF MUSIC
For Cynthia,
life at the time was an intricate interweaving
of public service and arts advocacy.
by DENIS COLWELL, Head
It was in early October of 2011 that I
first walked through the doors to the
main office at the Carnegie Mellon
University School of Music as the newly
appointed, but slightly naïve, interim
head. I wasn’t even inside the door when
I got clobbered by a steep and nastylooking learning curve. When I came to,
I was being administered smelling salts
by a terrific office staff who assured me
that while I was struggling to climb that
learning curve they would make sure the
trains ran on time. Still, the year 2012 was
nearly upon us and that meant we faced
the prospect of the 100th anniversary of
the founding of the School of Music. How
to mark the occasion with events worthy
of the school’s rich, 100-year history?
To my relief, I learned that a planning
process for the school’s Centennial
Celebration was already well under way,
complete with a distinguished Host
Committee featuring dynamic co-chairs,
Cynthia Friedman and the husbandand-wife team of Richard and Ginny
Simmons. It became apparent that the
best thing for me to do was to stay out
of the way or risk getting run over. No
fool, I sat back, embraced my role as
cheerleader, and enjoyed my up-close
view of special people at work.
Organizing something as complex as the
School of Music Centennial Celebration
is enough to give even the most skilled
manager fits. Finding a way to pay for
it – well, that’s an even taller order.
Richard and Ginny Simmons are well
known in Pittsburgh as the first couple of
philanthropy, especially where classical
music and the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra are concerned (a future issue
of the School of Music magazine will
profile these extraordinary people).
As for the other half of the Host
Committee chairmanship, here is a brief
tribute to a very special woman, with
sincere thanks from the Carnegie Mellon
School of Music.
4
Cynthia Friedman
Let me tell you a bit about
Cynthia Friedman—Carnegie
Mellon trustee, organizer
extraordinaire, businesswoman,
philanthropist, activist,
art lover—because to her
goes much of the credit for
the success of the Centennial
Celebration events.
The memorable gala concerts were
undoubtedly highlights of the School
of Music’s Centennial year. Featuring
nine School of Music alumni soloists
from around the country, the 101-piece
Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic,
and the 99-strong Carnegie Mellon
Concert Choir and Repertory Chorus,
the celebratory program was performed
first in the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh
in late March and then two days later in
Carnegie Hall in New York. The concerts
themselves were by acclamation artistic
triumphs. But the backstage story — the
creation of the Host Committee, the
planning, the care for thousands of
details – these were no less exceptional.
To find out more about how it all came
about, I visited Cynthia Friedman in
New York City, which serves as her
part-time home along with Palm Beach,
Pittsburgh and Paris.
A native of Pittsburgh, Cynthia attended
the University of Pittsburgh with majors
in Political Science and Fine Arts,
connecting a keen social conscience and
a gift for activism with what would prove
to be a lifelong love for the arts. At Pitt
she also indulged her musical side as a
member of the alto section of the Heinz
Chapel Choir under the direction of the
legendary Theodore M. Finney, whom
Cynthia claims as an important influence.
(Finney was the Head of the Department
of Music at Pitt from 1936 to 1968, and
founded the Heinz Chapel Choir in 1939.
Today the music library at the University
of Pittsburgh bears his name.)
After college and given her bent toward
public service, Cynthia could have easily
found her way to Washington D.C. and
immersed herself in politics or public
policy. But love intervened when she met
a young Carnegie Tech alumnus, Milton
Friedman (’47, ’49). They married, and
the Keystone State became their home
and the place where they raised three
children.
Milton Friedman was the founder and
long-time President and CEO of the
Emglo Products Corporation. He died
in 1996.
Cynthia recalls that her husband loved
to brag about his student experience at
Carnegie Tech as an engineering student,
declaring that it was positive in
large part because of the good
friends he made in the College of
Fine Arts, who taught him “about
life and the world.”
For Cynthia, life at the time
was an intricate interweaving of
public service and arts advocacy.
Her public service side surfaced
in 1993 when having made that
long-contemplated move to
Washington, D.C., she co-founded
the Women’s Leadership Forum
(WLF) of the Democratic National
Committee, an organization that
encourages women to participate
in national Democratic Party
affairs. Today the WLF boasts a
membership of several hundred
thousand women across the
country.
Cynthia’s efforts with the WLF
were noticed by President Bill
Clinton, as was her interest and
advocacy for the arts, and he
appointed her to the President’s
Committee on the Arts and the
Humanities. She also served on
the Collectors Committee at the
National Gallery of Art.
In 1998 and in memory of her
husband, Cynthia set up an
innovative internship program,
the Friedman Fellows, which
enables Carnegie Mellon students
to spend summers in Washington,
D.C., involved with real policy
makers in real projects.
Among the arts groups currently
on her radar screen, Cynthia
serves on the board of the Orpheus
Chamber Orchestra (based in
New York), and is a member and
supporter of the American Friends
of the Louvre, an organization of
American and French art lovers.
Smack dab in the middle of this
full and busy life CMU President
Jared Cohon asked Cynthia to
serve as co-chair of the Host
Committee for the School of Music
Centennial Celebration, and she
agreed. Asked why she would
consider adding one more thing
to her already busy schedule, she
said simply, “I love music, I love
CMU, and I love making things
happen.”
Making things happen is hard
enough, but paying for things to
happen can be harder still. As cochair of the Host Committee, part
of Cynthia’s task was to convince
others of the importance and value
of the Centennial Celebration
project. The result was a Host
Committee comprised of many
remarkable and dedicated people.
How does she convince busy
people to get involved in yet one
more project? “Well, I start by
calling people up and introducing
myself,” she said wryly. “I don’t
see it as asking people for money,
or help, or charity. I am firmly
convinced I am doing them
a favor. Getting involved in
worthwhile organizations and
projects is good for them — they
get something very valuable for
their time and money. And it’s
good for the community.”
Serving as a member of the
Carnegie Mellon Board of
Trustees for the past 10 years,
Cynthia has had a birds-eye
view of the progress of the place,
particularly with regard to the
quality of the students. “I have
witnessed the CMU student body
become, in general, more diverse,
more talented, and much more
sophisticated,” she said. “I am
amazed by the current crop of
students’ intelligence, ingenuity,
and energy.”
Centennial Celebration, Cynthia
expressed satisfaction and maybe
a hint of pride, too. “I was very
impressed and pleased with the
student musicians’ performances
in Pittsburgh and New York. The
artistic level was very high and I
think we can be very proud to have
a School of Music of this caliber.
I lost count of the number of
people who expressed to me their
astonishment at the proficiency of
these young musicians.”
Cynthia has agreed to stay involved
with the School of Music beyond
its Centennial year, lending her
energy, abilities, perspective, and
experience.
That’s music to our ears.
About the CMU School of Music
5
September
Concert
Premiere
by HANNAH WHITEHEAD (MM’14)
t was my first week at school. I’m sure anyone who’s
been a student can remember what that feels like:
the sense of excitement at a new beginning, the
apprehension, the pleasant sense of confusion from
trying to learn so many new faces and new names
and new buildings, the relief that the long-awaited
semester is finally here. For a few short weeks in
September, the whole world seems new again.
And I will admit to a personal bias before saying this, but I do
think that students at the College of Fine Arts enjoy a particularly
good vantage point from which to survey that new prospect.
At the beginning of my first week of classes, I walked into the
Great Hall of CFA, and I was startled by the beauty I found
there. As my gaze swept upward to the ceiling frescos with
their panorama of Arts and Industry, and across to the statues
of Ceasar Augustus and Sophocles, I had a strong feeling
that I would like it here at Carnegie Mellon University.
Of course, for music students, there’s always an added element
of anticipation at the beginning of a new school year, above
and beyond the jitters about classes, exams and new friends:
our first orchestra concert. And, even more than that, the first
orchestra rehearsal. What’s the maestro like? Will I get along
with my section? What are we playing?
When I sat down at my stand on the first day of rehearsal for the
Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, I was fairly confident that we’d
have no problems—with at least HALF of the program, that is.
The second half of our opening night would be Tchaikovsky’s
broodingly melancholic Fourth Symphony, a work that, while it
will always be daunting, was already familiar to many of us. So,
with a little woodshedding in the practice room and attention
to detail in rehearsal, no problem there. But somehow, I could
already tell that the first half of our program might be a different
6
story. After Tchaikovsky we would venture into uncharted
territory. I opened my folder to see four pieces of music,
each by a different composer, and each with a somewhat
enigmatic title. Euphonic Blues. Memories Nr. 1— Barcelona 1938.
Celebration. The Darkness of Fury. (That last one gave me an
inexplicable but particularly acute feeling of dread. Whether it was
because of the title or the extremely fast tempo indication, I’m not
sure. Probably both.) What was the connection between them,
if any, and what did those titles mean?
I soon found out, the connection
“...one way of As
was that each of those evocative
celebrating pieces had been written especially
where we for us, the Philharmonic, by
members of the composition faculty.
have arrived, And the overarching theme was a
and, more celebration of the first 100 years
the School of Music. Each work
importantly, ofcould
certainly stand on its own,
where we but as a group they are known as
are going, the Centennial Suite. Denis Colwell,
head of the School of Music,
is to cause the
approached Carnegie Mellon
new music faculty composers Nancy Galbraith,
Balada, Marilyn Taft
to be Leonardo
Thomas, and Reza Vali to write music
created.” to commemorate the 100-year
anniversary of the School of Music’s
DENIS COLWELL, Head
founding. Colwell said that “On the
occasion of [our] centennial, it’s certainly appropriate to look
back over the rich history of the CMU School of Music, but also
to look forward. I thought that one way of celebrating where we
have arrived, and, more importantly, where we are going,
is to cause new music to be created.”
So that was the first step. The music had been created in the composers’
minds and committed to paper, and now it was our job to interpret what
they had written and to give it life. As we worked our way through the
Suite in the first rehearsal, I realized that our greatest challenge might
lie not in learning the notes (although these were certainly difficult),
but rather in capturing the mercurial shifts of mood from one
movement to the next. Each part of the Suite presents to the listener
an entirely different and self-contained sound world. So the real
challenge was to perform a compelling characterization of each
movement, while also finding a way to link them together seamlessly.
The Suite opens with Marilyn Taft Thomas’s
Celebration for Orchestra,
a light, jazz-infused piece
reminiscent of Poulenc.
Taft Thomas has said that this
piece is “meant to be free of
philosophical angst—just plain
fun!” She scored the work for a lighter,
more transparent ensemble, with the goal
of showcasing several student soloists at
different points throughout the piece.
In contrast, Leonardo Balada’s Memories Nr. 1—Barcelona 1938
took us on a dark and painful journey back to the bloodiest battles of the
Spanish Civil War. Balada was born in Barcelona in 1933, and the piece
revisits his experience of the war as a young child. The movement is
also a sound collage of the the war-torn streets of Barcelona, in which
the Spanish, Catalan, Irish, and American folk songs being sung by the
volunteers in the Resistance blend with the Internationale, the anthem
of the socialist workers’ movement.
Balada’s reminiscence of war is followed by another strong contrast:
Nancy Galbraith’s Euphonic Blues, which is, in her own words,
“a bluesy, nostalgic celebration of the past 100 years of this
venerable institution.” The strings begin the movement very
quietly, in a hushed, reverent mood, supporting a flute solo that
eventually builds to a resounding orchestral climax. This then
evolves into a celebratory dance in 7/8 time, and again falls back
to the quiet, lush string sound of the opening.
The final movement of Centennial Suite was without a doubt
also the most difficult, both in technical and emotional terms.
Reza Vali composed The Darkness of Fury in response to the years
of violent conflict in the Middle East since 1942. The piece presents
players with huge demands: It is metrically complex, exploits the
high register of most instruments, and calls for both extremely
loud and extremely soft dynamics. After a terse opening tutti,
Vali introduces what he calls a “demonic fugue” in the violas.
The brutality of this motif is somewhat mitigated by a lyrical
passage in the strings, meant to evoke “a ray of hope for peace”:
However, lasting resolution proves to be elusive, and the fugue
returns, propelling the movement toward its violent conclusion.
It was quite a journey preparing these works in the two weeks leading
up to the concert; but we had a huge asset in being able to work with the
composers themselves during rehearsals. (Personal interaction with
composers is all too rare an occurrence for most performers.) For me,
it was an invigorating challenge for a new school year and a fantastic
welcome to Carnegie Mellon: the opportunity not only to play new music
by living composers, but then also to meet those composers and to have
their direct guidance on interpretation. It meant that we, the members
of the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, had the honor of bringing this
new music to life.
