Dr. Susan Thomas received the prestigious Stevenson Award from the American Musicological Society earlier this month in San Francisco. Dr. Thomas was recognized for her work “Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana’s Lyric Stage.”
The Stevenson Award recognizes outstanding scholarship in Iberian music, including music composed, performed, created, collected, belonging to, or descended from the cultures of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.
Professor of Double Bass Milton Masciadri is the subject of the University of Georgia’s most recent “Focus on Faculty” feature.
A longtime member of the School of Music faculty, Masciadri is also an internationally-renowned performer and teacher, who has presented concerts and masterclasses in North and South America and Europe. In 1998, he was named a UNESCO Artist for Peace. Earlier this month, he performed in Venice, Italy with the ARCO Chamber Orchestra.
A big slate of recitals and concerts are on the schedule for the School of Music this week.
One of the early week highlights, is David Zerkel’s faculty recital on Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Ramsey Concert Hall. Zerkel will be joined by Anatoly Sheludyakov on piano for a program that includes works by Giovanni Pergolesi, Eugene Bozza, Ben Miles, Trygve Madsen and Robert Schumann. Admission to this concert is $5.
At week’s end is the UGA Choral Association Joy of Singing Festival on Friday, March 25. With guest conductor and Yale Professor Emeritus Simon Carrington. Featuring University Chorus, Collegium Musicum, Classic City Jazz and Concert Choir and guest choirs from Berry College, Savannah and Arts Academy, and Athens First United Methodist. 8:00 p.m. Hodgson Concert Hall.
Admission to this concert is free and open to the public. A BLUE CARD event.
Dr. Jean Kidula and Dr. Mitos Andaya were invited to present at the First National Choral Workshop of the Choral Music Society of Kenya at Moi University in Kenya from November 21-26. In addition to presenting sessions, lectures and rehearsals, both presented performances in the culminating concert of this inaugural workshop of the nation’s newest music directors’ organization.
Kidula, associate professor of musicology/ethno-musicology, and Andaya, associate director of choral activities, arrived in Nairobi and travelled to the workshop site in Eldoret, about 5 hours northwest of Nairobi.
The conductor’s workshop, organized by Moi University, Eldoret and Utafiti foundation, had 80 participants and 16 facilitators. They were drawn from 7 out of Kenya’s 8 provinces consisting of college students and professors/lecturers, high school choral directors, as well as church and parastatal organizations’ choral directors. Three of Kenya’s public universities offering music degrees were represented. Dr. Kidula reports that:
Of the 14 paper sessions, we coordinated and gave three presentations. We also held rehearsals three times everyday, once with an advanced group, once with sectionals, and once with all the delegates. The rehearsals were a practical application of the paper presentations and culminated in a concert on the second last day of the gathering. The concert also included an exchange of music repertoire with Moi University Choir.
Outside of these activities, we also held music theory practicums to enhance the musicianship of the conductors. We received positive feedback everyday from the paper and workshop sessions, related to the repertoire type and approach, to conducting techniques, expectations and interpretation of style, to rehearsal procedures, to musicianship, and aspects of interest to conductors seeking to diversify their repertoire and improve their skills.
As part of our visit’s objectives, we also shared the ways that choral conducting associations in the USA are managed. The organizers and delegates invited us and other UGA faculty and students to future annual workshops and future music department events by Moi University and by two other Universities (Kenyatta and Maseno).
On a side note, following a conversation about music education in high schools in Kenya, one of our graduate students in the School of Music, Benita Gladney, coordinated other students to donate some used instruments to Moi Girls High School in Eldoret. During our stay in Kenya, we presented the instruments to the school principal and music teachers as part of UGA’s public service.
The Red & Black published a very nice feature story on the music therapy program in the Hodgson School of Music yesterday.
“Music touches our emotions,” said Ellen Ritchey, clinical coordinator for the music therapy program. “We respond emotionally to music. Just about any important life event — weddings, funerals, births, graduation, football games — have music there and it serves a function.”
That function is to help people with physical, emotional, cognitive and behavioral handicaps meet their therapeutic goals. As an established and credited health profession, musical therapy improves the quality of life in ways that medical science cannot.
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A reminder about the performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers tonight at 8 p.m. Hodgson Concert Hall. FREE.
