“It’s been a long, drawn-out project, but I hope to finish it by the end of the summer,” she says.
“It started as an assignment to read one of Shakespeare’s plays and write a prelude. As I was reading, I kept thinking, ‘This would make a good aria here.’ I was telling that to Dr. Deakin, and he asked if I would like to write an opera. I think now, if I could go back, I’d say, ‘No, I don’t want to do this thing that’s going to take years,’” she says with a laugh.

This remarkable Blair pre-college student also practices harp and piano four hours a day, studies high-school physics, pre-calculus, Bible, German and economics, and takes an online English course from Nashville State Community College.

“Amy is one of the most gifted pre-college students I have ever had the privilege to teach at Blair,” says Paul Deakin, senior lecturer in music theory. “She completed our four-year college-level theory program in a year—an incredible achievement. She has been taking private composition lessons for two years and has already produced several works of the highest quality.”

Home-schooled since she was 7, Thompson began piano instruction at age 6 and lessons on a tiny harp when she was 11. She enrolled at Blair in the eighth grade, receiving the Myra Jackson Blair Scholarship for harp in ninth grade and for piano last year.

Thompson has composed several pieces for piano and harp, including “a compelling piece for voice and harp,” Deakin says, “a series of haiku by the Japanese poet Basho connected to create a cyclic form that takes the listener on a journey through the seasons. It’s a beautiful work.”

Thompson is also an accomplished performer. She placed seventh in her division at the 18th American Harp Society National Competition held in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2010 she won the Nashville Area Music Teachers Association’s Young Artists Achievement Award for piano in the junior/senior category, as well as the Sewanee Summer Music Festival’s 2010 Concerto Competition.

Marian Shaffer, adjunct professor of harp, calls Thompson “a wonderfully talented student who truly loves all aspects of music.” Valerie Middleton, adjunct artist teacher of piano, says her technique and artistry exhibit “a refinement few high school students achieve.”

Although she feels most comfortable with the piano, Thompson’s heart belongs to a beautiful, 80-pound Lyon and Healy harp, which she brings back and forth from her home in Springfield, Tenn., several times a week.

“I love the way the harp resonates and vibrates on my shoulder,” she says. “My fingers are in direct contact with what makes the sound. I also love the look of the harp.”

So what does this hard-working student do for fun? “Music is fun,” she says. But like any teen, the soft-spoken brunette enjoys friendships with the other pre-college students at Blair. She also completed a half-marathon last year and volunteers her time playing the harp at nursing homes on a regular basis.

As for the future, Thompson envisions a teaching career. “I want to continue to study at an academic university,” she says, noting that only three schools in the top 20 offer courses in harp: Vanderbilt, Rice and Northwestern.

Deakin predicts great things for his gifted student: “With all that she’s accomplished thus far, I wonder, ‘What’s next?’ She has the world at her feet.”

Scott Seaton, BMus ’04, conducting the Toronto Philharmonia Orchestra.

Within the conducting profession, the word “maestro” is sometimes used to describe the person wielding the baton and coaxing joyous sounds from voice, instrument or both.

Blair School of Music’s community of maestros—gaining influence both at home and abroad—is venturing into the world of orchestral conducting with an energy and success that would spur Jorma Panula, renowned teacher of conducting, to step from the podium and take note.

Interestingly, Blair’s rise has come despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it offers no degree in conducting.

“Fortunately, Blair does not have a conducting program, and this is fantastic as people like myself were able to take advantage of so many resources not available at other institutions where graduate students would have priority,” says Scott Seaton, who graduated from Vanderbilt in 2004 with a bachelor of music in saxophone performance. For the past two years Seaton was director of orchestras at Kent State University in Ohio. He is now principal guest conductor of the Toronto Philharmonia Orchestra and music director of the Lakeland Civic Orchestra, maintaining an active guest conducting schedule with orchestras in North America and Europe.

“For example, in my senior year at Blair, I was able to form an all-volunteer orchestra and perform Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring,” Seaton explains. “I am not sure this would have been possible at other institutions.”

But those other institutions are, indeed, recognizing Blair School of Music’s talented graduates.

“Since Blair has had many rising conductors in recent years, I think that people are starting to notice that Blair is a fantastic nest for conductors to develop without the formalities of a conducting ‘program,’” Seaton says.

There may be no structured orchestral conducting program at Blair, however, Robin Fountain, professor of conducting and director of the Vanderbilt Orchestra, handles the preparation of orchestral conductors in a highly effective manner. Fountain’s efforts are the key to why the music school has seen its alumni earn admission to graduate schools such as Yale and Vienna Conservatory.

Fountain graciously downplays his role and impact at Blair, saying simply: “I try to train young musicians to collaborate as performers and conductors.”

Fountain—who has studied at Oxford University, the Royal College of Music and Carnegie Mellon University—decided he wanted to be a conductor when he was pressed into service while a member of his high school choir.

“I found that not only did I enjoy it, but that others enjoyed the work when I did it.”

As have Blair students.

“I decided I wanted to be a conductor after attending Professor Robin Fountain’s beginning conducting class,” says David Torns, who graduated from Vanderbilt in 1998 with a bachelor’s in violin performance. “From that point, I enrolled in the advanced class, and I was fascinated with the possibilities of the symphony orchestra as a vessel for music. The colors and palettes that are available to a composer are limitless. So the possibilities for a conductor’s interpretation in serving the composer become limitless as well.”

John Concklin, BMus ’06, conducting the July 4th concert of the Georgia Symphony Orchestra last year.

John Concklin played with the Vanderbilt Orchestra at Blair, eventually earning his bachelor’s in 2006 in viola and piano performance. The creative director of the Cobb Symphony Orchestra in Kennesaw, Ga., from 2008-10, Concklin spent this past year enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He says the tools he uses to lead an orchestra are based upon his experience as member of an orchestra.

“It’s sort of like playing on a team,” he says. “If you know how to play the game, then it stands to reason that you may be able to lead others in doing it themselves.”

Torns says Blair provided personal guidance.

“I had wonderful coaching in chamber music from all of the members of the Blair String Quartet, which was immeasurable,” Torns says. He currently serves as assistant conductor of the Baton Rouge Symphony and music director of the Louisiana Youth Orchestra.