Hannah Whitehead is a first-year graduate student in the cello studio of David Premo.
7
FEATURED
ANDREW
CARNEGIE’S
SCHOOL
OF MUSIC
by ROBERT FALLON, Assistant Professor of Musicology
When Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Technical Schools
in 1900, he envisaged training all levels of workers for the steel mills
of Pittsburgh. Architects would design walls raised by master masons.
Engineers would fashion equipment created by machinists and
operated by foremen. Painters and sculptors, whose purpose was
“to apply art and design to industries,” would finish the buildings,
and clothiers would create and care for the workers’ uniforms.1
All of these craftspeople, executives, and staff—men and women
alike—would emerge from Carnegie Tech educated for a life
of productive employment and civic participation in the burgeoning
country. Founding such a school, he wrote in his essay “The Best
Fields for Philanthropy,” was the best application of his philosophy
of giving, where “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” 2
8
Music was a core focus from the
university’s beginning, as it was
for Carnegie himself, who donated
7,689 organs to churches and
municipalities, served as president
of the New York Philharmonic
Society, and helped to establish
the Pittsburgh Symphony.
ANDREW CARNEGIE’S SCHOOL OF MUSIC
irst a railroad worker, then a steel
industrialist, an ingenious investor, and
the richest man in the world when he sold
Carnegie Steel to J. P. Morgan to create
U.S. Steel in 1901, Carnegie was in the
end the premier cultural philanthropist
of his age. With his millions, he created museums,
institutes, foundations, prizes, endowments and
libraries. His canny mind and thrifty values ensured
his investments were sound—but they were not always
intended for short-term yields, however practical the
curriculum at the Carnegie Technical Schools.
Despite his life in steel, the most difficult to
manufacture yet most useful of all modern materials,
Carnegie valued even more the matters of the spirit.
A MUSICAL LIFE
Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland,
in 1835 to poor parents who immigrated to Pittsburgh
when he was 12 years old, whereupon he quickly
found his first job. Like millions of other poor
immigrants, he expected a better life in America than
had been available to his family in the Old World.
The emerging rags-to-riches narrative of American
history embraced education as the key to a better
life. Carnegie thus treasured so greatly his own early
opportunities to read in a private library that he
built more than 2,500 public libraries worldwide to
enable others to learn as he had.3 Yet Carnegie did
not attend school after age 13 and seems to have felt
disadvantaged throughout his life as he associated
with educated scientists, businessmen, and heads
of state. An inner sense of his background as a poor,
uncultured Scottish child seems to have motivated
him to work hard, read widely, and acquire a broad
knowledge of the fine arts.
Throughout the 19th century, art—and music
above all—was widely held to exemplify humanity’s
highest aspirations and noblest qualities, and even to
open onto the transcendental properties of Beauty,
Truth and Goodness. Music lifted one’s thoughts to
a higher plane, far above the base materiality of this
world. Knowledge of music was thus regarded as a
sign of refinement and good character. By extension,
cultural critics Matthew Arnold and Charles Eliot
Norton preached the social utility of beauty, for what
was good for the individual was good for society.
10
Carnegie revealed his vision for elevating Pittsburgh through art
in an 1897 letter to the President and Trustees of the Carnegie
Institute:
Not only our own country, but the civilized world,
will take note of the fact that our Dear Old Smoky
Pittsburgh, no longer content to be celebrated only as one
of the chief manufacturing centers, has entered upon the
path to higher things, and is before long, as we thoroughly
believe, also to be noted for her preeminence in the
arts and sciences.4
As art historian Kenneth Neal wrote, “According to the wisdom
of the age, art was ennobling, uplifting, at once an agent and an
index of social progress.” 5
Despite these aspirations, backed by gifts of organs and
concert halls, Carnegie’s commitment to music has come into
question. His friend Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New
York Symphony, wrote that Carnegie’s “admiration for music
in its simpler forms never crystallized into as great a conviction
regarding its importance in life as that he had regarding the
importance of science or literature.” 6 He never, for example,
pursued music lessons. Though he frequently led guests in song,
he acknowledged that he was “denied much of a voice.” 7
Music was, however, at the heart of his extraordinary
life and philanthropic work, as it is now at the heart of the
School of Music that bears his name. Among Carnegie’s most
cherished childhood memories in Scotland were his father’s
rich-voiced singing of ballads and his mother’s intoning the
“gems of Scottish minstrelsy.”8 “Folksongs,” he wrote, “are
the best possible foundation for sure progress to the heights
of Beethoven and Wagner.” He was “awakened” to music while
singing in a choir, where he discovered selections from Handel
oratorios in the back of the hymnbook. “The beginning of my
musical education,” he said, “dates from the small choir of the
Swedenborgian Society of Pittsburgh.” Later he was astounded
by Wagner: “The overture to Lohengrin thrilled me as a new
revelation. Here was a genius, indeed, differing from all before,
a new ladder upon which to climb upward.”9
He loved not only folksongs, choral music, and opera, but
was also fascinated with instrumental timbres:
If I have one weakness more than another, it is for the
harmony of sweet sounds… I met my fate in the famous
Temple of Hoonan, in which is the most celebrated ‘gong’
in China. I struck it, and listened. For more than one
full minute, I believe, that bowl was a quivering mass of
delicious sound. I thought it would never cease to vibrate.
In Japan I had counted one that sounded fifty seconds,
and its music rang in my ears for days.10
100
years
and
counting.
A photo of the very first orchestra at CMU in 1913
J. Vick O’Brien, conductor
Alum Chancey Kelley (A’35)
conducts a performance of the
CMU Symphony Orchestra
School of Music
faculty listings
as of June 1, 1917
A group photo of
the Cameron Choir
in front of the dean’s
office entrance
Max Peterson,
conductor
A group photo of the Kiltie Band
Richard Strange, conductor
MATTER OF
FACT:
“If I have one weakness more than another,
it is for the harmony of sweet sounds.”
- ANDREW CARNEGIE
Similarly, he wrote two poignant pages on the abbey bells of
Dunfermline, saying: “The world has not within its power to
devise, much less to bestow upon us, such reward as that which
the Abbey bell gave when it tolled in our honor.” 11 When his wife,
Louise Whitfield, requested that they wake to the sound of Highland
pipes when they were in Scotland, he happily obliged.12 Their
piper, Agnus Macpherson, would walk around the perimeter
of Skibo Castle to rise them every morning, a ritual they enjoyed
so much that they brought Macpherson with them when they
stayed in New York. He also installed an organ in Skibo that
piped him chorales and selections of oratorios for breakfast,
and a Bechstein piano for the standard hymns and solemn Wagner
that he requested in the evening.13 His sensitivity to sounds
may even account for his early career advancement, having been
promoted for his remarkable ability to decipher telegraph wires
not by transcription but by sound alone.14 In short, music defines
Carnegie intimately. “With him,” wrote one biographer,
“music was almost a form of religion.”15
As music was integral to his personal life, so it stood at
the center of Carnegie’s philanthropic work. He paid about
seven million dollars for 7,689 church organs for various
denominations, 1,351 of them in Pennsylvania and about 500 in
the Pittsburgh area. “You can’t always trust what the pulpit says,”
he wrote, “but you can always depend upon what the organ says.”16
He sat on the boards of several musical societies, underwriting
symphonies and gifting his good friend Walter Damrosch,
conductor of the New York Symphony, an annual stipend of
$5,000.17 Serving as president of the New York Philharmonic
Society in 1909, he may even be credited with helping to hire
Gustav Mahler as Music Director. Today Carnegie may be most
widely recognized through Carnegie Hall, a name synonymous
with musical prestige and pristine acoustics. (Simply called the
New York Music Hall when it hosted its first concert in 1891, the
management renamed it for its greatest benefactor in 1893.) At
the hall’s inaugural concert, the Carnegies invited Tchaikovsky,
who was conducting, to their home for dinner. There the
tycoon imitated the maestro, waiving his hands “so solemnly,”
Tchaikovsky wrote, “so well and so like me that I myself was
delighted.”18 Carnegie’s musical philanthropy carried on after
his death in 1919 when, for example, the Carnegie Corporation
donated over $750,000 of phonographs and classical recordings
to institutions of secondary and higher education.19
Carnegie invested in music education because he was convinced
of the transformative moral and aesthetic power of music. He
subscribed to the philosophy of education articulated by his friend
14
John Stuart Mill, whose address at the University of St. Andrews
argues that art “trains us never to be completely satisfied with
imperfection in what we ourselves do and are: to idealize, as much
as possible, every work we do, and most of all, our own characters
and lives.”20 Mills insists that art is “needful to the completeness
of the human being” because it is “the education of the feelings,
and the cultivation of the beautiful” and he posits three branches
of education: the moral, the intellectual, and the aesthetic.21
Carnegie repeated these co-equal categories in a later speech:
Our mills and factories are numerous, large and
prosperous, but things material, including money itself,
should only be the foundation upon which we build things
spiritual… Not until the dollars are transmuted into
service for others, in one of the many forms best calculated
to appeal to and develop the higher things of the moral,
intellectual and esthetic life, has wealth completely
justified its existence.22
Again referring to Mill’s essay in his Autobiography, Carnegie
states that “The prominence he assigns to music as an aid to high
living and pure refined enjoyment is notable. Such is my own
experience.”23
CARNEGIE’S INSTITUTES
The story of how Carnegie’s personal, philanthropic, and
philosophical advocacy of music was realized in the Carnegie
Mellon University School of Music begins with the founding
of the Carnegie Institute. Carnegie opened his “palace of culture”
—a library, painting gallery, museum of natural history, and music
hall—in 1895 at the entrance to Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park as
his ultimate gift to the city that had given him opportunity and
phenomenal wealth.
Though the Carnegie Technical Schools were not part of his
original plan for the Carnegie Institute (now Carnegie Museums
and Library), the Institute expressed his esteem for education
and the elevating powers of art. The personifications of these
values sit along Forbes Avenue, one block from Carnegie Mellon,
in the Noble Quartet of sculptures by John Massey Rhind that
greet visitors to the Carnegie Institute: Galileo for the Museum
of Natural History, Michelangelo for the Painting Gallery (now
the Art Museum), Shakespeare for the Library, and Bach for the
Music Hall, each one exemplifying the greatness that the cultural
treasures inside might inspire in the public.
Such riches of the human spirit, Carnegie insisted, were
not the exclusive creations of European monarchies, but could
emerge, too, from the denizens of democracy. As James Van
Trump wrote in An American Palace of Culture (1970), “The Foyer
[to the Music Hall] is a monument, not to the pomp of princes
and the circumstances of kings but to the majesty and affluence
of merchants and manufacturers—that class which had risen to
power during the nineteenth century and now wished to show
forth its strength in a tangible way.”24
After Carnegie completed an enormous expansion of his
Institute in 1907, he orchestrated a three-day rededication
celebration, much of it taking place in the Music Hall. Among the
invitees were composers Jules Massenet, Camille Saint-Saëns,
Edvard Grieg, and Richard Strauss. Henry E. Krehbiel, music
critic of the New York Tribune, attended the event, as did Edward
Elgar, who conducted the Pittsburgh Orchestra in his Enigma
Variations. Elgar and his wife may have been photographed at the
banquet held the day after he conducted. At this event, Carnegie
emphasized the edifying and moral function of his music hall:
“That this Hall can be and will be so managed as to prove a most
potent means for refined entertainments, and instruction for
the people and the development of musical taste of Pittsburgh,
I entertain not the slightest doubt, and Goethe’s saying should
be recalled, that ‘Straight roads lead from music to everything
good’.”25 In his capstone speech, with students of the Carnegie
Technical Schools in attendance, he extolled the Pittsburgh
Symphony as one of only three full-time orchestras in the United
States (along with those in Boston and Chicago), declared it in
good hands under the leadership of Emil Paur, and elaborated on
the civic work of music:
Many are the youths of Pittsburgh, who through these will
have their finer natures touched and attuned, the results
being lifelong. I attach so much importance to music. I
believe with [Confucius] who wrote: “Oh! music, sacred
tongue of God, I hear thee calling, and I come.” Cherish
your orchestra and develop your musical facilities here.
