Professor Elainie Lillios’s new composition “The Rush of the Brook Stills the Mind” for multi-percussion and live, interactive electroacoustics premiered on June 1, 2013 at the Nief Norf Festival in Greenville, South Carolina. The annual summer festival attracts percussionists, composers, and other performers who workshop and perform challenging contemporary literature and explore special topics surrounding the avant-garde. Percussionist Scott Deal, Nief Norf’s 2013 keynote speaker and featured guest, premiered the work.
BGSU alum is Michigan Teacher of the Year
BGSU alumnus Todd Schreiber was named 2013 Vocal Music Teacher of the Year in Michigan.
BGSU grad Jason Dovel to take trumpet positon at the U of Kentucky
Dr. Jason Dovel, MM 2005, has recently won the position of Assistant Professor of Trumpet at the University of Kentucky. Prior to this new appointment, Jason has served as Assistant Professor of Trumpet at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma
Prof. Satterlee in China for recitals and master classes
Robert Satterlee, Associate Professor of Piano, will travel to China in May for concerts and master classes at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music and the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu.
Lillios to teach electracoustic performance in Greece as Fulbright scholar
BOWLING GREEN, O.—As Dr. Elainie Lillios goes about preparing for the end of the semester at Bowling Green State University, getting ready for a premiere of her work in South Carolina in June and for her commission to compose in Paris this fall, she is also spending some time each day learning Greek.
Lillios, an associate professor of composition specializing in electroacoustic music, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach a seminar and conduct research at the Municipal Conservatory at Thermi in Thessaloniki, Greece, next fall.
“I’m a composer, but I’ll be exploring a new area of instruction,” she said. “I’ll be teaching performers how to perform with technology.”
A prolific composer, Lillios is well known in the electroacoustic world. In 2009 she won first prize in the “music with instruments” section at the 36th annual Bourges International Competition in France for her composition “Veiled Resonance,” written for soprano saxophone and live electronics. Last year she became only the second American composer in the history of the prestigious Groupe de Recherches Musicales musical research group in Paris to be awarded a commission. Lillios’s new work will be premiered in October as a featured piece on the group’s “Multiphonies” concert series. She will perform it at La maison de Radio France in the Salle Olivier Messiaen, on the organization’s famous “Acousmonium,” an orchestra of 80-plus loudspeakers arranged throughout the concert space.
In her invitation to Lillios to come to Thermi, Artistic Director Erato Alakiozidou said the conservatory was interested in “your expertise on integration of new technology in composition, performance and repertoire selection. Quite recently, our conservatory started a contemporary music and music technology department and there are already 20 students interested in attending such a seminar.”
“The conservatory students who attend the seminar play traditional instruments, but want to learn to integrate technology into performance,” said Lillios. “We’ll investigate performers who specialize in technology, and I’ll show them how to use microphones, how to prepare pieces employing technology, and how to work with sound systems. The seminar’s capstone event will be a concert where students will perform technology-mediated pieces they select and rehearse in collaboration with their studio instructor.”
Integrating technology calls for a specific type of composition, and one of Lillios’ goals is “to leave the conservatory with the beginnings of a technology-mediated score repository so that they have the resources to continue after I’m gone.
“Many contemporary composers create music combining live and acoustic instruments with technology,” she said. “It could be saxophone with fixed media (what we used to call tape), or flute with computer – which listens to the music and reacts to it.”
To gather the necessary materials, she will put out a call for scores, and all submissions will go to Greece for student and faculty use.
In many ways, the trip to Greece is a reconnection for Lillios, whose father was Greek and who still has family in the Thessaloniki area. She taught in a weeklong electroacoustic composition workshop in Corfu during a 2007 sabbatical.
The connection with the Thermi conservatory, though, is with a BGSU alumnus from Greece, Theofilios Sotiriades, who was a graduate student in Distinguished Artist Professor John Sampen’s saxophone program. Sotiriades now teaches at the conservatory.