In addition to recognizing Fountain, Torns credits Amy Dorfman, associate professor of piano, and Emelyne Bingham, senior lecturer of the teaching of music. The trio, among many others at Blair, helped Torns hone his skills in transitioning from hearing the violin to hearing multiple instruments and understanding how they work in tandem.

Torns says such aural aptitude involves hearing the instruments’ “particular colors.”

“You can begin to pick out what an oboe is playing compared to a bassoon, for instance, because the two timbres are unique to one another,” he notes. “At the same time, as a conductor you are trying to blend the two colors so that neither of them sticks out more than the other.”

Getting to the point of hearing on that level requires years of work. For Blair’s conductors, much was done long before arriving at that point.

Joseph Lee, who received his bachelor’s from Vanderbilt in 1998 after studying bassoon, knew at a tender age he wanted to wield the baton.

David Torns, BMus ’98, is assistant conductor of the Baton Rouge Symphony and music director of the Louisiana Youth Orchestra.

“When I was 12 years old, I told my parents that I wanted to be a conductor and that I would need to begin lessons on a string instrument,” says Lee, who filled in as adjunct assistant professor of orchestra and conducting during the spring 2011 semester while Fountain was on sabbatical.

Lee says he was inspired by both his middle school band director and civic youth orchestra conductor.

Today, Lee is the resident conductor of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, director of the Huntsville Youth Orchestra, and music director of the Murfreesboro Symphony Orchestra and the Sewanee Symphony Orchestra, the latter two to which he was recently appointed.

Lee echoes the words of Seaton, emphasizing the fact that Blair’s lack of a formal conducting program gave him the freedom to “create my own path.”

“I began my conducting studies as a sophomore,” he recalls. “Not only did I organize my own ‘lab’ orchestras by bribing friends with pizza and soda, [Emelyne] Bingham also allowed me to share the podium with her during the Vanderbilt Opera Theatre production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte.  She had me conduct the entire first act, which was a monumental first experience for me.”

Lee went on to take Blair’s conducting courses and study privately with Fountain during the next two years.

“He would fast become my mentor and friend, a relationship that has continued into the present,” Lee says.

Dean Whiteside understands the advantages of Blair’s approach. Whiteside, who earned his bachelor’s in viola and philosophy in 2010, was admitted to the prestigious Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien during his junior year—a notable accomplishment—but deferred until he could finish his Blair degree. He now studies conducting in Vienna full time and recently made his European debut conducting the Ruse Philharmonic (Bulgaria) on tour.

“Music-making should be a dialogue,” Whiteside says, “and this is what Blair excels at creating.”

How Hersch and the quartet came to work together is described by both as serendipitous.

“I had been asked a fair number of times over the last two decades to write string quartets,” Hersch says, “but there was nothing in my imagination, nothing in my mind’s ear. I didn’t think that I could write a good one. I wanted to write other things, and I didn’t hear a string quartet.

“It was an extraordinary confluence of events,” he says. “If they had contacted me two or three months earlier, I would have said no. It’s as simple as that.”

The ignition point, as Hersch calls it, for writing a string quartet was living with prints by the American visual artist Michael Mazur, whom Hersch met in Rome in 2000. Mazur’s The Inferno of Dante, an exhibition of 41 etchings with accompanying texts translated into English, was being shown at the American Academy in Rome at the time. As Hersch wrote in his composer’s note to the piece for the Blair String Quartet, “Although we worked in different mediums, I often felt that Mazur understood what I was doing better than most.” A friendship developed between the two artists.

Hersch acquired some of Mazur’s prints in 2008 from the Closed Ward and Locked Ward series of etchings done in the early 1960s. They hang in his work space.

In mid-2009, “this amazing period of serendipitous events happened,” Hersch says. “My mind’s ear started composing a string quartet around these images of Mazur’s, and then I was going to contact him.” Instead, Hersch read of Mazur’s death in a newspaper the day before he planned to reach him. “Not more than a few months later, I was contacted by the Blair String Quartet.”

The Blair String Quartet listened to 30 or 40 different composers before deciding that they wanted to ask Michael Hersch to compose a piece for them. Each member of the quartet was inspired by different aspects of Hersch’s work.

“For me,” says John Kochanowski, professor of viola, “it was a certain passion that he brings to every piece he’s written, and a discovery of voicing, as Beethoven voiced so beautifully. Michael has that ability to voice for four people in an extraordinary way. He really understands the conversational attitude, the parameters, the darkness, the ecstasy. We were excited by the possibility that he could be a great quartet composer.”

“We also wanted a prominent American composer who had not written for string quartet, so that this would bring some attention as the first string quartet of his work,” says Christian Teal, Joseph Joachim Professor of Violin.

Connie Heard, Valere Blair Potter Professor of Violin, honed in on Hersch’s ability to focus. “When we first listened to him,” she says, “we listened to some short piano pieces that he was playing. They were beautiful, very personal and focused—they weren’t trying to do a lot of things. He will have the kernel of an idea and really develop that kernel rather than trying to do six different things at once.

“He’s not bound by the instruments he’s writing for. He’s not afraid to be stark,” she says. “He’s not afraid to be performed only once.”

“When you hear this piece, it’s not going to be something a string quartet would sound like. It’s not necessarily going to follow those parameters. The voice that you hear in his music is original.”

- Felix Wang

Felix Wang, associate professor of cello, was impressed by Hersch’s artistic integrity. “When you hear this piece, it’s not going to be something a string quartet would sound like. It’s not necessarily going to follow those parameters. The voice that you hear in his music is original.”

“I think we just lucked out with the timing,” Heard says, “where he was in his life, where he was with his composing. His thoughts were that we just happened to drop in at the right time.”

Hersch was somewhat familiar with the Blair String Quartet as well.

“I’d never met any of them before,” Hersch says, “but I knew John’s name, because he was with the Concord Quartet, and I heard them a lot when I was younger. So he was very familiar to me, even though I didn’t know him. And I had known of the Blair quartet’s reputation broadly, because they had been around a long time in different iterations. All I had to do was hear them, and I listened to them a fair amount and was very excited.