Believe me, music is the highest expression which the
human race has yet attained.26
Like John White Alexander’s mural, “The Crowning of Labor,”
which spirals up the main stairwell of the Carnegie Institute,
depicting the people of Pittsburgh rising toward the spiritual
rewards of their labor, Carnegie’s cosmology of culture set music
to work as an essential refiner of humanity. To him, music is
both the reward of labor and, like labor, the conduit toward
improvement of self and society.
In 1910, just three years after the expansion of the Carnegie
Institute, the Pittsburgh Orchestra fell silent. Conductor Emil
Paur’s policies had long rankled its musicians and funding had
trickled down to unsustainable levels. Although the city found
itself without a symphony, it had recently acquired a new fifth
branch of the Institute, the Carnegie Technical Schools.
On November 15, 1900, Carnegie publicly read a letter
addressed to Pittsburgh Mayor
William Diehl, offering $1
million to found the school.
Carnegie Tech was in all respects
a part of the Carnegie Institute,
as Carnegie himself said: “These
are part of the Institute, and
no mean part.… Based upon
science and more refined
methods, [Carnegie Tech]
must create finer tastes. All the
Technical students have free
access to Library, Department
of Fine Arts, Music Hall, and
Museum.”27 The 36-member
Board of Trustees, which
held legal control of both the
Institute and Tech, appointed
the 16 members of the Trustees’
Committee on the Institute of
Technology.28 Only in 1959 were
Tech’s ties severed from the
Carnegie Institute.29
After some years of
planning and building, classes
at Carnegie Tech opened on
October 16, 1905. Music had
played a role in the selection
of its first president—Arthur
Hammerschlag was commended
to Carnegie by Robert Fulton
Cutting, president both
of Cooper Union and the
Metropolitan Opera Company 30
—and music was part of campus
life years before the School of
Music opened in 1912. Less
than a day after the first class
arrived, students met on October
17, 1905 to choose the school
colors and create a school cheer;
within a month a Glee Club and
an orchestra were meeting in
Industries Hall (now Porter
Hall).31 The Glee Club performed
in Carnegie Music Hall in spring
1906 32 and the Kiltie Band,
replete with tartans, first rallied
in 1908. By 1910, the Carnegie
Tech Band and the Carnegie Tech
Orchestra each had 18 members,
the Glee and Mandolin Club
(which included a string quartet)
Pianist Nelson Whitaker
would write all over
students’ music.
Frederic Dorian,
an original member
of Arnold Schoenberg’s
Society of Private
Performances, helped to
establish its successor
group, the International
Society for Contemporary
Music (ISCM), at CMU.
The ISCM presented
concerts at CMU between
1946 and 1958. Its activities
were partly replaced
in 1962, when Nikolai
Lopatnikoff began the
Composers Forum series
that continues today.
Among the musicians that
the ISCM presented were
composers such as Aaron
Copland, Paul Hindemith,
and Francis Poulenc.
Performers included Isaac
Stern, Rudolf Kolisch,
Pierre Bernac, Maria Malpi,
the Juilliard Quartet, and
Edward Steuermann.
Frederic Dorian’s book
Commitment to Culture
(1964) traces the history of
arts patronage in Europe.
It was read by US Senator
from Minnesota Hubert
Humphrey (later VicePresident in the Johnson
Administration), who used
its ideas to convince
Congress to establish
national subsidies for the
arts. In 1965, President
Lyndon Johnson signed
the Arts and Humanities
legislation that created
the National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA). Dorian
was invited to the White
House’s Rose Garden
ceremony for the signing
of the legislation.
MATTER OF
FACT:
Women members of the
Kiltie Band were not
allowed to wear kilts until
the 1970s. They wore
concert black instead.
On Sunday evening
December 7, 1941,
Earl Wild gave a concert
at Carnegie Music Hall.
Florence Lawton, longtime
secretary of the department,
who assigned every
student every class, met
everyone at the door and
told them not to mention
Pearl Harbor that night
because Earl Wild had a
brother stationed at Pearl
Harbor; it was the last time
he played in Pittsburgh
until he returned to teach at
CMU in 1987.
The organ at
Carnegie Music Hall
could not perform with the
orchestra because it was
tuned to A-435, not A-440.
In 1921, University of
Pittsburgh Chancellor
John G. Bowman
reorganized the university
in order to balance the
budget, avoid duplication
with the courses at
CIT, and in response
to inquiries from the
Carnegie Corporation
and the Carnegie
Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching.
Six departments in Pitt’s
School of Education were
closed, including music.
Susan Canfield moved her
classes from Pitt to CMU
and began the renowned
Eurhythmics program here.
Cecile Kitcat, an English
woman who taught
Eurhythmics, would
regularly show up to class
late and begin by shouting
“Come here, you dirty
bastards!”
“Not funny enough to be
American, not musical
enough to be Italian!” –
Frederic Dorian
chastising the brass section
of the Student Symphony
when they stood during a
rehearsal of a passage with
a brass chorale.
The Kiltie Band
played in the
1939 Sugar Bowl,
where Carnegie
Tech played Texas
Christian University
in New Orleans.
(The Tartans lost, 15-7.)
had 56 members, and the Women’s Glee Club had 34 members.33
With the laying of the cornerstone on April 25, 1912, the School
of Applied Design (later the College of Fine Arts) at last had a
home. Two years had passed since the Pittsburgh Orchestra had
performed and the newly opened School of Music took up the task
of providing music to the people of Pittsburgh, with the explicit
goal that its graduates would soon populate a revived professional
symphony. As a reporter wrote in 1913, “The new movement can
in a way be said to be rising from the ashes of the old orchestra:
for two of the members of the Tech musical faculty—Mr.
Malcherek and Mr. Derdeyn—were members of the Pittsburgh
Symphony. They carry with them into their work an adequate
conception of the principle of orchestra construction and a zeal
for the return of an orchestra such as will make and maintain a
definite and high place for Pittsburgh in the estimation of the
musical world.”34 A further fourteen years would pass between
the opening of the School of Music and the resurrection of the
renamed Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1926.
As with the Carnegie Institute, the Fine Arts Building’s
sculptures and paintings appear to reflect Carnegie’s perspective
that art improves character and culture. Architect Henry
Hornbostel and James Monroe Hewlett, painter of the interior
fresco of the Great Hall, which was completed on March 8,
1917, may have modeled parts of the building after passages in
Triumphant Democracy (1886), the book that earned Carnegie
the reputation of an intellectual on top of his accolades as
an industrialist. Carnegie discusses the five arts (Painting,
Sculpture, Architecture, Music and Drama) in the same order
as the five engraved stones above the niches on the façade.
Framing the windows on the wings are portraits of DaVinci,
[Michelangelo] Buonarotti, Shakespeare and Beethoven, each
of them mentioned in Triumphant Democracy. As the book lauds
the French Renaissance, so the building is modeled after a
French Renaissance chateau. As it refers to St. Peter’s Basilica
and the Taj Mahal in the same sentence, so the fresco presents
them as neighbors. As it extols New York’s short-lived National
Conservatory of Music as an important institution for democracy,
so the art emphasizes democratic service. Both painted passages
of music celebrate freedom: the folk-like “America” with its
phrase “let freedom ring” is shown beside the Capitol Building
in Washington, and the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
resonates with ideas of personal, political, and aesthetic
liberation. The fresco’s Pittsburgh color scheme of black and gold
underscores the civic theme.
Civic responsibility and service to democracy is also written
into the original seal of Carnegie Tech (reproduced in the fresco),
which includes four ribbons labeled Science, Art, Character and
Service. The art of music—art is “techne” in Greek—belongs in the
technical institute because it was understood to build character
and serve society. Accordingly, the school served the community
by giving regular public concerts and performing at special events
such as Carnegie Day.
MUSIC AT CARNEGIE TECH
The School of Applied Design took shape upon moving into
the newly built Fine Arts Building in 1912. Its name changed
to the Division of the Arts in 1918 and finally the College of
Fine Arts in 1921;35 its initial purpose was to instruct students
how “to apply art and design to industries.”36 In preparation
for the opening of the school, Acting Dean Henry McGoodwin
suggested including a Department of Music, as he wrote to the
Director of Technical Schools on April 1, 1911:
We believe that a Department of Music connected with
the School [of Applied Design] would be in every way
appropriate, if it offered courses leading to a high degree
of technical proficiency; that the best place for such a
department is in a school devoted to practical instruction
in all the important fine arts. The musician is certainly
as much a subject of technical training and as surely
preparing for a technical vocation as is any other student
of our school. There does not seem to us to be any very
pertinent reason why music should be excluded from
cooperation with the other arts in such a school.37
On April 1, 1912, however, McGoodwin expressed his despair over
being unable to open the courses in music: “As deeply as I regret
to abandon the hope of projecting a department of music in the
near future there seems to be no hope for it, as there is no possible
accommodation for it in our new building.”38 Immediately
after opening the new building that fall, President Arthur
Hammerschlag himself acknowledged that the School was unable
to accommodate any growth: “The Department of Architecture
has already reached its capacity. Growth during the next year must
be restricted to improving the standards of admission as very few
additional students can be provided for.”39 The shortage of space
was not addressed until 1916, when the north and south wings to
the Fine Arts Building were added (whereupon the building was
again immediately found to be at capacity).
Despite the lack of space, the creation of the Department
of Music was announced in the newspapers over the winter
holidays of 1912–13. “This was immediately followed by the
application of 75 men and women, which number has now grown
to approximately 125,” wrote C. Russell Hewlett, Dean of the
School of Applied Design on March 8, 1913. “Of these 22 have
been admitted to the day and 29 to the night classes, with results
much in advance of what could have been hoped for by the
most optimistic.”40
When the Department of Music opened its doors to student
performers and music educators in 1912, J. Vick O’Brien (1876–
1953), an accomplished composer from the Pittsburgh area who
had studied in Germany with Englebert Humperdinck, served
as head, a position he held until June 1944. Beloved by students,
staff, and faculty, O’Brien not only led the department and
conducted the Student Symphony but also taught Harmony, Sight
Reading, Counterpoint, and Composition. Early instrumental
17
“Let no one
underrate the
influence of
entertainments
of an elevating
or even of
an amusing
character,
for these do
much to make
the lives of the
people happier
and their
natures better.”
- ANDREW
CARNEGIE
MATTER OF
FACT:
Thomas Stockham
Baker, who served as
Carnegie Tech’s second
president from 1922 to
1935, worked for a decade
as a music critic for
The Baltimore Sun.
Bagpipes first
accompanied the
university commencement
ceremony on June 27,
1948, at the request
of the faculty marshal
and with the approval
of the president and the
executive board.
John Nash, CMU
alumnus and Nobel
laureate, had a signature
habit of whistling Bach’s
“Little” Fugue in G Minor.
Referring to a “Summer
Night ‘Pop’ Concert”
on the Hotel Schenley
Lawn, give on July 18,
1933 by the Little
Symphony Orchestra
conducted by J. Vick
O’Brien, a newspaper
recorded the following
event: “They’re still talking
about how nicely J. Vick
O’Brien, head of the Tech
music department, solved
a difficult situation Tuesday
night when rain drove the
conductor, his musicians
and the audience into the
Hotel Schenley during the
‘pop’ concert. Having no
platform on which to
stand while conducting,
he seized and nonchalantly
mounted—an empty
beer case!”
At age 88, Pablo Casals
had a two-week residency
on campus in April 1965,
when he received an
honorary doctoral degree,
gave master classes and
conducted his own music
as well as all six of Bach’s
Brandenburg Concertos.
Earl Wild (CIT’37)
on his piano studies
with Selmar Janson
at Carnegie Tech:
“My relationship with
Mr. Janson lasted about
ten years. Janson was
a dedicated teacher—
I learned a great deal
from him. He was also
a relentless taskmaster
with a terrible temper—
capable of putting his
students through all sorts
of experiences. If a pupil
didn’t play well, he would
often reach over, grab the
music off the piano and
tear it up!”
The number of concerts
given in 1920–21 was 23.
In 1985 the number was
152 and in 2011 it was
more than 250.
250
CONCERTS IN 2011
faculty included violinist Karl Malcherek, formerly of the Chicago
Symphony and the defunct Pittsburgh Orchestra; cellist Joseph
Derdeyn, also of the former Pittsburgh Orchestra; and pianist
Selmar Janson. Charles Heinroth, organist of Carnegie Music
Hall, taught organ and music history, soon followed by Arthur
Burgoyne, Harold Geoghegan and Glendinning Keeble. Later,
Caspar Koch and H. K. Schmidt joined the piano faculty, Theodor
Rentz was hired to teach violin, Will Earhart offered classes on
the Teaching of Music and a librarian and “custodian” (manager)
of the department rounded out the full-time faculty. Part-time
instructors were soon hired to teach flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon,
horn, trumpet, trombone/tuba, double bass, percussion, harp
and sight-singing.