The University of Georgia and the Hugh Hodgson School of Music will host a memorial service celebrating the life of Dr. Kenneth Fischer on Saturday, March 6 at 2 p.m. in Hodgson Concert Hall at the Performing Arts Center.
From an article in the Athens Banner-Herald, on Thursday, March 4:
Fischer taught the sax at UGA for 30 years and led the school’s saxophone quartet to national competitions. He toured the country, Europe and Asia playing both the alto and soprano saxophones and wrote more than 30 works for the instrument.
His son, Stephen, who holds three degrees from Georgia, now teaches his father’s classes and filled his shoes for leading the conference this week.
“I know how he taught, and I teach very similarly,” he said. “I’m trying to continue all that he built here.”
The Classic City Saxophone Quartet, a group made up of current UGA doctorate students who studied under Fischer, will play at his memorial service. So will the Globe Saxophone Quartet, made up of players who all got their doctorates from UGA.
The UGA saxophone orchestra also will play, performing a special rendition of “Georgia on My Mind.”
Stephen Fischer knows that his father would have enjoyed the music and the company.
“He was really proud of his students whether they stayed in music or not,” Fischer said. “He had a lot of friends everywhere.”
Please join us at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
A very full week of music at the HHSOM kicks ofF with tonight’s Wind Symphony Concert. The Wind Symphony is conducted by Gregg Gausline and tonight’s concert will feature oboe faculty member Dwight Manning and guest conductor Mark Spede, Director of Bands at Clemson University.
Tonight’s program;
Antiphonal Fanfare – Aleksander Sternfeld-Dunn
Suite Francaise – Darius Milhaud
If thou Be Near – Bach/Reed
Noisy Wheels of Joy – Eric Whitacre
Divertimento – Vincent Persichetti
Variations on a Theme of Glinka – Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Dwight Manning, oboe
Fiesta del Pacifico – Roger Nixon
The music begins at 8 p.m.in Hodgson Concert Hall at the Performing Arts Center. Admission is free and, as always, the public is invited to attend.
The Hugh Hodsgon School of Music announces faculty searches for the following positions:
Assistant Professor of Percussion
It with a heavy heart that we report the following:
UGA music professor and renowned chamber musician Kenneth Fischer dies after illness
Athens, Ga. – Kenneth Fischer, a renowned saxophone soloist and professor in the University of Georgia’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music, has died following a brief illness. After being awarded his Doctor of Music with Distinction in Performance from Indiana University, he joined the UGA faculty in 1979.
A frequent contributor to The Saxophone Journal, he authored numerous articles on repertoire and pedagogy. Fischer was an outstanding performer and appeared as a soloist at numerous meetings of the World Saxophone Congress, including the world premieres of several works dedicated to him. In 1987, Fischer was awarded a Soloist Recording Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the recording of original works for the saxophone. Fischer’s recordings are available from the Educational Music Service, Coronet Records and ACA Digital Recording labels.
“Dr. Fischer was a brilliant musician, an artist admired by all who knew him,” said Dale Monson, director of the music school. “He was also a dynamic and international leader in his profession, as well as here at UGA. For more than thirty years he led one of the finest saxophone studios in the world.”
Fischer’s accolades and achievements are accompanied by wide-ranging respect and affection from international colleagues, whom he regularly brought to UGA to perform and interact with his students. Most recently the Zagreb Saxophone Quartet completed a one-week residency at the music school in October, conducting master classes, coaching ensembles and performing. “It’s important for our students to be able to work with such musicians and to get them to know them not only as performers and teachers, but also as human beings,” Fischer said at the time.
Rest in peace, Dr. Fischer.
Another example of the extraordinary individuals on the faculty at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music: UGA Community Music School Director Kristin Jutras and assistant professor of piano pedagogy Peter Jutras are featured in a spotlight article by their alma mater, the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. The interview with the musical couple focuses on their artistic leadership and the necessity of musicians taking the initiative to bring their music to the world.
Kristin: Leadership skills are essential for a musician. Most of us leave college and expect to go into the world to perform, teach, or conduct research. As the competition becomes tougher, and jobs become scarcer, musicians need to have leadership skills and vision to create their own jobs and to promote themselves. Even beginning a successful private teaching studio utilizes leadership skills.
Read the whole thing. Congratulations Kristin and Peter on the well-deserved attention.
A reminder: The holiday edition of the 2nd Thursday Concert Series continues tonight at 8 p.m. at the UGA Performing Arts Center.
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