“It just felt right, and deciding to write a piece for someone, a group or an individual, is a very serious commitment,” he says. “A lot has to be right. It’s as intimate a connection as you can have in terms of creating something.”

Kochanowski agrees. “There is no way to write a string quartet without tremendous intimacy,” he says. “Because of our four ways of discussing, arguing, doing everything we do with each other musically, I think it’s a challenge for someone to say, ‘I want to get involved in that discussion with four human beings.’”

Writing the piece took less time than the quartet expected, with the score delivered to them about six months earlier than originally projected. Now that they have the score, there will be much more interaction between Hersch and the quartet, though, as Hersch puts it, the collaboration begins when you know for whom you’re writing.

“A lot of people think that there has to be a lot of back and forth, and that does happen,” he says, “but in this case, the process of composing the piece went relatively quickly, and the biggest part they played was that I felt that I could write whatever I wanted. That is participatory. That doesn’t mean that things won’t change after they start working on it,” he explains, “but I knew who I was writing for from the very beginning, and that’s a major collaboration in and of itself.”

The quartet met Hersch last February, when he came to Blair with his brother, horn player Jamie Hersch, and cellist Daniel Gaisford for a performance of Hersch’s Last Autumn for horn and cello. Hearing the piece, written in two parts and lasting two and a half hours, was revelatory for the quartet.

“The piece was stunningly beautiful, powerful,” Heard says. “The idea that someone could make French horn and cello work for two and a half hours is original and bold, and he is both those things. He is not a composer who is always trying to get his works performed. He’s writing for the purity of what he wants to write.”

Hersch puts it this way: “At the end of the day, one of the most important things for a composer is to feel that whatever the composer is writing feels necessary. So, if I’m going to write for a string quartet, I have to feel that the music I want to express, it’s necessary that it be a string quartet. It couldn’t have been anything else. And if you do a good job, all the things that are important to the musicians will follow.

“I was deeply moved that they approached me,” he says, “because it meant that they felt something in my work that they connected with. I will assure you that not everybody gets what I do,” he says with a laugh, “so when people do connect with it, that’s meaningful to me. It means that there’s something there that’s worth pursuing, because it doesn’t happen with regularity.”

“The performer/composer relationship can be very complicated,” Wang says. “Ultimately, it can be very rewarding, but it can be complicated because you have these artistic personalities that by nature have strong opinions. But the creative process of taking a piece of music, learning it and eventually performing it and letting it come to life is very satisfying. Spending time in collaboration with someone you deem artistically inspiring is very satisfying.

“And selfishly,” he adds, “we just want to be part of the process of bringing to life a masterwork.”

At the International School of Kabul in Afghanistan, Blair alumna Amanda Earnest leads her students in music-making activities not unlike those taught to children in the United States.

Boom! The cannon blasts at the end of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. The eighth-graders in my music class don’t react, they just listen. To me, it is a great moment of pure genius. To end a piece of music celebrating the victory of war with a cannon blast should get some sort of reaction of excitement: wide eyes, a jump in the seat, a quick turn of the head. I get no reaction from them. However, I, on the other hand, am fighting back tears. Just to take a moment and analyze what I am doing, playing an almost 200-year-old piece of music about war to a group of students who have grown up in war can be a little overwhelming at times. After the piece ends, I ask the class, “What was that sound at the end of the piece?”

“A bomb?” one student asks. I tell him that is a good guess, but that it is a cannon blast, because in those days they didn’t use bombs in war, they used cannons. “Oh,” the student says.

Then I ask, “What if someone here in Afghanistan wrote a piece of music to celebrate the end of the Soviet invasion, the end of the Taliban regime, or to celebrate the new democracy? Wouldn’t that be a great way to celebrate your country’s victory?”

“Yes!” they all chime in with agreement. As a class we talk about how cool it would be, and how the composer could take the melodies of their childhood songs and incorporate them into the work. “Then people would recognize it,” one student says.

Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture is an orchestral piece historically associated with war. There are other pieces that are not conveying the sounds of war at all, yet these children hear war sounds. For instance, a few weeks later I play Handel’s “Hornpipe” from Water Music for my second-grade class. As we pass out their music listening journals, I remind them of the instructions. I say, “Listen to the piece of music and finish the sentence, ‘When I listen to this piece of music, the picture I paint in my head is …,’ then draw a picture at the bottom of the page of the picture you see in your head.”

It’s Handel’s Water Music. It’s majestic and somewhat triumphant. Surely they’ll associate it with a happy image. Though a couple of girls draw pictures of princesses in castles, as I collect their journals I am mostly face to face with pictures of war—battles, blood-stained people and people in victory standing over dead bodies holding a gun in the air.

These children live in a world that is not normal, and I teach at a school that is the only one of its kind. I live in Kabul, Afghanistan, and teach music at the International School of Kabul. I teach preschool through eighth-grade music, direct the high school choir and teach a high school general music class that takes an academic look at the history of music and hopefully instills in the students a new appreciation of all music. This school is the only college preparatory, U.S.-accredited school in the country of Afghanistan. I live in a gated compound and walk across the street to my classroom. At our gates are guards holding guns ready to protect us at a moment’s notice. There are many times that we do not get to leave the compound, because there are direct threats to Americans outside our gates. This is normal life here, and for my students, it’s the only life they know.

Earnest teaches music to students at the International School of Kabul from preschool through eighth grade, directs the high school choir and teaches a high school music appreciation class.

The music of Afghanistan is comprised of the sounds of helicopters flying overhead so low that the house shakes. The sound of a bomb blast is more common than the sound of a thunderstorm. The kindergarten teacher told me a story of a thunderstorm that came through last spring, and the whole class jumped in fear, running to the windows of the classroom to see the dark clouds.

When I shake the thunder tube instrument in music class, the children scream, but then they suddenly hear a low tremolo coming from outside that is quickly making its way toward our building. As the ground starts to shake violently, we wonder if it’s a bomb. After it passes, the debate begins. Was it a bomb or an earthquake? After a few seconds they realize that it was just a bomb. Just a bomb. Really? I ask myself, have I become so numb to the reality of this war zone that even I think, “It’s just a bomb”?