O’Brien’s 1914 annual report cites enrollment at 26 day
and 41 night students. A forty-piece orchestra began rehearsals
in January 1914. First-year coursework included Harmony,
Obligatory Piano, Sight Singing, Aesthetics, History of Music,
English Literature, History of Art and French. In addition to
private lessons, other courses included Acoustics, Counterpoint –
Single and Double, Ensemble Work, Public Performance, Concert
Attendance, Appreciation of the Drama, German, Italian and
Physical Training. His 1915 report alludes to the department’s
good spirit and, pressing the administration for help, its awkward
conditions: “The attitude of the students toward their work
has been excellent and they have shown a willingness to adapt
themselves to a rather irregular method of scheduling teaching
hours and other conditions which are so difficult to meet in the
crowded condition of our building.”
At the same time that Carnegie Tech graduated its first student
in music (Hazel Inez Smail Benecke, 1917), the United States was
entering the First World War. Uniquely in the country, Carnegie
Tech’s music program was transformed into a training ground for
military bands and bandmasters, while many of its students were
send to fight overseas. Francis Fowler Hogan, a freshman Drama
student in 1916–17 who was killed in action at Chateau-Thierry,
wrote a poem, titled “Fulfilled,” whose first lines use music as the
vehicle for his life’s purpose:
Though he lived in Scotland and New York, he visited campus five
times between 1907 and 1914. In April 1911, the Glee Club and
Mandolin Club performed for him and 2,200 undergraduates
greeted him in the Music Hall by singing the song “Hail
Carnegie.”42 In 1914 the orchestra performed five times: on
Carnegie Day, for Carnegie’s visit, for a lecture by Jane Addams,
for the Convention of the Music Supervisors, and on a special
Orchestral Concert. These were among the first of countless
concerts the School of Music would offer the music-loving public
over the next century.
On his final visit, on October 29, 1914, he attended the
unveiling of the statue of Robert Burns that now stands between
the Phipps Conservatory and Panther Hollow Bridge near campus.
Bagpipers in full plaid and kilts accompanied the occasion with
Scottish airs. The day before he left Pittsburgh, the 60-member
Student Symphony of the new Department of Music played a
concert for him in what is now Kresge Theatre, returning the
service to him that he had done for them.43 He also met with
students in an informal gathering, with one representative
of a student group after another spontaneously thanking him
for the opportunities opened by as Carnegie Tech’s education.
Together, Carnegie and the students sang songs accompanied by
the organ. Then he left the campus for the last time, declaring the
meeting “an outstanding example of triumphant democracy.”44
1 Glen Uriel Cleeton, The Doherty Administration,
1936–1950 ([Pittsburgh]: Carnegie Press, 1965), 133.
2 See Andrew Carnegie, “The Best Fields for
Philanthropy,” The North American Review 149,
no. 397 (December 1889): 682–98, 687; and
Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth,” in
The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and The
Gospel of Wealth (New York: Signet Classics, 2006),
336.
3 David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Penguin,
2006), 607.
4 Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press), 817.
5 Kenneth Neal, A Wise Extravagance: The Founding
of the Carnegie International Exhibitions, 1895–1901
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), 5.
6 Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie, 357, quoting Walter
Damrosch, My Musical Life (New York: Scribner’s Sons,
1926), 94–95.
7 Carnegie, Autobiography, 49.
On September 8, 1990,
violin faculty
Andrés Cárdenes,
concertmaster of the
Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra, played all
ten Beethoven sonatas
in twelve hours
(a “Beethoven Triathalon”
of three concerts) to benefit
the Music Department’s
Merit Scholarship Fund.
In 1996 he bequeathed a
1717 Stradivarius to CMU
in memory of his teacher
Josef Gingold, He called
the curvaceous violin
“Marilyn” after Marilyn
Monroe.
In 2009, Sheela Ramesh,
a voice and psychology
major, became CMU’s first
Marshall Scholar.
Though my hands have not learned to model
The dreams of a groping mind,
Though my lips have not spoken their music
And are leaving no songs behind,
Think not that my life has been futile,
Nor grieve for an unsaid word,
For all that my lips might never sing
My singing heart has heard.41
Such were the gifts of music to the soldiers, providing discipline
and solidarity to their training, courage to their fighting, and
solace to their dying.
Andrew Carnegie lived to see the growth of his Carnegie
Technical Schools into a degree-granting institution in 1912,
when the name changed to the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
10 Carnegie, Round the World (New York: Cosimo,
2005), 110–11.
22 Memorial of the Celebration of the Carnegie
Institute at Pittsburgh, PA., April 11, 12, 13, 1907
(The Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institute,
1907), 66.
24 James Van Trump, An American Palace of
Culture: The Carnegie Institute and Carnegie Library
of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute and
Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation,
1970), 24.
Institute, 5–6.
Institute, 58–59.
Institute, 61.
28 Cleeton, The Doherty Administration, 316.
29 Robert J. Gangewere, Palace of Culture:
Andrew Carnegie’s Museums and Library in Pittsburgh
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), 75.
30 Arthur Wilson Tarbull, The Story of Carnegie
Tech, 1900–1935 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of
Technology), 29.
31 Tarbull, The Story of Carnegie Tech, 169.
32 Tarbell, The Story of Carnegie Tech, 170.
12 Alvin F. Harlow, Andrew Carnegie
(New York: Julian Messner, 1953), 119–21.
33 Carnegie Institute Eighth Annual Report of the
Director of Technical Schools, for the year ending
1909–10, 10.
13 Joseph Frazier Wall, ed., The Andrew Carnegie
Reader, 204, quoting the Carnegie Papers in the
Library of Congress, vol. 29.
15 John K. Winkler, Incredible Carnegie (New York:
Hespirides Press, 2006), 9.
16 Barton Jesse Hendrick, The Life of Andrew
Carnegie, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co.,
1932), 2: 261.
17 Richard Crawford, “Carnegie, Andrew,” in Grove
Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.
oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/
music/A2087269 (accessed September 16, 2012).
18 Alvin F. Harlow, Andrew Carnegie,123.
19 Crawford, “Carnegie.”
20 John Stuart Mill, “Inaugural Address Delivered to
the University of St. Andrews, 1867,” in The Collected
Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 21: Essays on Equality,
Law, and Education, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction
by Stefan Collini (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 215–57.
34 John Goldstrom, “Making Pittsburgh Musical,” The
Index (2 August 1913): 9.
37 Carnegie Institute Eighth Annual Report of the
Director of Technical Schools, 49.
38 Carnegie Institute Ninth Annual Report of the
39 Executive Committee Minutes of Carnegie Institute
of Technology, October 30, 1912.
40 Carnegie Institute Tenth Annual Report of the
42 Tarbell, The Story of Carnegie Tech, 40–41.
43 Tarbell, The Story of Carnegie Tech, 44–45.
21 In his autobiography, Carnegie states that he wholly
agrees with John Stuart Mills’s 1867 Inaugural Address
delivered to the University of St. Andrews.
19
New
Rooms
in an old building
by DENIS COLWELL, Head
Perhaps the practice rooms on the mezzanine of the College of Fine Arts were state-of-the-art 100 years ago,
and maybe they were serviceable 50 years ago, but lately they appear a little long in the tooth, to say the least.
As any conservatory student will testify, spending multiple hours per day in a tiny, worn-out, beat-up room
without climate control and putting up with sound bleeding over from rooms on every side - well, it just isn’t
any fun. And that’s if you can find one that’s not already in use.
With funding support from CMU Provost Mark Kamlet, the practice rooms at the south end of CFA were
completely renovated this past year, and a few new rooms christened to boot. Walls, ceilings, floors – everything
came out. The new rooms that went in boast upgraded lighting, HVAC and excellent sound isolation, even while
respecting the architectural integrity of the College of Fine Arts building.
A total of eight new practice rooms were constructed in what was (back when the School of Drama roamed these
halls) a row of dressing rooms above Kresge Theatre, spaces that had deteriorated and were unusable for the past
few decades. Given that there are never, EVER enough practice rooms, the addition of these is very welcome news.
Plans are being drawn up to renovate the north end of the mezzanine as soon as funding can be found.
In a 100-year-old building, renovations tend to be difficult and expensive. If you can help with the next phase
of these critically needed improvements, we’d love to hear from you.
20
21
Carnegie Mellon
Awards Its First
Music and Technology
Master’s Degree
to Dawen Liang
by RICCARDO SCHULZ,
Associate Teaching Professor and
Director of Recording Activities
Dawen Liang was in his second year of studies as a computer
science major at Fudan University, one of the oldest and
most selective universities in China, when he first heard
about Carnegie Mellon University.
Dawen is from the city of Taiyuan, the largest city in the
Shanxi province of northern China. He moved to Shanghai
when he was accepted at Fudan University, and it was there,
during his sophomore year, that one of Dawen’s classes
used a text book that had a unique approach to teaching
computer science—it integrated computer code with machine
interaction—and it became an inspiration for Dawen. The
book was Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective.
“This was the best textbook I have ever read,” he said,
“and it changed my life.” Reading about the authors of this
textbook—Randall Bryant and David O’Hallaron—Dawen
discovered they were both teaching at Carnegie Mellon.
The text book that captured his imagination was, and still is,
used all over the world.
In the meantime, thinking about his own future that year,
Dawen feared that although he was receiving excellent
training at Fudan, he might still not be a strong candidate
for a Ph.D. program in computer science like the one at CMU.
But Dawen, who had taken piano lessons since the age
of 6 or 7, saw another opportunity that would combine
his passion and formal education in computer
science with his talent as a musician. When
a good friend, ahead of him by two years, was accepted
to the CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music
and Acoustics) program at Stanford, the gears started
turning in Dawen’s mind. “I had a much higher QPA than
my friend,” Dawen said modestly, “so if he could get into
that program at Stanford, then I should be able to as well.”
The year was 2008, and Dawen still had almost two years
to prepare for the GRE and TOEFL exams—requirements
for just about any course of study in the USA—and to
research graduate programs that involved music and
computer science.
Dawen focused on this approach, figuring that this field was
relatively new and unknown, and he would have a competitive
edge. CMU was for him still an unattainable dream, but he
applied to Stanford and about two dozen other programs that
involved music and computer science. Stanford’s program,
in the few years since his friend was accepted, had grown
in stature and was attracting a more accomplished pool of
applicants. Much to his disappointment, Stanford turned
him down, as did a few other schools that were his ‘hopeful’
choices. Among the schools that Dawen applied to was
Carnegie Mellon, where a new degree program—Music and
Technology—housed in the School of Music and offering both
graduate and undergraduate degrees had been developed
through the efforts of Noel Zahler, then-head of the School
of Music at Carnegie Mellon, with Roger Dannenberg
(Computer Science), Tom Sullivan (Electrical and Computer
Engineering), Rich Stern (ECE and Computer Science)
and Riccardo Schulz (Music).
Suddenly Dawen realized that Carnegie Mellon University was
a possibility for him. With some rejections and a handful of
acceptances, it was time for a decision that would
be life-changing, taking him away from the
country he had never left, and setting him
on a career path he never could have imagined
a few months earlier. Dawen considered all kinds
of factors to help him decide where to go. He was a huge
basketball fan, and at least one acceptance got crossed off
the list because he had a low opinion of that city’s NBA team.
(The fact that Pittsburgh didn’t have an NBA team didn’t
seem to register.) Dawen knew that the Music and Technology
program at CMU was new, and that he would be in the first
enrolling class—a situation that would have to be factored
into his final decision. He needed more information before he
could decide which offer to accept.
Looking at the list of faculty and seeing Roger Dannenberg’s
name was one of the deciding factors for Dawen, because he
already knew of Dannenberg’s work in computer music.
“I wrote the longest e-mail I had ever written in my life” to
Roger Dannenberg, Dawen recalled, “with so many questions
and concerns,” and waited, as the deadline neared, for Roger
to respond. Dannenberg’s response convinced Dawen that the
Music and Technology program at CMU was the right choice
for him. He accepted, and came to Pittsburgh for the Fall
semester 2010, the first recruit for the new program.