“When he (Sotiriades) was at Bowling Green, he took the music technology class and loved it. He’s been championing me to come to Greece ever since,” Lillios said, adding that while there is a lot of electronic music in the country as a whole, “I’m bringing something new to the conservatory, and I hope to get the students and the faculty excited about it.”
In addition to teaching and composing, “I plan to travel and lecture in various parts of the country,” Lillios said. “With the Fulbright, I will be a diplomat to build bridges in my field between creative people in Greece and creative people here.”
She plans to renew her connections with the Corfu faculty and arrange to lecture there as well. “I want to recruit for our program and build connections. I want to collaborate with Theofilios (Sotiriades) and compose a piece for the resident faculty ensemble.
“I’m looking forward to working with students and faculty at the Municipal Conservatory, connecting with family and immersing myself in Greek culture,” she said.
Series tickets on sale for Festival Series
BOWLING GREEN, O.—The College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University invites the community to “Experience the Top” during the 2013-14 Festival Series. Highlighting performances in a variety of categories, the series features artists who are rising to the top. Series tickets are available now online at the BGSU box office.
The series begins on Sept. 28 in Kobacker Hall, where guests can listen to outstanding young musicians at a live taping of the popular National Public Radio show “From the Top,” hosted by acclaimed pianist Christopher O’Riley, who also performed as a soloist in the 2012 BGSU Festival Series.
What began as a radio experiment in 2000 quickly became one of the fastest growing and most popular weekly classical music programs on public radio. Broadcast on nearly 250 stations nationwide to an audience of more than 700,000 listeners each week, “From the Top” celebrates the performances and stories of America’s best pre-college classical musicians.
“‘From the Top’ gives young musicians the stage but lets them act their age. It’s serious music but classically kids,” said The New York Times.
Continuing the series, guests will experience an extravaganza of BGSU’s top artistic talent on Dec. 6 at a special holiday concert that will be part of the annual ArtsX event. In the first ever such large-scale collaboration, the College of Musical Arts, the School of Art, and the departments of theater and film, creative writing, and dance will present an artistic showcase themed “Wonderland.” The concert will include ensembles from the University and community, as well as readings, performances and artistic expressions celebrating the season from students and faculty in theater, film, dance and fine art. This is a holiday event that encompasses all the talents among the arts at BGSU, and will be an evening for all ages.
In the spring of 2014, Festival Series will welcome one of today’s top pianists, Jeremy Denk, performing on Feb. 15. “Mr. Denk, clearly, is a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs, in whatever combination – both for his penetrating intellectual engagement with the music and for the generosity of his playing,” said the New York Times.
An American pianist with an international reach, Denk has steadily built a reputation as an unusual and compelling artist, with a broad and thought-provoking repertoire. He has appeared as soloist with many major orchestras in the United States and around the world. But beyond that, Denk is also known for his witty and personal music writing, which has appeared in The New Yorker and Newsweek, on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, on the NPR Music website and in his widely read blog.
The Festival Series concludes April 5, 2014, on a comic note with the renowned Improvised Shakespeare Company (ISC). Based on an audience suggestion, the company creates a fully improvised play in Elizabethan style. Each of the players has brushed up on his “thee’s” and “thou’s” to produce evening of off-the-cuff comedy using the language and themes of William Shakespeare. Any hour could be filled with power struggles, star-crossed lovers, sprites, kings, queens, rhyming couplets, insults, persons in disguise and all that we’ve come to expect from the pen of the Great Bard. The night could reveal a tragedy, comedy, or history. Nothing is planned out, rehearsed, or written. Each play is completely improvised, so each play is entirely new.
The Improvised Shakespeare Company, founded in 2005, has been performing its critically acclaimed show every Friday night at the world-famous iO Theater in Chicago and entertains audiences around the globe. It has been named Chicago’s best improvisation group by both the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Examiner and has received a New York Nightlife Award for “Best Comedic Performance by a Group.”
The Festival Series is one of the oldest running performance series at BGSU, and is made possible by the support of the community. Series tickets range from $58-$147 and are available online, or by calling the Arts Box Office at 419-372-8171. Individual event tickets will be available in August. Visit the Arts Box Office website for specific ticket prices and event times.
