Category Archives: alumni

Early Music Ensemble Invited to Nationally Acclaimed Festival

February 26, 2016all, alumni, brass-percussion, brass-percussion-alumni, choral, composition, composition-alumni, conducting, dma, education, events, faculty news, jazz-alumni, keyboard, keyboard-alumni, MACCM, music-education-alumni, musicology-ethnomusicology, musicology-ethnomusicology-alumni, opera, promusica, string-alumni, string-news, student news, theory-alumni, theory-musicology-ethnomusicology, Uncategorized, voice, voice-alumni, woodwinds, woodwinds-alumnigabrig

BGSU’s Early Music Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Arne Spohr, has been selected by Early Music America to perform at Early Music America’s Young Performers Festival in Berkeley, CA. This nationally recognized festival will be featuring top university early music ensembles from around the United States, including groups from Indiana University, University of Southern California, Case Western Reserve University, and Brigham Young University Idaho. All performances will take place at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church from June 8th – 10th as part of the Berkeley Music Festival.

Professors Papanikolaou and Merritt presenitng pre-performance talks at Toledo Opera’s production of Porgy and Bess

February 10, 2016alumni, choral, education, events, faculty news, musicology-ethnomusicology, opera, promusica, student news, Uncategorized, voice, voice-alumnigabrig

Eftychia Papanikolaou, Associate Professor of Musicology, and Myra Merritt, Professor of Voice, will present two pre-performance talks at Toledo Opera’s production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Friday, February 12 at 6:30 p.m. and Sunday, February 14 at 1 p.m. in the Grand Lobby of the Valentine Theatre.

For more information please visit:

http://www.toledoopera.org/events/main/porgy-bess/

http://www.toledoopera.org/learn/pre-opera-talks/

Steinway Artist headlines Dubois Piano Festival

February 3, 2016events, keyboard, keyboard-alumniljgross

BOWLING GREEN, O. – Bowling Green State University will host American pianist and Steinway Artist Spencer Myer for the annual David D. Dubois Piano Festival and Competition, Feb. 12-14.

Lauded for “superb playing” and “poised, alert musicianship” by the Boston Globe, Myer is considered one of the most respected and sought-after pianists on today’s concert stages. During his visit to BGSU, Myers will sit on a panel of judges for the Dubois piano competition; work with piano students during a master class, and present a community concert at 8 p.m. on Feb. 13 in Kobacker Hall, Moore Musical Arts Center.

His performance will include pieces by Mozart, Schumann, Ravel and Bolcom.

Myer’s orchestral, recital and chamber music performances have been heard throughout the country, Canada, Europe, Africa and Asia. He has been soloist with, among many others, The Cleveland Orchestra; Boise, Dayton and Louisiana philharmonic orchestras; Pro Art Chamber Orchestra of Boston; The Park Avenue Chamber Symphony; Mexico’s Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco; South Africa’s Cape Town and Johannesburg philharmonic orchestras, and Beijing’s China National Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with such conductors as Leslie B. Dunner, Bernhard Gueller, Jacques Lacombe, Jahja Ling, Timothy Muffitt, Maurice Peress, Kevin Rhodes, Matthew Savery, Klauspeter Seibel, Steven Smith, Arjan Tien and Victor Yampolsky. In May 2005, his recital/orchestral tour of South Africa included a performance of the five piano concerti of Beethoven with the Chamber Orchestra of South Africa, followed by return orchestra and recital tours in 2010 and 2012.

His master class for BGSU piano students will be 2:30-4:30 p.m. on Feb. 12 in Bryan Recital Hall. The class is free and open to the public.

Twenty-six competitors will be invited to the Dubois competition semifinal round, which is Feb. 13 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Kobacker Hall, with the finalists announced at 5:30 p.m. The competition finals are Feb. 14 from 9 a.m. to noon in Kobacker Hall. Winners will be announced at 12:30 p.m.

Tickets for the public performance on Feb. 13 are $10 for adults, $5 for children and free for BGSU music students with ID. Tickets are available online at bgsu.edu/arts, by calling the Arts Box Office at 419-372-8171, or visiting the arts ticket office in the Wolfe Center for the Arts.