The Music and Technology program at Carnegie Mellon gave
Dawen access to just about any course offered in the Schools
of Music, Computer Science, and Electrical and Computer
Engineering. Dawen and his colleague, Guangyu (Gus) Xia,
a graduate student in computer science and an excellent
flutist, enrolled in a class taught by Bhiksha Raj, professor
in the Language Technologies Institute of Computer Science.
There they joined forces with another computer scientist/
musician, Mark Harvilla. Together, they chose a
project to develop a music-centered computer
program that was at the intersection of
machine learning and computer science.
Their project was a computer program that would
automatically locate similar music passages in different
performances. This would be a valuable aid to students
who might want to compare different performances of the
same passage of music. The project was successful, and it
grew into a paper that was presented at ISMIR (International
Society for Music Information Retrieval). The paper was
published and further developed for Dawen’s thesis.
As a result of his work in the machine learning area,
as his master’s program was nearing completion, Dawen
began looking into Ph.D. programs in that field. He received
his master’s degree in Music and Technology from Carnegie
Mellon in 2012, and is now a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia
University, as a researcher in the Laboratory
for the Recognition and Organization of Speech and
Audio (labROSA), which is part of the Electrical Engineering
Department at Columbia.
23
Starling
String
Quartet
journeys to
Qatar for
exchange
of musical
culture
...CONTINUED
24
Our first performance venue was at Carnegie Mellon in Qatar in
Education City, a large educational complex containing branches
of several high-level universities. We gave concerts for students
and faculty there. It was an inspiring place to perform, first of
all because of its stunning and futuristic architecture, and more
importantly because of the intensive academic atmosphere. It was
fascinating to witness the same rigorous academic standards of
the Pittsburgh campus at work halfway around the world. Carnegie
Mellon University in Qatar Dean Ilker Baybars was very gracious
as host, illuminating for us the education process in Doha.
The group also had the opportunity to play in other venues in
Doha, including the Four Seasons Hotel. This performance was
particularly memorable, as we later found out that our small
audience included Kofi Anan, former Secretary General of the
United Nations.
Another highlight of the trip was performing and interacting
with students at a few local schools. This gave us an opportunity
to connect with a completely fresh audience: some of the young
students had never heard a string quartet before, and it was a
great thrill to introduce them to the intricacies of the violin,
my instrument. We played Dvorák and Shostakovich, two
composers whose backgrounds differ greatly from those of most
Qataris, to say the least. It was a joy to introduce young children
to these two musical giants.
During our time off we enjoyed seeing the sights of the city.
One of my favorite moments of the trip was our visit to the Souk
Waqif, or local bazaar. We gained a view into the everyday lives
of Qataris, bargaining for goods at the Souk, sampling delicious
foods, and listening to popular Middle Eastern music. I haggled
with a vendor for a lovely carved wooden chess set which I brought
back with me as a memento of the trip.
I am so thankful to be at a place like Carnegie Mellon where
experiences such as this concert tour are possible. As a musician
and artist, I think it is vital to have an understanding of what is
going on in the world at large, as well as maintaining an active
curiosity about cultures and customs different from my own.
This trip gave me the opportunity to hone my craft through
performances, and was integral to my education as a musician
and as a socially-conscious individual.
Hilary Gamble is studying to receive her Advanced Music Studies Certificate
in the viola studio of David Harding.
Watch:
<
IMAGE: GOOGLE MAPS
by HILARY GAMBLE (BA’10, MM’12, AMS’13)
As a member of the Starling Honors String Quartet,
I was invited to perform with the group during Spring Break 2012
at the Carnegie Mellon Qatar campus. I had traveled extensively
as a musician before, but had never been to the Middle East.
I was excited to experience a new culture along with my fellow
quartet members Sonia Shklarov, violin; AiWen Thian, viola;
and Marlene Ballena, cello. Joining us was interim head of the
School of Music (now current head) Denis Colwell and his wife
Melanie. I envisioned our visit to Qatar as a cultural exchange:
we would introduce our Qatari audience to the great literature
for string quartet, and in the process would learn about their
very different way of life.
Starling Quartet
at the Four Seasons,
Doha, Qatar:
http://youtu.be/Nc1U0lFoPnA
25
Devin Arrington (MM’04) is the founding director of
Musicians with a Mission, a new Pittsburgh nonprofit organization
that brings musicians into local nursing and personal care
homes. Read more at musicianswithamission.org.
Weronika Balewski (A’12) will be attending the Longy School
in Boston in pursuit of a Master of Music degree.
Eric Barndollar (BS, A’09) is currently a Software Engineer
at Google, Inc., and is a research collaborator on the Arghonoon
Project hosted by Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for
Creative Inquiry.
Julieta Blanco (MM’12) following graduation, resumed her
position with the Mar del Plata Symphony Orchestra in Argentina.
Nathaniel Blume (MM’05) has written an original score for
the Kevin Spacey-produced documentary, Shakespeare High,
which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and premieres on
the Showtime network in mid-September. Since moving to
Los Angeles in 2007, Nathaniel has written additional music for
various television shows including No Ordinary Family on ABC,
and orchestrated other projects such as The Pacific on HBO.
He has also co-written on the new TBS comedy, The Wedding
Band, due to premiere this fall. While at Carnegie Mellon,
Blume studied with Leonardo Balada.
Jennifer Bouton (MM’07) is Principal Piccolo of the
Milwaukee Symphony, a position she began in September
of 2011.
Gabriel Castagna (MM’90) has had two albums nominated
for a Latin Grammy, “Cuarteto Latinoamericano” and “Fiesta
Criolla”. He has been conducting Latin-American symphonic
music as well as the music of Astor Piazzolla, and appeared
in an interview with Gramophone magazine, which said that
Castagna “offered a rare and valuable account of the tango
master’s 1953 Sinfonietta”.
Rodolfo Antonio Castillo (MM’05, Music Ed’07) spent
four years working for Charter Schools USA, where he was a
finalist for the “New American Hero” award - charter school’s
equivalent to teacher of the year. Castillo has been appointed
as Director of Bands at the prestigious Canterbury School in
Fort Myers, FL. In addition, he is the Assistant Band Director
at the Estero High School Marching Band, Concert Band
Conductor and Brass Instructor with the Southwest Florida
Music Foundation Summer Camps, and performs regularly
as 1st Trumpet/Soloist with the Edison Estate College Concert
Band, and the Bonita Springs Concert Band. Antonio lives
in Bonita Springs, FL with his wife Roxana, daughter Rocio,
and son Diego.
26
Vivian Choi (AD’10) joined the roster of Parker Artists
Management, NYC, in 2011. She also released her debut
album “Northern Flowers” on St. Petersburg Musical Archive
Russian label which received critical acclaim from Fanfare
magazine and Music Web International UK. In addition,
she toured Italy performing recitals and giving master classes,
was invited to be part of the jury for piano competitions and
was appointed to Piano Faculty of Concordia Conservatory,
New York.
Kara Cornell (A’02) currently lives in Albany, NY and just
finished a run as Carmen with Opera Theater of Pittsburgh,
and will reprise the roll this fall with Long Island Opera.
Upcoming performances include alto soloist in St. Matthew
Passion with Albany Pro Musica, and alto soloist in Rossini’s
Stabat Mater with The Octavo Singers. Additionally, she is
currently a member of the operatic pop trio Bella Diva.
Joshua Fishbein (A’06) was recently a finalist the
2012-2013 Young New Yorkers’ Chorus 9th Competition
for Young Composers. In addition, he won the 2012 BMI 60th
Annual Student Composer Award, the 2012 American Prize
in Composition – Choral Division (student), 2012 Hollywood
Master Chorale, “Voices of LA” Project, 2012 American
Choral Directors Association, Brock Memorial Student
Composition Contest, 2011-2012 Guild of Temple Musicians,
Young Composers Award, and came in second place
at the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival Student
Composition Contest.
Luke Fitzpatrick (MM’12) participated in the National
Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, CO, under the direction
of Carl Topilow this past summer. In September he will
attend Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles for the
Artist Diploma program.
Jena Gardner (MM’11) was hired in January 2013 as Horn
Instructor at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as winning a
French Horn position with the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra.
Nicholas J. Gatto (MM’02) is currently the Director of
Music and organist at Saint Bartholomew Roman Catholic
Church in East Brunswick, New Jersey as well as a staff
piano accompanist at The College of New Jersey. In June,
2011, he was the oboe soloist for the premiere performance
of Tim Keyes’ New England Tapestry, a concerto for oboe,
choir, and orchestra at Richardson Auditorium in Princeton,
New Jersey. In September 2011, he performed with the
Monmouth Winds in the East Coast premiere of Eric Ewazen’s
Cascadian Concerto for woodwind quintet and orchestra with
the Monmouth Symphony in Red Bank. Next spring, he will
perform Mozart’s Oboe Concerto with the St. Mary Chamber
Orchestra in South Amboy. Nicholas married Andrea Parker in
August and currently resides in Edison.
What’s
New
Amal Gochenour (MM’12) was one of three flutists
selected to perform in the Castleton Festival Orchestra under
the direction of Lorin Maazel.
David Grabowski (A’11) is serving as Administrator of
Development at Concert Artists Guild in New York City.
He also freelances as a film composer and writer.
Catherine Gregory (AD’12) was accepted into the
fellowship program of the Carnegie Hall Academy.
Heather Hall (MM’03) serves as the Director of Music
at the Church of the Holy Family in New Rochelle, NY.
In the past 2 years, her adult choir has performed the
Mozart Requiem and the Vivaldi Gloria in partnership
with a church choir in the Bronx and the Artemis Chamber
Ensemble. She has been heard in a live broadcast of Masson
Radio Maria and accepted an invitation to play flute for a
Mass shown on EWTN. Heather has also instituted a music
education program at Holy Family called Making Music
Praying Twice for families of the parish with children ages
new born to 5 years. The year 2012 marks her 25th year as a
church musician - having begun as an organist at her home
church in Vandergrift, PA at the age of 11. Heather and her
husband, Michael, (Tepper ‘08 and Heinz ‘09) have 2 young
sons and make their home in Manhattan. Her website is
MusicHallNYC.com.
Courtenay L. Harter (A’90) is currently Associate
Professor of Music at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN
teaching all music theory, oboe/English horn, interdisciplinary
courses in psychology & music, and coaching chamber
music. Harter continues to freelance & perform.
Colin Hartnett (A’08) is currently Principal Timpani of
the Chattanooga Symphony and was a semifinalist in an
international audition for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Joseph Hasper (A’92) is working on his doctoral
dissertation at the University of Oklahoma and is in the
process of composing a four-movement symphony.
On September 6 two of his compositions will be premiered
at the University of Oklahoma: Five Forms for Woodwind
Quintet and Prelude and Allegro for Violin and Piano. He
was also the winner of the 2012 Anton Stadler Composition
Competition and his Concertino for Trombone and Band
(with Joseph LaRosa) was selected for publication by
Wehr’s Music House this summer.
Renée Fleming, receives
an honory Doctor of Fine Arts
from Carnegie Mellon’s College
of Fine Arts
Renée Fleming, famed soprano, after having received
an honory doctorate with School of Music faculty member
Mildred Miller Posvar. Ms. Fleming studied for a brief stint
with Ms. Posvar prior to her professional career.
Andrea Humenick (MAM’12) was hired by the Orpheus
Chamber Orchestra in October 2012 as Development and
Special Events Associate, as well as by the Imani Winds
Chamber Music Festival in March 2012 as the Assistant
Administrative Director.
Patrick Johnson-Whitty (MM’10) won the position of
2nd Bassoon & Contrabassoon with the San Francisco Ballet
in December 2010, and won the contrabassoon position with
the Bergen Filharmoniske Orkester in Norway.
Valerie Komar (married name Beatson) (A’93) has
opened a multilingual cultural center and school of music
for children in Paris: www.kidjam.fr. This will also serve as
a meeting/performance space for CMU & Juilliard alumni.
Michael Laubach (MM’07) has recently been appointed
to the position of Principal Timpani of the Virginia Symphony.
Nicholas Lewis (MM’96) is currently Principal Clarinetist
at Bard Conductor’s Institute Orchestra, Principal Clarinetist
at Music for the Folk, and Bass Clarinetist with the Richmond
Symphony Orchestra.
Lizzie McGlinchey (A’06) was hired as Product Manager
at Promoboxx in January 2013.