The next day at school, there is no discussion about it. Not even the kindergarteners talk about it during morning circle time. But, if there had been a thunderstorm, they would have walked into the classroom talking about it.

Last spring a bomb hit a loaded public bus about a half-mile from our school. We heard and felt the blast in the classroom. There was a pregnant pause at the time, and then life went on. I remember some of the students talking about it the next day, only because as they rode home after school, they had seen the bodies of the victims lying on the side of the road. No tears were shed. These children have not been taught to cry when someone dies.

This is normal life here, but it is not normal. I am a Commodore living in Kabul, and my music is not the music I played at the Blair School when I was an undergraduate. My music is comprised of the sounds of helicopters flying low, bombs blasting so close that the ground shakes and children crying at thunderstorms.

Thomas Verrier, associate professor and director of wind studies at Blair (in green shirt), saw great potential for Blair’s involvement in Costa Rica’s SiNEM program during his first visit to the country two years ago.

The small Central American country of Costa Rica is famous for its rich natural resources and for its exceptional political stability in a part of the world that has seen much upheaval. In spite of these advantages, Costa Rica is troubled by poverty and its attendant problems. The country’s democratic government is committed to offering the Costa Rican people opportunities to improve their lives, and one of its initiatives is a remarkable music education program, Sistema Nacional de Educacion Musical, generally known as SiNEM. Modeled on Venezuela’s renowned El Sistema youth orchestra program, SiNEM is dedicated to providing high-quality music training to children from all walks of life in all areas of the country.

When Thomas Verrier, associate professor and director of wind studies, traveled to Costa Rica two years ago at the invitation of SiNEM’s director, Ricardo Vargas, he was impressed with the vast potential of the program, which was then in its first year. He also saw a possible role for the Blair School. “I was excited to come down and see what was happening,” he recalls. “I immediately saw an opportunity to help them in several ways.”

Verrier returned to Nashville with a proposal to create a partnership between SiNEM and Blair—an idea that was warmly received by Dean Mark Wait.

“I spoke with Dean Wait about what was happening there, the energy and commitment of the instructors, the joy in the kids’ faces,” Verrier says, “and he shared my excitement at the potential for the Blair School to assist on a larger scale.”

For his part, Dean Wait saw involvement with SiNEM as very much in keeping with Blair’s primary mission. Noting that Blair began as a pre-collegiate academy, he observes that music education for younger students is “part of our DNA.” He saw support of SiNEM as an exceptional chance for Blair to extend its work.

“To be able to participate in that kind of effort at the ground level is a great honor,” Wait says, “and an opportunity that we simply could not let pass.”

Last April, Wait and Verrier traveled to Costa Rica together to meet with Vargas and the Costa Rican Minister of Culture to discuss specific ways that Blair might assist SiNEM, and, as Verrier puts it, “come to a mutually beneficial understanding between the institutions.” Wait, who had not previously visited Costa Rica, became even more enthusiastic about the partnership after witnessing SiNEM in action. He was particularly impressed by a visit to an orphanage, where he saw a dozen or more children under 12 playing violins.

“Seeing these children, so accomplished in spite of their circumstances,” Wait says, “was one of the most deeply moving experiences of my life. For us to have any kind of role in that is a great privilege.”

Blair’s Thomas Verrier works with conducting student Sergio Cubero Mata during a Thanksgiving workshop with SiNEM instructors in Costa Rica.

A blueprint for training teachers
The blueprint for Blair’s partnership with SiNEM is designed to assist the Costa Rican program in its unique challenges. Unlike Venezuela’s El Sistema, which serves a largely urban population, SiNEM is focused on reaching children in rural, often remote communities. The program currently has more than two dozen established programs across the country. About half that number are music schools where the students have the opportunity to take theory and musicianship classes, while the rest are orchestral or ensemble programs, which often have just three instructors for 200 or more children. These students get little individual instruction, though—unlike in the Venezuelan El Sistema program—they all get real instruments to play within a few months of beginning the program. The universal allocation of instruments represents a substantial financial investment and is a measure of the Costa Rican government’s commitment to the program.

The focus of Blair’s contribution has been on the training of SiNEM instructors. As Verrier points out, university music degrees in Costa Rica are essentially performance degrees.

“Their instruction in pedagogy and teaching is not sufficient for the demands on an instructor in SiNEM,” Verrier says, “especially in the programs with only three instructors.”

To supplement the instructors’ training, Verrier began teaching workshops in Costa Rica, and in January 2010, four SiNEM instructors arrived in Nashville for three weeks of study on conducting, pedagogy and musicianship.

In 2011, Blair and SiNEM will commence a formal program, the SiNEM Institute for Professional Development (SiNEM Instituto de Desarrollo Profesional), which will provide a two-track course of study, each track consisting of eight classes covering the different instruments. All of the classes will be taught in Costa Rica by Blair faculty, during two-week sessions in February and August. The 2011 courses will focus on pedagogy, and in 2012, the institute will add another track devoted to conducting. Participants will receive certification for each track as well as a professional credential on completion of the entire two-year program. That accreditation will come with the stamp of Blair as well as the Ministry of Education of Costa Rica. In addition, Blair will continue to bring a few SiNEM instructors to Nashville every year, eventually instituting a third level of professional study.

Four Costa Rican music educators traveled to Nashville in February for three weeks of instruction and observation with Blair faculty. Here (second row, from left), Christian Alvarado Rodriguez, Marco Mora Solis, Ana Cecilia Umanzar Rodriguez and Roxana Patricia Borges Rojas observe as Blair junior Phillip Franklin (foreground) takes a turn in a choral conducting class. Blair students (front row, from left) Sarah Wood, Ryan Parker and Drew Silverstein look on.

Roxana Patricia Borges Rojas (center) and Ana Cecilia Umanzar Rodriguez (back to camera) in a keyboard harmony class with Blair’s Karen Ann Krieger (left), associate professor of piano and piano pedagogy.

