Associate Professor of Piano, Thomas Rosenkranz, will be presented in a solo tour of China with performances in Shaoxing, Wenzhou, Leqing, Cixi, Ningbo, Houzhou and Jiaxing, from May 3rd-May 11th. On May 18th he will serve on the jury for the Spring Festival Competition in Shanghai, which is sponsored by Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. In addition he will give masterclasses at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu, and at the Xinghai Conservatory in Guangzhou.
A broken reed or sticky keys are the variables most saxophonists face during live performance.
But living with hearing loss has prepared music education major Jacob Kopcienski to overcome to a wider range of variables during his own performances: even the batteries going dead in his hearing aids. The disability hasn’t stopped him from collecting awards as a top student in the BGSU College of Musical Arts.
Diagnosed at age four with moderate-severe hearing loss, Kopcienski has focused on finding solutions rather than on his obstacles. He says the key is to face limitations, accept them and adapt, and that includes developing coping strategies and problem solving skills in order to achieve goals.
“For me, hearing is not a constant thing, he said. “Yes, it’s a deficiency and it’s challenging, but I have so much control over it that I don’t even notice it. It’s something I don’t even think about. Most people go through their lives only hearing one way, and not noticing a change in their hearing, but for me, mine can change throughout the day.”
One of his adaptations is to have different programs for his hearing aides – one for direct conversation, one for general circumstances, and one for performing. Educators across the college agree, Kopcienski has never asked for special treatment or consideration. He just keeps smiling and pressing while encouraging others as he goes.
Kopcienski’s accomplishments during his four years at BGSU are impressive by any measure, but he resists viewing his success against the backdrop of his impairment.
“Jacob’s hearing is a very minor issue in his working life,” said Elaine Colprit, chair of the Department of Music Education. “He has never been defined by his disability. If Jacob didn’t tell you, you’d never know, and it certainly has not prevented him from being one of our top students.”
Along with being a top student, Kopcienski has been honored with the Music Presser Award, won BGSU Competitions in Music Performance in 2011, and has performed in prestigious university ensembles, including the Borealis Saxophone Quartet, and was a first place winner of the BGSU Chamber Music Competition in 2010. He is also a student teacher with the band program at Perrysburg High School.
He hopes to study next year in France with the world-famous saxophonist Jean-Michel Goury, a member of the prominent XASAX Quartet and is a faculty member at the Conservatoire National de Musique de Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris.
That sounds like sweet music.
(Posted April 29, 2013 )
BGSU alumni Barry Hartz was named OMEA Outstanding Music Education 2013. For further information, go to: www.omea-ohio.org/activities/recognition.html) – then choose “outstanding educator.”
Per F. Broman, Associate Professor of Music Theory and Associate Dean, will present his paper “Mute the Bereaved Memories Speak: ‘Vulgar! Rough! Tasteless!—A major music event! Brilliant critique of civilization’,” a paper dealing with the first Requiem by composer Sven-David Sandström, at the Society for Word-Music Relations 7th Annual Lyrica Dialogues at Harvard University on May 3.
On April 4th and 5th, BGSU Philharmonia director Dr. Emily Freeman Brown conducted the Göttinger Symphonie Orchester in a program of Bohemian Masters of the Classical Period. The web site is http://www.gso-online.de/
Per F. Broman, Associate Professor of Music Theory, along with three graduate students, musicologist Jane Hines, composers Michael Kasinger and Carter Rice, will present research papers at the Music and Moving Image conference at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, May 31-June 2.
Hines’s “The Enchanted Concerto: World War II, Propaganda, and Musemes” analyses the use of the Hubert Bath’s composition Cornish Rhapsody in John Cromwell’s film The Enchanted Cottage (1945); Rice’s “Thematic Textures in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Films” shows the transformation of traditional Leitmotifs from the early Batman (1989) to The Dark Knight (2008); Kasinger’s “Sleight of Ear: The Use of the Unexpected in Film Scores” illustrates how carefully selected music acts a barrier between the audience and the cinematic events, controlling the emotional and intellectual response, by using Joel and Ethan Coen’ Burn After Reading (2008) and Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch (2011) as case studies; Broman’s “Mute the Bereaved Memories Speak: A Pasolinian Requiem” traces the close intertextual musical relationship between the Sven-David Sandström’s Requiem (1979) and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975), which provides important keys to understanding the requiem.