27
...CONTINUED
Andrew McKenna Lee (A’98) recently performed as a
featured solo artist at the prestigious Guitar Foundation of
America Convention in Charleston, SC. Other recent activities
include a commission from Italian guitarist Sergio Sorrentino
for the solo guitar piece Curio, which Mr. Sorrentino premiered
at the 20th International Guitar Festival of Lagonegro, Italy.
Mr. Sorrentino has also recorded Lee’s work for solo electric
guitar and electronics, Sunrise from the Bottom of the Sea,
for a CD on the Italian label Silta Records, which was released
in July 2012. Currently, Lee is at work on a large-scale song
project that draws freely from a diverse array of influences
ranging from classic rock and psychedelia to minimalism and
polyphonic Renaissance vocal music. Scored for two electric
guitars, electric bass, drums, mallet percussion, string quartet,
and three women’s voices, the project is scheduled for release
on New Amsterdam Records
in 2013-2014.
Eddie Meneses (MM’08) won the Principal Percussion
position with the Santa Barbara Symphony in 2008. He also
was the percussionist for the Cirque du Soleil show Iris
in Hollywood, running for a year and a half.
Marc Lopez (MM’12) Received a commission from
the Orquestra de Girona in Catalunya, Spain; the resulting
Sinfonietta for String Orchestra was premiered by the
orchestra in December 2012, in a performance led by
Maestro Xavier Puig.
Remembering
Chauncey Vernon
Kelley, Jr.
Chauncey Vernon Kelley, Jr.
1913-2011
Carnegie Mellon alumnus
Chauncey Kelley (A’35) enjoyed
a brilliant and multi-faceted
career, one that spanned most of
the 20th century and
took him across the country
and around the world.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1913,
Chauncey Kelley attended
Carnegie Mellon University
(then Carnegie Technical
Institute) earning a degree
in music education, and
28
did graduate work at The
Juilliard School. He began his
professional career as an oboist
with the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra, the NBC Symphony,
and the New York Philharmonic.
These experiences brought him
into contact with some of the
most legendary conductors
of the 20th century including
Otto Klemperer, Fritz Reiner,
and Arturo Toscanini.
Kelley served in the US Army
during World War II, conducting
the 78th Division Band and the
225th Army Band. Upon returning
to civilian life, Kelley was staff
conductor with the American
Broadcasting Company in New
York City and directed the ABC
Symphony for five consecutive
seasons. He was frequently
Wicked, Romeo & Juliet
PBS, Lion King,
Grammy
Ming Luke (MM’02) recently worked with the Bolshoi
Orchestra in conjunction with an international tour by the San
Francisco Ballet. He conducted Romeo and Juliet with the
San Francisco Ballet and will be conducting the ensemble
on their upcoming tour to England and Washington DC. He
also performed at the International Mahler Festival in Jihlava,
Czech Republic with American Soprano Carrie Hennessey,
performing Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer.
Thomas Lukowicz (AD’08) was appointed to the
performance faculty (tuba) of Wright State University in Ohio.
Brian McBride (MM’08) was selected by an international
panel as a finalist in the Solo Competition (Artist Division)
at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference in Linz,
Austria in June.
Emma Niesl (married name Koi) (MM’12) was a
substitute with the Milwaukee Symphony flute section
in numerous performances, including their performance
at Carnegie Hall in May 2012.
Christiane Noll (A’90) joins the Wichita Symphony and
guest conductor Thomas Douglas of the Music Theatre of
Wichita for the Symphony’s October 6 opening with Broadway
hits from Wicked, The Lion King, Phantom of the Opera,
Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rent,
and more.
engaged as a guest conductor
in Europe, appearing with the
Pasdeloup Orchestra in Paris,
the l’Orchestre de la
Radiodiffusion Française,
the l’Opéra de Monte-Carlo,
and the Trieste Opera. While
in Monte Carlo, Kelley had the
distinction of conducting the
orchestra for the coronation
ceremony of Prince Rainier III.
In 1953 he became a founding
member of the Savannah (GA)
Symphony Orchestra and was
also its music director from
1953 until 1969. Kelley left
Savannah to return to Carnegie
Mellon, where he served as
Head of Orchestral Activities
and Assistant Head of the Music
Department. He maintained an
active professional conducting
schedule during his CMU tenure,
conducting the McKeesport
Symphony and guest conducting
throughout the US and in Central
America.
Kelley was deeply committed
to leadership and service within
the arts community, serving as
a faculty and board member of
Lord Fairfax Community College,
the Virginia Commission for the
Arts, and the Shenandoah Valley
Music Festival. He also served
as president of the Shenandoah
Arts Council, the Strasburg
(VA) Musem, and the Strasburg
Rotary. He was a member
of the Phi Mu Alpha National
Music Fraternity.
Georgia Osborne (A’80) spent this past summer
working at The Weston Playhouse in Weston, VT. In May,
Osborne appeared as Florence Foster Jenkins in Souvenir:
A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins in New
York City (a role which Osborne also played at the Weston
Playhouse in 2011 to much critical and popular acclaim).
Osborne lives in New York City.
Michael Remson (MM’92) currently serves as Executive
and Artistic Director of the American Festival for the Arts
(AFA). As a composer, Dr. Remson has received numerous
grants, commissions and fellowships and his works have
been performed throughout the United States and in Europe.
Dr. Remson served as Composer-in-Residence with the
Ulster Orchestra in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as recipient of
an award from the Americans for the Arts Foundation (ARTSUSA) and the Irish Arts Council. Dr. Remson is also on faculty
at the Houston Ballet Academy and an Affiliate Artist at the
University of Houston Moores School of Music.
Marc Rosenberg (MM’11) was invited to participate in
the Celedonio Romero Guitar Institute, a week long program
in July ‘12 in Oklahoma in which he received private lessons
from the legendary guitarist Pepe Romero and participated
in a master class with the entire Romero Guitar Quartet.
Mr. Rosenberg has also been accepted into the Máster en
Interpretación de Guitarra Clásica program at the University
of Alicante in Spain starting in January ‘13 where he will study
with such notable musicians as Manuel Barrueco, David
Russel, and Nigel North.
Carol Rosenberger (A’55) recently retired from the
concert stage after making 30-plus recordings as a pianist.
She is now the General Director in Recording Production
and A&R for Delos. She lives and works in Sonoma, CA.,
and distributes Delos recordings through Naxos of America.
John Rusnak (A’84) is currently based in Los Angeles
Scott Seifried (A’89) is Director of Guitar Studies at
Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia, which boasts
one of the oldest and most highly regarded public school
guitar programs in the US. This past March, Robinson’s
Advanced Guitar Ensemble received rave reviews for their
performance at the American String Teachers Association
national convention. In addition, he was invited to serve on
ASTA’s Guitar-in-the-Schools national task force, and his most
recent article, “Why Guitar Kids Are Different: Attracting New
Students to School Instrumental Programs,” appeared in the
May 2012 issue of American String Teacher magazine.
Hyesong Shin (A’12) began her graduate degree at Indiana
University’s Jacobs School of Music this fall and was one of
six graduate students awarded the Jacobs Fellow – one of the
school’s most prestigious award grants.
Rebecca Swain (married name Chapman) (A’12)
will enter the University of Texas in Austin to pursue
a Master of Music degree.
Marie Tachouet (MM’08) was recently appointed
Principal Flutist of the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra
under the direction of Andrew Davis.
as pianist, composer, producer and songwriter. In 2011,
he recorded harpsichord and piano solos for the soundtrack
of the PBS movie The Washingtons of Sulgrave Manor.
John is also a successful pop songwriter; his music is
published by Warner Brothers Publications and OCP.
Elizabeth Talbert (BM’12) will be attending the San
Francisco Conservatory to pursue a Master of Music degree.
Marco Sartor (MM’08) received First Prize in the JoAnn
Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition in
Buffalo. He also completed engagements with the Buffalo
Philharmonic and Virginia Symphony Orchestras. Additionally,
he recorded his first solo album Red for Fleur de Son Classics
which received enthusiastic reviews in his home country
of Uruguay and participated in guitarist’s Marc Regnier’s
album Radamés Gnatalli: Chamber works for guitar which
was Grammy-nominated in 2010 as best chamber music
recording. He currently lives in New Haven, CT and is
completing his Master in Musical Arts (doctoral residency)
at Yale University.
Jorge Variego (MM’06) was resident artist at the Centro
Timothy Tan (CIT’10) was hired in 2012 by the Fort Wayne
Philharmonic as Personnel Manager and Section Violinist.
Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras (CMMAS) in
July 2012, with the support of the North Dakota Council on
the Arts. He recorded his forthcoming solo CD, Regress,
featuring works for clarinet and electronics by Argentine
composers, which will be released in 2013. His research
was published by the University of Rome, the University
of Texas at Austin, and the Universidad de Lanus in Argentina.
Variego was invited to be resident artist at the Visby Centre
for Composers, in Sweden, in June 2013, where he will
work on a new piece for orchestra and electronic media
commissioned by the Berner Musikkollegium.
29
...CONTINUED
A Legacy in
by JENNIFER BOUTON (MM’07)
A performance at Carnegie
Hall has long been the proof
of a musician’s arrival on the
world stage. That old saying –
“How do you get to Carnegie
Hall?... Practice, practice,
practice!” – is certainly still
true. The performers who
appear onstage at Carnegie Hall
have devoted tens of thousands
of hours to the mastery of their
craft. Professional orchestras
regularly travel there from
around the country as a way to energize the communities in their
home states, to present themselves to New York concertgoers, and
to participate in the numerous festivals designed to bring new
audiences to Carnegie Hall.
On May 11, 2012, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra performed
at Carnegie Hall as part of the Spring for Music Festival a concert series created to feature orchestras with a commitment
to adventurous programming in Classical Music. Among the
95 musicians sharing the stage that night, each viewing the
performance through the lens of his or her own journey to the
hall, the flute section had a particularly unique path to trace.
Marie Tachouet (MM’08), Emma Niesl (MM’12), and I (MM’07),
all studied with Jeanne Baxtresser and Alberto Almarza at
Carnegie Mellon University. For us, the performance at Carnegie
Hall represented not only the pinnacle of our professional careers
to that point, but also a celebration of the shared education and
musical heritage that had allowed us to reach it.
Carnegie Mellon Professors Baxtresser and Almarza have created
a uniquely rich environment that provides one of the best training
programs for orchestral flutists. CMU alumni hold prominent
positions in orchestras and universities around the globe. Marie
(Mimi) Tachouet describes Carnegie Mellon as “a magical place”
and Jeanne Baxtresser and Alberto Almarza as “two figures as
revered in the flute world as Carnegie Hall is in the performing
arts world.” But besides the professional successes of their
graduates, Baxtresser and Almarza are renowned for encouraging
the kind of relationships among students that make reunions like
ours possible. A significant part of the training for CMU flutists
30
takes place during the weekly studio class, with the entire flute
studio in attendance. Professors Baxtresser and Almarza coach
individual students on specific ideas for the given repertoire;
this allows everyone a chance to learn from the performing
experience of their colleagues and fosters and environment
of support and cooperation.
When Mimi and I were attending Carnegie Mellon, most
of the flute studio would compete in the same auditions for
professional orchestral positions. Professors Baxtresser and
Almarza encouraged us to work together, rather than sequestering
ourselves in our practice rooms for weeks beforehand. As a result,
much of our audition preparation was collaborative, both in studio
class and mock auditions. Audition preparation is always an
intense and undeniably competitive process, but in the supportive
atmosphere of the CMU flute studio, it took on an atmosphere
of joyful excitement. We often traveled together to auditions,
and it was reassuring to know that when my portion of the audition
was done, my CMU colleagues would be there, ready to celebrate
or commiserate over beers. What we shared was greater than
the difference between those who advanced in auditions and
who didn’t; there was a sense of camaraderie that transcended
competition. As a result, I formed many enduring friendships
with my colleagues in the flute studio at CMU. Mimi adds,
“I will never forget the cohesion of the studio and the wonderful
times I shared with my fellow flutists. For me, performing at
Carnegie Hall with my dearest friends from CMU is the fulfillment
of a great personal and professional dream.”
The sense of fellowship among CMU flutists is due in part to
the excellent overall training we received at Carnegie Mellon.
However, it is also the product of a distinguished pedagogical
lineage that reaches all the way back to Julius Baker, who was the
Principal Flutist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from
1941-’43, and the New York Philharmonic from 1965 until 1983.