In addition to development classes for SiNEM personnel, the partnership will provide opportunities for Blair’s fifth-year master’s students in teacher education to do internships in Costa Rica. The first group of three students went last year, each one spending 10 days with a different SiNEM program out in the countryside. They stayed with SiNEM instructors and, says Verrier, “lived locally, ate locally and really were immersed.” He describes the experience as “enormously valuable” for the students, and looks forward to sending a group every November. Beyond the formal course program, Blair faculty will also be taking part in SiNEM-sponsored master classes and performances. Robin Fountain, professor of conducting and director of the Vanderbilt Orchestra, will be conducting the Costa Rican National Youth Symphony Orchestra this spring, and the Blair String Quartet has been invited to appear.

SiNEM’s administration sees the Blair partnership as an invaluable aid to the program. Sandra Herrera, SiNEM’s national academic coordinator, says the training has already been “extremely helpful” to the instructors, and describes the partnership as a “great opportunity to encourage and support our instructors with pedagogical tools that will greatly benefit the students.” Melissa Pacheco, who heads the production department at SiNEM, notes that, with the high student-to-teacher ratio, the Blair training helps instructors teach each instrument and conduct rehearsals more effectively. Beyond that, she says, “It has been encouraging to have such a prestigious school help us so generously.”

Nashville Symphony Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero, who grew up in Costa Rica and has worked extensively with Venezuela’s El Sistema, observes that SiNEM has radically improved the opportunities for music education across the country.

“It makes me very happy,” Guerrero says, “to see that in my own country now, kids in little towns and little communities are starting to have access to music education.” He regards this kind of grassroots training as “the future of classical music,” and he lauds the role Blair is playing in this change. “It’s very important that they are providing them with expertise and advice.”

As everyone involved in the Blair-SiNEM partnership is quick to stress, the benefits of the program go far beyond music education. Pacheco says that the primary goal is “to help children and teenagers transform their lives through music. It gives them a chance to change their future and open their minds to new opportunities.” Herrera notes that the positive change in the children ultimately benefits “family, neighbors and the whole community.” As Guerrero puts it, “First and foremost this is a social program.” Along with bringing the kids to classical music, he says, programs like SiNEM and El Sistema are about “keeping young people off the streets and giv[ing] them something meaningful to do.”

As Dean Wait sees it, the long-range benefits of SiNEM provide an enormous return on Blair’s investment.

“This is a project that will have significant ramifications in the lives of these students 50, 60 or 70 years from now,” Wait says. “That’s about as good as it gets in terms of having influence and bringing good into the world.”

Blythe Barkley Bonnaffons’ first teaching job has taken her to Cairo, Egypt, where she has had the experience of riding a camel to visit the pyramids of Giza in the desert outside Cairo.

The sound of “Allahu Akbar” several times daily and the permeating dust of the desert surrounding the Nile Valley have changed very little since Napoleon’s entourage first described the city of Cairo, Egypt, in the early 19th century. But for Blythe Barkley Bonnafons, BMus’09, MEd’10, a “world of experiences” awaits outside her classroom door, and every experience becomes a lesson for this newly minted educator.

As a first-year teacher of English and music to primary students at the International School of Choueifat, Bonnaffons has the opportunity to visit many of the glories of Egypt: the pyramids and the Sphinx, the Citadel and the Egyptian Museum. She’s also experienced the challenges of life in an unfamiliar country far from home.

“This city is dusty and polluted, the traffic is crazy and often the simplest errand becomes a huge ordeal,” she says. “But Cairo also holds extraordinary beauty. Alongside the most dismal of buildings, mosques and other magnificent structures are built. Above car horns and the shouts of vendors, you can always hear the call to prayer projected over loudspeakers. I love it here.”

Bonnaffons is the first graduate of Blair’s five-year bachelor of music/master of education program to teach abroad in the program’s 14-year history, says Associate Professor Thomas Verrier, director of teacher education and wind studies. “She’s a wonderful musician and incredibly open to new possibilities,” he says.

The International School of Choueifat, a private school with close to 1,700 students, attracts the sons and daughters of leading Egyptian families, including the country’s minister of education.

“I have taught privately and spent time in classrooms connected with my education degree, but this is my first ‘real’ teaching job,” Bonnaffons says.

Her students are remarkably similar to American children. “They’re full of energy, generally want to please and often get distracted by their peers,” she says. “And their parents are very, very heavily involved in their children’s academic life.”

Blythe Bonnaffons leads her music students during the annual Christmas concert at the Choueifat School in Cairo, where she teaches.

Her two English classes are very small, but the 10 music classes contain 32 students each. All instruction is in English, which is the second language for most students, and teachers and students alike are discouraged from speaking Arabic.

“Classroom management is a huge challenge,” she says. “But it still amazes me how a neon bassoon sticker can make the worst kid behave for 55 minutes.”

A flutist, Bonnaffons has difficulty finding time for her own music since she’s staging two musicals this year: Oliver for the middle-school students and Annie for the second- to fourth-graders. “Most of my free practice time is spent trying to get the piano score under my fingers,” she says ruefully.

Her Blair classes definitely helped prepare Bonnaffons for her new position. “All the courses I took on general music were really helpful as far as offering me practical knowledge and tons of resources I can use in the classroom,” she says.

She notes that teaching in a foreign country can be “incredibly lonely” at times. “Teaching itself is a challenge, stepping outside your own culture puts you at another level of vulnerability. But that vulnerability is largely what attracts me to teaching abroad. I can admit that I don’t know anything. I am as much a learner as I am a teacher.”

Editor’s Note:
At press time, President Hosni Mubarak had just stepped down as president of Egypt after 18 days of protests. Blythe Bonnaffons left Cairo at the end of January, after two days at the airport, taking an American chartered flight to Istanbul. Prior to leaving, she took photos of the protests on Friday, January 28, the “day of wrath,” as labeled by Cable News Network. She writes, “My friend Carla and I went to the top of Cairo Tower to watch as the protesters gathered in Midan al Gala, and the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd. We watched as a nearby building caught on fire, and protesters sent a police truck up in flames. The protesters made it onto the bridge leading to Tahrir Square, but were knocked back by water hoses. When the call to prayer went off, everything stopped. The protesters kneeled down on the bridge. The police stopped firing. Prayer lasted for about ten minutes, after which the fight continued.”