The Dubois Piano Festival and Competition is named for Dr. David D. Dubois, an internationally recognized consultant, author and speaker who had a love of music and a passion for piano and organ performance. In 2008, after reviewing proposals from major music schools around the nation, the David D. Dubois Trust established the competition at BGSU to enhance the piano program in the College of Musical Arts. The competition supports student pianists by providing scholarships for high school students to attend BGSU, encouraging undergraduate students to develop innovative programming ideas for outreach projects and supporting current piano students to participate in music festivals around the world.

For more information visit bgsu.edu/dubois.

BGSU makes strong presence at the 2016 New Music Gathering

December 10, 2015all, alumni, composition, dma, events, faculty news, musicology-ethnomusicology, musicology-ethnomusicology-alumni, New Music, promusica, student news, theory-musicology-ethnomusicology, Uncategorizedgabrig

Bowling Green State University will be well represented at the 2016 New Music Gathering held at the Peabody Conservatory. The following list includes those from BGSU performing and lecturing during this highly acclaimed new music conference:

Alumnus Ryan Muncy, part of panels: “Commissioning New Music”, and “New Music and Community Building”
Faculty member Ryan Ebright, part of panel: “New Music(ology) Gathering: Scholarly Perspectives on American New Music Since 1960”
Current DMA student Aaron Hynds: performance, 60 minute lecture/demo/question workshop
Current DMA student Hillary LaBonte: panel, “The Church of New Music: Places of Worship and the New Music Community”
Alumnae Viola Yip and Ellery Trafford: performance, “Instrumentalists Using the Voice”

BGSU students, faculty, and alumnae will participate in this interdisciplinary event taking place January 6-9, 2016.

From the mission statement of New Music Gathering:

“Even in a culture that thrives on connectivity, the ancient idea of simply being in the same place at the same time to exchange ideas continues to be the most effective, and New Music Gathering fills that need.

Following the conference model, the event will be three days of performances, presentations, and discussions, but as it is to be run not by an organization but by four working musicians – Lainie Fefferman, Daniel Felsenfeld, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Matt Marks – it should be a way to “skip the middleman” and focus on the needs and desires of the community directly.

As it is to be based in a different city annually, aside from bringing together those who write, perform and promote “contemporary classical” music to meet, talk, and develop collaborative relationships, the Gathering will also focus on the dedicated population in that specific region.”

Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard selects Mikel Kuehn for 2015 Composer Commissions

December 1, 2015all, alumni, composition, composition-alumni, dma, education, events, faculty news, music-education-alumni, musicology-ethnomusicology, musicology-ethnomusicology-alumni, New Music, promusica, theory-musicology-ethnomusicology, Uncategorizedgabrig

The Board of Directors of the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University is pleased to announce the names of fourteen composers selected to receive 2015 Fromm commissions. These commissions represent one of the principal ways that the Fromm Music Foundation seeks to strengthen composition and to bring contemporary concert music closer to the public. In addition to the commissioning fee, a subsidy is available for the ensemble performing the premiere of the commissioned work.

Among the fourteen recipients is local composer Mikel Kuehn, a resident of Sylvania, Ohio, and faculty at Bowling Green State University.

Founded by the patron of contemporary music, the late Paul Fromm, the Fromm Foundation is now in its sixtieth year, having been located at Harvard University for the past forty. Since the 1950s, it has commissioned well over 300 new compositions and their performances, and has sponsored hundreds of new music concerts and concert series.

BGSU Alumnus & Composer David Conte Reminisces on 60 Years in Music

November 2, 2015alumni, composition, composition-alumnispergal

San Francisco Classical Voice—

“David Conte doesn’t look like a sexagenarian, even though his seventh decade will begin on Dec. 20 and he’ll be publicly celebrating it with a Birthday Concert on Nov. 1 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chairs the Composition Department.

Young at heart as he manifestly remains, Conte has credentialed connections to the past. He spent several years as one of the last students of the legendary Nadia Boulanger and then spent scholarly and personal time with Aaron Copland, who’d been a pupil of Boulanger a half-century earlier. Conte secured academic degrees from Bowling Green State University and Cornell University, before joining SFCM in 1985. He’s composed extensively for chorus, as well as for solo voice, opera, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and solo instruments. SFCV shared a lunch with him near his Corona Heights home before he took a sentimental journey to his original hometown of Cleveland.”