In addition to his celebrated orchestral career, Julius Baker was
highly sought after as a teacher. Baker trained a generation of
outstanding flutists during his tenure at The Juilliard School.
Jeanne Baxtresser and Alberto Almarza both studied with Baker;
in addition, Mimi Tachouet, Emma Niesl, and I worked with teachers
during our undergraduate years who were students of Julius Baker
and Jeanne Baxtresser. Thus our reunion at the Carnegie Hall
Performance reflected 75 years of this eminent tradition.
The product of this musical heritage is an extremely refined
concept of sound that is instantly recognizable. Ms. Baxtresser
tells of attending a New York Philharmonic concert with Julius
Baker honoring the retirees of the orchestra, in which Sandra
Church (Associate Principal Flute, and another Baker student)
was playing a solo: “Sandy played and Julie [Julius Baker]
grabbed my hand. ‘That’s us,’ he said.”
I had the same reaction when I first heard Emma Niesl playing
with the Milwaukee Symphony. I was the only permanent member
of the Milwaukee Symphony in the flute section that performed
at Carnegie Hall, and when Emma played as a substitute with us
last November, her sound triggered a whole series of musical
memories for me. There was something both indefinable and
yet immediately familiar in her tone; hearing it for the first
time evoked an almost Proustian connection between past and
present. Similarly, when Mimi Tachouet began rehearsing with the
Milwaukee Symphony three weeks before the tour, it felt as though
Ms. Baxtresser was right there, talking to me through Mimi’s flute.
On more than one occasion I found myself turning my head to look
– the sensation was so strong and the communication so direct,
it felt like speech.
The program presented by the Milwaukee Symphony at Carnegie
Hall provided the perfect vehicle to highlight these connections
between students and teachers. The concert followed a thread
linking French composer Claude Debussy to his student Olivier
Messaien, and further, to Messaien’s student, the Chinese
composer Qigang Chen. Tracing a broad arc of musical thought,
we began with Debussy’s colorful and evocative La Mer (1905),
continued to Messaien’s shimmering Les Offrandes Oubliées
(1930), and concluded with Chen’s atmospheric Iris Dévoilée
(2001). The stylistic connections between these works were a
beautiful parallel to our own artistic evolution: just as Debussy
shaped the musical language of the 20th and 21st centuries,
so Julius Baker, Jeanne Baxtresser, and Alberto Almarza have
shaped the sound of a new generation of flutists.
It seems both natural and extraordinary that the musical
reunion of three CMU alumnae took place in the country’s most
distinguished musical venue. (Andrew Carnegie built Carnegie
Hall in 1891 – nine years before founding a school he called the
Carnegie Institute of Technology, which would later become
Carnegie Mellon University). Nearly every major musician or
ensemble for the past 120 years has sought to present themselves
at Carnegie Hall; when you step inside it is hard not to imagine
Igor Stravinsky, Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, Duke Ellington,
Martin Luther King Jr., Glenn Gould, Groucho Marx, Leonard
Bernstein, and the countless other luminaries who have
performed or spoken there. In Ms. Baxtresser’s words,
“It is a room, a room that holds history beyond what you
can keep in your mind.”
This performance marked my first occasion in Carnegie Hall as a
performer or audience member. Though it was just the beginning
of my relationship with the space and the legacy of musicians
whose memories haunt its halls, this concert also represented
the culmination of a course set in motion during my time at
Carnegie Mellon. Furthermore, it served as tribute to the personal
and professional relationships I began there. Incredibly,
Ms. Baxtresser was able to attend The Milwaukee Symphony’s
Carnegie Hall concert, adding her physical presence to the spirit
of her many performances still reverberating through the hall.
Now our performance is one of the thousands energizing future
musicians onstage at Carnegie Hall. As we celebrate our shared
heritage, we are also all the next links in the chain. The idea
persists, in that indefinable quality of our sound. Which part
of it is Baxtresser and which is Almarza? Which is Messiaen
and which is Debussy? Which part goes back even farther?
What will continue in our own students, tracing this same line?
Musicians play for the love of their art, but it is seldom so
simple and idealistic – we’re accustomed to making the best of a
performance with too few rehearsals, in an uncomfortable space,
with people we may have just met or may not care to know better.
Great music is made every day in imperfect situations. To be able
to play with an orchestra of such caliber, in the greatest hall in the
country, is truly a rare gift. To have shared that experience with
friends, with a beloved teacher in attendance, assures that it will
be among the most memorable performances of our lives.
Jennifer Bouton (MM’07) is Principal Piccolo of the Milwaukee Symphony,
a position she began in September of 2011.
Marie Tachouet (MM’08) played principal flute for the Carnegie performances,
and was recently appointed Principal Flute of the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Emma Niesl (MM’12) graduated from Carnegie Mellon this June and regularly
performs with the Milwaukee Symphony on 2nd flute.
31
Welcome:
What’s
New
32
Jennifer Aylmer
Assistant Professor of Voice
Soprano Jennifer Aylmer has developed
a sterling reputation for her beautiful voice,
compelling stage portrayals, and impeccable
musicianship. She is a featured soloist on
Opera America’s new CD The Opera America
Songbook, and during the 2012-2013 season
appeared on several promotional recitals at
the National Opera Center. Recently, Aylmer
returned to Portland Opera and Opera Theatre
of St. Louis, for performances as Susanna in
Le nozze di Figaro, and as Despina in Così fan
tutte. This February her new singing translation
of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel premiered
at Stony Brook University. She will make her
Dallas Opera debut in 2014.
Aylmer made her debut with The Metropolitan
Opera in 2005 in the world premiere of Tobias
Picker’s An American Tragedy and was
Papagena in the first live worldwide opera
broadcast of The Magic Flute. In all, she has
sung over 40 roles with Atlanta Opera, Austin
Lyric Opera, NYCO, Spoleto Festival (USA),
Opera Boston, Orlando Opera, HGO,
and others.
Aylmer is a graduate of Eastman School
of Music, the Juilliard Opera Center, and
received her Masters of Vocal Pedagogy from
Westminster Choir College in 2011. Aylmer has
recently been appointed Assistant Professor
of Voice at Carnegie Mellon.
Monique Mead
Director of Music Entrepreneurship Studies
A passionate ambassador of classical music,
violinist Monique Mead has developed a
multi-faceted career as a performer, pedagogue,
and presenter. Inspired by her collaborations
with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood and the
Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Mead has
devoted her career to building new audiences
for orchestras, choirs, and music festivals in the
United States and Europe. Her programs have
drawn international acclaim for their popular
appeal and innovative educational approach.
Mead graduated summa cum laude from
Indiana University with Bachelor and Master
of Music degrees. She currently serves as
a Consultant for the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra, teaches violin at CMU’s Music
Preparatory School, serves as Co-music
Director of the Strings Festival in Colorado,
and regularly teaches classes for CMU’s
Osher Program.
Her appointment as Director of Music
Entrepreneurship Studies at CMU School
of Music fulfils her desire to inspire the
next generation in developing innovative
career paths.
Maria Spacagna
Associate Professor of Voice
Maria Spacagna, soprano, has had a
distinguished career that brought her to
5 continents where she performed leading
roles on many of the world’s most prestigious
stages. Ms. Spacagna was appointed Associate
Professor of Voice at Carnegie Mellon in 2012.
She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera
opposite Luciano Pavarotti singing the title
role in Verdi’s Luisa Miller. She made her
European debut as the first American to
sing Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at La Scala.
She has recorded for Vox Classics, the first
commercial recording of the 1904 La Scala
world premiere version of Madama Butterfly,
which includes the revisions for Brescia
and Paris. Ms. Spacagna is a graduate of
the New England Conservatory where she
received a Bachelor and a Master of Music in
Voice with distinction. She was a winner of the
Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions,
the Verdi International Voice Competition,
and the Paris International Voice Competition.
Recently, she received a RI Pell Award for
Excellence in the Arts and an award given by
the Italian Consulate in Boston for Outstanding
Achievement in Art, Culture and Entertainment.
Alberto Almarza, Associate Professor of Flute,
Associate Research Professor Roger Dannenberg
recently recorded two CDs for the MODE Records label:
Complete Flute Works by David Stock and Chamber Music
of Mahler and Schoenberg. Almarza has traveled extensively
during the past year, performing, partcipating in residencies,
and giving masterclasses across the country and around the
world. He has appeared at at the University of West Virginia,
the FEMUSIC FesGval in Brazil, Seoul National University,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Youth Orchestra
Foundation of Chile, and in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He
also performed in Bogotá with the National Symphony of
Colómbia, and was a featured performer in the innovative
TEDxPittsburgh lecture series.
worked with his students to create an innovative concert
experience: in the spring of 2012, six laptop computer
ensembles, operated by about 50 performers, collaborated
in a live internet performance. The network of virtual
collaborators extended across the US and as far away
as Belfast, Northern Ireland. Dannenberg conducted the
performance while presenting his work at the Symposium
on Laptop Ensembles and Orchestras at Louisiana State
University (Baton Rouge); his students participated in the
performance from their lab at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh.
In June, Dr. Leonardo Balada, Professor of
Composition, taught a ten-day intensive composition
course at the Polytechnic University of Valencía (Spain).
Dr. Balada also gave a talk on the roots of his creative
inspiration, called Surrealism in the Music of Leonardo Balada:
Under the Spell of Salvador Dalí. Balada’s works enjoyed
frequent performance in the past year, both here
in the US and abroad. In June, Conductor Josep CaballeDomenech led the Sinfonie-Orchester Sankt Gallen in a
performance of Balada’s Guernica. Balada’s works for solo
guitar also received performances in Spain, Germany, and
in the US. In May, the Spanish Brass ensemble Luur Metalls
performed Balada’s Mosaico in Valencía. Most significantly,
in 2013, Naxos records will release an album of Balada’s
orchestral works, performed by the Malaga Philharmonic
and featuring guest soloists from the London Symphony
Orchestra. The disc will include Balada’s Sinfonia en Negro:
Homage á M. Luther King, Columbus: Images, and the
Double Concerto for Flute, Oboe, and Orchestra.
Jeanne Baxtresser, the Vira I. Heinz Professor
of Flute, was the sole adjudicator representing the Americas
at the Beijing International Flute CompeGGon, which was held
in October 2012. In addition, she was a featured guest artist
at the 40th Anniversary Conference of the Suzuki Association
of the Americas. Baxtresser was also a member of the flute
faculty at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara,
California. She has recently presented masterclasses at Seoul
National University, the New World Symphony, University of
Kansas City Conservatory of Music, Florida State University,
and the Riverside Church in New York City.
Chris Capizzi, Artist Lecturer in Jazz Piano,
has been invited to present his paper, Preserving Black
American Music: ‘Mass’ by Mary Lou Williams, at the annual
conference of the Society for American Music, which will
meet in March of this year. In support and recognition of this
project, he was also awarded a 2012 research grant from
the Morroe Berger-Benny Carter Jazz Research Fund,
at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University.
Nancy Galbraith, Professor of Composition
and Theory, has had a number of performances of her
works during 2012: Euphonic Blues (premiere) by Carnegie
Mellon Philharmonic with Ronald Zollman, conductor; Febris
Ver (Spring Fever) by Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble
with Thomas Thompson, conductor; Four Nature Canticles
(premiere) by Lyrica Chamber Music with Adam Waite,
conductor & Kent Place Chamber Singers; Edel Thomas,
director; Danza de los Duendes by Waukesha Area Symphonic
Band with Rick Kirby, music director; Piano Sonata No. 1 by Josie
Merlino, piano; Hodie Christus Natus Est by Westmoreland
Choral Society with Thomas Octave, music director; Danza
de los Duendes by University of Delaware Wind Ensemble
with Wesley Broadnax, conductor; Febris Ver (premiere) by
the IUP Wind Ensemble with Jason Worzbyt, conductor; and
O Magnum Mysterium by the 2012 Pennsylvania Collegiate
Choral FesGval Singers with Andrew Clark, conductor.
Enrique Graf, Artist Lecturer in Piano, was the soloist
in the world premiere of Florencia DiConcilio’s Piano Concerto,
which was commissioned by the Orquesta Fílarmonica de
Montevideo. He also appeared as a soloist in Leonardo
Balada’s Concerto for Piano and Winds at Carnegie Music
Hall; this work was recorded for a forthcoming CD on the
Naxos label. Graf was the Guest Artist at the Alabama Music
Teachers Conference where he gave recitals, in addition to
performing in South Carolina and Italy. He was a member of
the jury for the Hilton Head International Competition and for
the Oberlin Conservatory Piano Competition. Graf traveled to
Italy, to teach at the Music Fest Perugia; his students John
Lam, Luis Hernandez, Eun Sook Cha and Brian Gilling also
performed in the festival. Graf’s student Mengyi Yang was a
winner of the Pittsburgh Concert Society and Carnegie Mellon
Concerto Competitions.