Bonnaffons returned to Cairo on Sunday, February 20, for the reopening of Chouifat School. She plans to finish the semester teaching there.

Stan Link, associate professor of the philosophy and analysis of music, on the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan.

Josh McGuire, senior lecturer in aural studies, and Stan Link, associate professor of the philosophy and analysis of music, traveled to Mexico City to premiere Link’s Toda la Tierra, for amplified classical guitar, two speakers and computer-generated accompaniment at the El Chopo Museum last September. The concert was part of the Music of the Stones project, in which visual artist Will Berry commissioned musical responses from several composers, including Blair alum Zach Miskin, BMus’06, to a series of large works he created by printing with rolling discs of lava rock on 30-foot-long Japanese paper. The installation of the scrolls in a gallery of the museum was also accompanied by ambient sound installations, including two extended works commissioned from Link at the beginning of the Music of the Stones project. The source sounds for these pieces included a clay flute that Link brought back from the pyramid city of Teotihuacan 34 years earlier. Ironically, this little souvenir was ultimately what brought McGuire and Link to Mexico City.

McGuire performed Toda La Tierra from a score that Link composed to simulate the 10 paths of the lava disks across the paper as well as the eye’s wandering path over the image. In this respect, McGuire became a kind of “co-composer” of the piece, which is never played the same way twice. By following the connections among the 10 cycles Link composed to represent the 10 lava disks, a new event emerges every time he plays it. McGuire’s trip through this musical labyrinth takes place against a background soundscape that Link constructed entirely from sounds made from paper and rocks. McGuire’s guitar in conjunction with the soundscape then forms the setting for four texts. The texts consist of Mexican poems, both contemporary and ancient, that refer to paper and stones. The title, Toda la Tierra, comes from an Aztec “flower and song” poem by Nezahualcoyot (Hungry Coyote), a poet/ruler who lived in pre-Cortes Mexico from 1402-1472. The poem describes the transience of human life, and ends with the line, “Vanished are these glories, just as the fearful smoke vanishes that belches forth from the infernal fires of Popocatepetl. Nothing recalls them but the written page.” Each of McGuire’s performances then mirrors the transience of human existence—which might be recorded, but can never be recreated.

Vanderbilt Opera Theatre performed Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance at Blair’s Ingram Hall in November 2002. Each fall, VOT performs a fully staged production with orchestra featuring composers as varied as Sondheim and Puccini, Mozart and Weill, and the ever popular Gilbert and Sullivan.

The mischievously dark worlds of filmmaker Tim Burton, illustrator Edward Gorey and the humorously twisted “Fractured Fairy Tales” cartoons are influencing this fall’s Vanderbilt Opera Theatre production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. It’s quite a change from the traditional, straightforward approach taken when the opera was performed a decade ago, and a change in how opera is integrated into the Blair curriculum.

Now the opera course, an elective open to voice majors of any year (as well as any Vanderbilt student), also fulfills an ensemble requirement for Blair students.

“It’s recognition that opera is a significant solo and ensemble experience within our new curriculum,” says Jonathan Retzlaff, chair of the voice department. As a result, some voice students will not participate in symphonic or chamber choir during the second half of the fall semester if they are cast in the opera. Retzlaff believes this new arrangement enhances both the choral and opera experiences for students.

For last season’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, for example, students began working with vocal and opera coach Jennifer McGuire—who also serves as VOT’s rehearsal pianist—even before production staging began.

Students are not required to take part in VOT, but it is considered to be an important part of the Blair experience.

“You can’t recruit if you don’t offer stage experience. You can’t have a performance degree in voice and not offer stage experience,” Retzlaff says. He directed the VOT for a year before Gayle Shay came to Blair as director in 1998.

“In Gayle we found a person who loves the entire process—the craft of developing the actors, of helping everybody create the characters and of creating a community within a cast,” Retzlaff says.

Producing a full-scale production with costumes and sets in one semester is not unusual, even in an undergraduate environment. But Blair’s program includes working with a live orchestra—comprised of Blair students under the direction of Robin Fountain—rather than piano accompaniment.

“Professor Fountain believes very strongly that instrumental students need to have the experience of playing in an opera pit,” Shay says. “I feel incredibly fortunate for that, because not only is the orchestra very fine, but Robin is also a tremendous collaborator and second set of eyes and ears in the rehearsal process.”

Shay says hers is a “dream” job. She realized a love of directing while in graduate school and was recruited to Blair by Dean Mark Wait in 1998 when, with a new wing of classrooms, studios and a state-of-the-art theater in the works, there was a desire to expand the VOT beyond students presenting opera scenes in Turner Recital Hall.

Amy Jarman, senior lecturer in voice, says the VOT offers students a look at how professional companies work, particularly given Shay’s meticulously organized rehearsals. “If we get to 5:15 p.m. and it’s time to move on to the next thing she’s scheduled, Gayle will say ‘I’m sorry. We’re going to have to stop now,’” Jarman explains.

Retzlaff, who along with Jarman has had roles in two VOT productions, feels giving students the opportunity to work alongside their professors allows students to see them as working professionals. “I hope they admire us and see that we are there to support and encourage them, to nurture them,” he says. “We also provide motivation when they need it. We set really high expectations for them.”

Associate Dean Pam Schneller, who has taught at Blair since 1999, founded the Vanderbilt Community Chorus a decade ago, directed the Vanderbilt Concert Choir and Chamber Singers from 1999-2008 and led the Blair Children’s Chorus program for 14 years.

It would be easy, and true, to say Pam Schneller lives and breathes music.

It would also be an understatement.

Schneller—a longtime fixture within the Blair School of Music—views music as more than lyrics, voices and instruments, as more than even the world-unifying “universal language.”

Indeed, Pam Schneller sees music as a spiritual force of sorts, a type of intangible, art-as-life-giving source of healing and hope.

“All music, and vocal music in particular, has the ability to express and bring to life ideas and emotions too deep, too powerful for words,” says Schneller, who serves at Blair in many roles, including associate dean (pre-college and adult program), senior lecturer in choral music and guest conductor for Blair choirs. “I believe music is one of the keys to the salvation of the world.