John Paul Ito, Assistant Professor of Music Theory,
presented his paper Focal Impulses and Expressive
Performance at the ninth International Symposium on
Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval, which met in
June 2012. This paper also appeared in the College Music
Symposium that Fall. Ito’s other publications will appear
in 2013 in the Journal of Music Theory and the Journal
of Musicology.
33
...CONTINUED
Craig Knox, Artist Lecturer in Tuba, collaborated with CMU
staff pianist Rodrigo Ojeda to release A Road Less Traveled,
an album of music for tuba and piano. Knox was also a featured
performer at the annual Army Band Tuba-Euphonium Workshop
in Washington, D.C., where he appeared as a guest soloist
with the US Army Band (Pershing’s Own.) In March 2012, Knox
gave the world première performance of André Previn’s Triple
Concerto with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted
by Maestro Previn. The Pittsburgh Symphony commissioned
this work for Knox and his colleagues George Vosburgh and
William Caballero.
Stephen Neely, Associate Director of the Carnegie Mellon
Marta Sanchez Dalcroze Training Center and Artist
Lecturer in Eurhythmics, has been invited to teach in 10
different cities in the coming school year as guest professor,
artist in residence, or by special faculty invitations. In addition,
he also conducted a production of the Lukas Foss’s opera,
Griffelkin, at CAPA. This was the first-ever “youth” production
of the full opera, with all parts performed by promising high
school students.
Richard Randall, Director of the Music Cognition
Lab and Assistant Professor of Music Theory,
presented his neurocognitive work on musical
expectation and music-syntax violations at the
joint meeting of the International Conference of
Music Perception and Cognition and the European
Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music in
Thessaloniki, Greece in July, and at the 18th International
Conference on Biomagnetism in Paris, France in August.
While Michele de la Reza and Peter Kope, Assistant
Teaching Professors of Dance and Co-Artistic
Directors of Attack Theatre, are teachers of dance,
their musical collaborations are far-reaching. Last season
was an unprecedented year of musical collaborations.
As company in residence for Pittsburgh Opera, they danced in
productions of Turandot, Pearl Fishers and served as movement
coaches for the principals in Tosca. Kope and de la Reza
collaborated with Opera Theater of Pittsburgh to create a fully
danced production of SoM alumni Ricky Ian Gordon’s Euridice
and Orpheus and the US Premiere of Maria de Buenos Aires,
an Astor Piazolla tango operetta with Quantum Theatre.
Building on a long-standing relationship with Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra, Kope was movement director and
choreographer for the world premiere production of Handel’s
Messiah. In addition, Peter and Michele created a premiere
of the rarely choreographed La Creation du Monde by
Darius Milhaud for the PSO’s Paris Festival in May.
Throughout the spring 2012, Attack Theatre created
and toured a world premiere of Traveling with musical
collaborator New Victorians including a performance at
the New Hazlett Theater on Pittsburgh’s northside. Kope
and de la Reza also worked with the PSO to re-imagine
a fully theatricalized Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat
premiering the work with members of the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra.
34
Stephen Schultz, Associate Teaching Professor,
recently participated in two international tours. He performed
with the Wiener Akademie and the actor John Malkovich in
a tour of Ecuador and Chile; he also appeared with Musica
Angelica Baroque Orchestra at North- and South American
venues in a traveling production of Malkovich’s two chamber
operas, The Infernal Comedy and The Giacomo Variations.
Additionally, he has also recently appeared in Apollo’s Fire’s
staging of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Bach’s St. John Passion
the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall (Los Angeles,
CA), and as a featured soloist at the Festival del Sole Festival
with Nicholas McGegan and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
(Calistoga, CA). Schultz was a judge for the Baroque Flute
Competition, taught a master class on Bach, and perform
a recital at the National Flute Association Convention in
Las Vegas on August 9-11. In November Schultz was the
featured soloist in the Carnegie Mellon Baroque Ensemble’s
premiere of Nancy Galbraith’s Concerto for Electric Baroque
Flute, Piano, and Baroque Ensemble.
Pittsburgh
Symphony,
Pittsburgh
Opera,
Attack
Theatre
Dr. Lewis Strouse, Associate Teaching Professor
and Chair of Music Education, represented the
Pennsylvania Association of Colleges & Teacher Educators
(PAC-TE) on a joint panel with members of the Pennsylvania
Association of Supervision & Curriculum Development (PASCD)
to present parameters of measuring teacher effectiveness
as part of the PAC-TE Spring Conference held at Penn State
University in April. He was an invited panelist during the annual
PAC-TE Teacher Education Assembly last October presenting
on The Role of Foundation Courses in Teacher Education
Programs. His 2011-2012 publications included Multifocal
Assessment at the Core of Arts Education that appeared in
PMEA News (Fall 2011) and was reprinted by the Assessment
Special Research Interest Group (SRIG) of the National
Association for Music Education (NAfME) in March.
An interview with Dr. Strouse was the basis of an article relating
music study to the process of creativity in other subjects titled
Turning a Spotlight on the Creative Process in the January issue
of Teaching Music. At this fall’s PAC-TE Teacher Education
Assembly, he will present on strategies that connect foundation
concepts in teacher education to clinical experiences.
Daniel Teadt, Assistant Professor of Voice, performed
in a myriad of productions staged by Conspirare, New York City
Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Microscopic Opera, Susquehanna
Valley Chorale, and Opera Theater Summerfest.
Marilyn Taft Thomas, Professor of Music, had the premiere
of her composition The Elements: Four Sound Poems for
Violin and Orchestra on August 6, 2011, by faculty member
Andrés Cárdenes, Dorothy Richard Starling & Alexander Speyer
Jr. University Professor of Violin, at the Strings Festival in
Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Associate Professor of Composition Reza Vali’s
composition Kord (Calligraphy No. 9) was performed by the
Mexican cellist Juan Hermida on June 18, 2012 at the Palacio
de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, as part of the 34th International
Forum for New Music Festival. In Addition, he traveled to
Australia from June 16-25 for two full concerts of his music
in Sydney and Melbourne. While there, Vali was interviewed
live on Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Ronald Zollman, Associate Professor and Director
of Orchestral Studies, continues as Principal Guest
Conductor of the Prague Radio Orchestra. His major programs
this season include Mahler’s 6th Symphony and Berlioz’s
tone poem Harold in Italy. Zollman will also record two full
albums, one in collaboration with soloist Boris Berezovski.
Zollman’s forthcoming engagements include performances
in Bilbao, Belgrade, Mexico, and Bucharest. He will return for
the fourth time to Cuba for a collaborative project organized
by the Salzburg Mozarteum. He will also conduct a production
of Massenet’s Cendrillon at Indiana Opera. Zollman has
announced that he will start a five year tenure as Guest
Professor at the University of the Arts in Belgrade.
35
Honoring
Maestro
Robert Page
Called the “Dean of American Choral Conductors,” Maestro
Page’s distinguished career has been marked by accolades that
include two Grammy Awards, the Prix Mondial de Montreux,
the Grand Prix du Disque, and Pennsylvania’s “Artist of the Year”
award. The American Record Review called Maestro Page
“a national treasure” in recognition of his distinguished catalog
of over 44 recordings with choirs and orchestras.
Page prepared choruses for Eugene Ormandy and the
Philadelphia Orchestra (1956-1975), was Assistant Conductor
and Director of Choruses of the Cleveland Orchestra
(1971-1989), Music Director/Conductor of the Mendelssohn
Choir of Pittsburgh (1979-2006), and Director of Choral
Activities and Special Projects for Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Page has conducted performances in most of the countries
of Western Europe including the Dvorák Festival
(Czech Republic), Mikilli Festival (Finland), White Nights
Festival (St. Petersburg) and the Toulouse Festival (France).
Throughout his long career Maestro Page forged relationships
with important living composers, and has premiered many
notable works, including compositions by Samuel Barber,
Ned Rorem, and Alberto Ginastera. Page was personally selected
by composer Krysztof Penderecki to prepare the choruses
of the Chicago Lyric Opera and La Scala for the world premiere
of Penderecki’s opera Paradise Lost. Maestro Page also
conducted the first performances of Penderecki’s
Passion According to St. Luke in Cleveland and Philadelphia.
Photo: Carnegie Mellon University Archives
Robert Page
conducting
Cleveland
Orchestra.
Photo:
The Cleveland
Orchestra Archives
Robert Page conducting
the Baroque Ensemble,1975.
(back row)
Andrew Clark (MM’01),
Christine Hestwood (MM’96),
Robert Page, Dan Toven,
Thomas Douglas
Friends of the School of Music can insure his legacy by
making a gift to the Robert Page Fellowship Fund, online at
music.cmu.edu/pages/ways-to-give.
(front row)
Ming Luke (MM’02),
Jeffrey Tedford (MM’03)
Please join us in congratulating Robert Page on his impending
retirement and help us thank him for his impact on countless
music students at Carnegie Mellon University.
Taken September 28, 2001
in Alumni Concert Hall at a
reception in honor of Dr. Page
being named the Paul Mellon
University Professor of Music.
A Tribute
to Robert Page:
Robert Page conducting the Carnegie Mellon
Concert Choir and Repertory Chorus at
CAPA High School, February 16, 2013.
http://youtu.be/kIPFVqclw-s
Photo: Erica Dilcer
Music Rehearsal
with Robert Page,
1977.
Photo: Carnegie Mellon
University Archives
36
Robert Page with wife Glynn,
President Jared Cohon,
and Martin Prekop (then Dean
of CFA).
Taken September 28, 2001
in Alumni Concert Hall at a
reception in honor of Dr. Page
being named the Paul Mellon
University Professor of Music.
Denis Colwell, head of the School of Music, remarked,
“Maestro Page’s contributions to the School of Music and
to the community are remarkable and too numerous to list.
We are deeply grateful to this fabulous musician and pedagogue
for his service, teaching, and leadership.”
Watch:
Robert Page, Paul Mellon University Professor of Music and
Director of Choral Studies, will retire at the end of this academic
year from the Carnegie Mellon School of Music. Maestro Page
first joined Carnegie Mellon as head of the School of Music in
1975, and since then has had an important and lasting impact
on multiple generations of students.
Photo:
The Cleveland
Orchestra Archives
Carnegie Mellon University SCHOOL OF MUSIC
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3815
Address Service Requested
Carnegie Mellon University does not discriminate and Carnegie Mellon
University is required not to discriminate in admission, employment,
or administration of its programs or activities on the basis of race,
color, national origin, sex or handicap in violation of Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Educational Amendments
of 1972 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or other
federal, state, or local laws or executive orders.
However, in the judgment of the Carnegie Mellon Human Relations
Commission, the Presidential Executive Order directing the
Department of Defense to follow a policy of, “Don’t ask, don’t tell,
don’t pursue,” excludes openly gay, lesbian and bisexual students
from receiving ROTC scholarships or serving in the military.
Nevertheless, all ROTC classes at Carnegie Mellon University
are available to all students.
Carnegie Mellon University publishes an annual campus security
report describing the university’s security, alcohol and drug, and
sexual assault policies and containing statistics about the number and
type of crimes committed on the campus during the preceding three
years. You can obtain a copy by contacting the Carnegie Mellon Police
Department at 412-268-2323. The security report is available through
the World Wide Web at www.cmu.edu/police.
In addition, Carnegie Mellon University does not discriminate in
admission, employment or administration of its programs on the
basis of religion, creed, ancestry, belief, age, veteran status, sexual
orientation or gender identity. Carnegie Mellon does not discriminate
in violation of federal, state, or local laws or executive orders.
Inquiries concerning application of these statements should be
directed to the Provost, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes
Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, telephone 412-268-6684 or the
Vice President for Campus Affairs, Carnegie Mellon University,
5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, telephone 412-268-2057.
Obtain general information about Carnegie Mellon University
by calling 412-268-2000.
“ Music & Technology. Love it. ”
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me to go for computer science.”
VISIT: MUSIC.CMU.EDU
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The Full Version of Magazine - Carnegie Mellon School of Music

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