“Making music in community makes each of us more fully alive, more fully human and more fully connected to each other,” she adds. “I chose to make my career in choral music for that reason, because of the power and joy that comes in enabling others by teaching and evoking the music that lies within each one of us.” 

From a practical perspective, Schneller says music offers people a chance to gather, rejoice, reflect and, well, be human.

“Music in community is a key part of most of our significant human rituals—weddings, funerals, commemorations, celebrations,” she explains. “At the horror of Sept. 11, 2001, people all over New York and the world came together in song. They were speechless, but they sang.”

That Schneller sings today can render folks speechless, once they learn her story.

While jogging in Los Angeles in February 2005, Schneller was hit by a motorist. She spent several weeks in intensive care and underwent surgery for brain hemorrhaging and broken bones. Music helped save her.

“I cannot tell you how, only that music does heal physical and emotional wounds,” she says. “Doctors and nurses—and singing parents—have long known that music soothes, calms, relaxes and promotes healing. In ICU, my blood pressure was alarmingly high. Although I was basically in a coma, my husband [Chancellor’s Professor of Piano Roland Schneller], I am told, sang to me, over and over. Every time he sang, my blood pressure went down. Talking didn’t do it. Music did it.”

As Schneller began to recover in the hospital and, later, in a rehabilitation center, people in her choirs inundated her and Roland with “aid, good wishes and encouragement.”

“Over and over we heard ‘because the choir—and the music you help us make—mean so much,’” she says.

“Because it ‘meant so much,’ it gave me strength to keep trying and not give up,” she continues. “Not to be self-deprecating, but I knew it wasn’t really me they were responding to. It was ‘music in community.’”

And, no doubt, the Vanderbilt community has Schneller’s conductor’s baton waved all over it, as the spirited academic founded and/or has overseen six of the 10 existing choirs associated with the Blair School of Music.

The accomplishments are enough to impress husband Roland, one of Blair’s original faculty members (his tenure began in 1964) and a venerable figure himself within the Vanderbilt community. Roland says his positive-karma-ed wife always serves as an inspiration.

“She’s such a positive and giving person, I almost feel like whatever she is doing, even if it weren’t in music, it would be in the same loving and giving attitude,” Roland Schneller says. “Music is simply her way of communicating.”

Schneller says he and Pam share music in many ways.

“We talk a good bit about it, not about music per se, but our place in the musical life of Blair and the community,” he explains.

A trained vocalist as well as pianist, Schneller says he has always enjoyed singing under the direction of a skilled conductor, in this case, his wife.

“She has a wonderful manner and presentation,” he says. “She works so well on a larger stage. She’s proactive. I admire what she is. She is a choral conductor and amateur pianist. I’m more of a one-on-one person. She is exactly what I am not.”

No question Pam Schneller is versatile within the music realm. A decade ago, she founded the Vanderbilt Community Chorus and remains closely attached to that group. She also remains close to the VU Concert Choir and Chamber Singers which she directed from 1999-2008 and the Blair Childrens Chorus program, which she led for 14 years. In addition, she has an extensive background in the church music sector, working as the full-time director of music at local Presbyterian and United Methodist churches from 1988-99.

“Serving as a church musician for over 20 years taught me a profound reverence for the power of poem, prose and misic,” she says.

With the church work and full-time choral conducting duties behind her, Schneller now focuses fully on teaching undergraduate conducting and on Blair’s pre-college and adult students. About 700 strong, the students range from infants to adults in their 80s.

“Getting to know as many of them as I can is a goal and a big challenge,” she says of the students. “I work to help parents and students learn about the many types of classes, lessons and opportunities we offer at Blair.”

In the process, Schneller endeavors to help the pre-college students build and enhance a sense of community.

“I enjoy assisting faculty with the Myra Jackson Blair Honor Scholars,” she says. “These high school students are immersed in music at Blair with lessons, ensembles and classes,” she explains. “Finding others that share a similar passion for music is such joy.”

Schneller’s work with youth is not unexpected, as music quickly became a part of her life while she grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.

“I had my first choir solo in grade five in school,” she remembers. “I first conducted a choir in high school. My choral director allowed me to conduct a women’s group in a piece I had written for music theory class. I was hooked on making music with others and never looked back.”

Indeed, Schneller has not looked back since that fateful February day in 2005 either. She returned to Blair in July of that year and has come full circle since then, having given a speech for the Blair Senior Recognition event in May 2009. During the speech, Schneller used music education—and the love of music as a healing force—as a metaphor for life and the future the graduates were facing.

“No matter who you are or how perfectly your life in and out of music has gone so far, you will find that life brings great surprises, bizarre challenges and incredible and unexpected opportunities,” she said that day.

Looking back, Schneller says penning the speech was enormously difficult. Her emotions ran high. Some physical pain, despite being assuaged by the healing force of song and sound, remained (and still does). Still, Schneller embraced the challenge of crafting and presenting a speech that would directly impact the Vanderbilt students—and subconsciously act as catharsis for Schneller herself.

“I was so humbled to be doing it and there was so much I wanted to say,” she recalls. “Above all, I wanted the graduating seniors to know that their music has given them gifts and skills that will enable them to deal with whatever life brings them.”

Life has brought Pam Schneller many challenges. Music has helped her face them head on.

Musically and academically talented, having made it through Blair’s strenuous audition process, first-year voice majors may be in for a few surprises when they arrive at Blair. The students may find themselves asked to reconsider how they do everything that got them there in the first place. That’s because their voice instructors are determined to transform the young students into well-trained musicians capable of gaining admittance to the nation’s most prestigious graduate music programs.

Jonathan Retzlaff, associate professor and department chair; Gayle Shay, associate professor and Vanderbilt Opera Theatre director; and Amy Jarman, senior lecturer in voice, begin by steeping students in the principles of the 19th century Italian or bel canto school of singing, which emphasizes principles of integrating the physiology of singing (breath, posture and vowel formation) with the development and care of one’s voice. “Our backgrounds synthesized into believing that this is really the most effective set of tools for singers,” Retzlaff says. “What the Italians were doing hundreds of years ago by ear … has been borne out by science and spectrum analysis.”

Four-time Grammy Award winner Dawn Upshaw has sung twice at Blair in concerts sponsored by the Mary Cortner Ragland Master Series Fund, which brings internationally known vocalists to Blair each year. Other artists who have sung at Blair as part of the Ragland Master Series have included Renée Fleming, Ian Bostridge, Bo Skovhus and Jennifer Larmore.

“Jonathan, Gayle and I are very technically oriented in terms of the ‘how’ of singing,” Jarman says. While Jarman and her colleagues don’t necessarily have to unteach things the students may have previously learned, they often must redirect their students’ ideas about singing. “I’m asking them to think differently about what they’re doing with their tongue or their jaw, how they are creating space inside their mouth, or what they’re thinking about when they take a breath,” Jarman says.

Jennifer McGuire, lecturer in opera and vocal coaching, works with students to address issues of language diction, performance practice, style and the art of collaborative music-making. Her work emphasizes a level of polish and preparation that is graduate level in expectation. As part of her preparation before meeting with students, McGuire practices singing their parts to make note of where they’ll need to breathe and whether they need more time to voice certain words.

An important part of Retzlaff’s instruction is teaching young singers to respect their vocal folds and how to properly prepare them for performance or practice. It’s all the more difficult given the elusive nature of some of the muscles involved in singing.

“Most of the [first-year students] don’t know where their diaphragm is, or that you can’t feel it,” Retzlaff says. “To ‘sing from your diaphragm’ is really scientifically impossible … it’s an involuntary muscle,” he explains. “We do have to learn about it and its interaction with the abdominal muscles.”

Master classes are an important addition to regular classroom instruction, providing students the opportunity to work with a diverse range of professionals. In a January 2008 master class at Blair, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore works with Tierney Bamrick, BMus’09, now in the graduate voice program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Shay uses a small skeleton and anatomical charts of the larynx to help clarify such points for students. The skeleton is also useful when talking about body awareness work, such as the Alexander Technique, and its focus on proper spinal alignment.

Named for Shakespearean actor Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955), the technique is based on the idea of continuously lengthening the spine, of “never arriving at a posture,” Shay explains. She finds the concept particularly useful for students who are unaware of how to use their bodies to enhance their singing. “They think their instrument is just here,” she says, pointing to her throat, “but it’s actually their whole body.”

“Part of our job is to know—particularly with young, big, mature voices—that it’s not appropriate for them to be singing heavy repertoire. It’s as important for a teacher to say ‘no’ as it is to say ‘yes’ sometimes.”

—Jonathan Retzlaff

Blair voice graduates are busy performing in many venues. Top: Zach Nadolski, BMus’05, performing as Gaston in Beauty and the Beast at Walt Disney World. He has gone on to perform in numerous theatrical productions around the country, as well as singing in Jubilee!, a show that has been running for 29 years in Las Vegas, and working as a production singer on the cruise ship Celebrity Solstice. Bottom: Daniel (BMus’04) and Caitlin Shirley (pre-college alumna) as Fenton and Anne in the 2008 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Daniel is in the final stages of the doctor of music degree, and Caitlin recently finished her master of music degree at IU. This season, he will be a resident young artist with Florida Grand Opera in Miami (singing in performances of Turandot, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and Cyrano) and Caitlin is joining the chorus of the Lyric Opera of Chicago (singing in performances of Macbeth, Carmen, and Lohengrin).

Still, Shay acknowledges the Alexander Technique isn’t for every person or every body, and that’s fine. Shay and her colleagues devote a lot of time to finding the best way for each student to achieve his or her personal best. This might even mean helping them to find ways of keeping music in their lives should they decide not to pursue a performing career—or even a degree in music.

Retzlaff, Shay and Jarman make no bones about the competitive, low-odds nature of a performance career, repeatedly stressing the discipline and dedication required to succeed at the undergraduate level, let alone anything beyond that. To do well at competitions, in graduate school or to maintain a professional career requires a certain amount of tunnel vision, Retzlaff’s says.

One of the biggest challenges the voice instructors face, Retzlaff says, is teaching students to be patient, an increasingly difficult task given the instant-gratification nature of our society. Google, American Idol and other aspects of popular culture have led kids to expect what they want, when they want it.

“Singing just doesn’t work that way,” Retzlaff says. “You have to be willing to learn to love that solitary time in the practice room, and it takes years. There’s no amount of technology out there that can speed up your physiological process. It just does not work.”

For Retzlaff, an essential component of lessons is what he refers to as the “Retzlaff Regimen,” a series of exercises—targeting onsets, agility and sustaining notes—that take the voice from cold to ready to perform anything from musical theater to art song to opera. The exercises also improve resonance and help singers work through their passaggi (transition areas between registers). Retzlaff requires his students to demonstrate and discuss the regimen in lessons. “The point is not what I can get your voice to do,” he says, “the point is can you get your voice to do what I can? Students must know what the exercises are, the exact order in which to practice them, which includes what the pitch boundaries are.”

The right material
Ensuring that students stick only with material appropriate for their young voices is also a major undertaking of the voice faculty, in choosing material for studio classes, competitions and performances. At the end of spring semester, for example, Jarman goes through a bookcase full of music in her office, closely examining each book and score to see what might fit incoming and current students. Shay starts searching for the next Vanderbilt Opera Theatre production immediately after that season’s show closes.

“We try to find things that will be useful for [the students], that will address their needs, that will encourage them to stretch and grow,” Shay says. “That’s why we say you’ll never see La Bohème on this stage, because it’s way too difficult for our students, but you’ll never see Rent either, because that’s not what we teach.”

Last season, the Vanderbilt Opera Theatre mounted a production of The Marriage of Figaro, a choice driven by the presence of a baritone (Preston Orr) to sing the title role and a soprano (Katie Heaton) who could handle the role of Susannah. Retzlaff and Jarman sang the mature roles of the Count and Countess Almaviva—roles not appropriate for most undergraduate voices.

“Part of our job is to know—particularly with young, big, mature voices—that it’s not appropriate for them to be singing heavy repertoire,” Retzlaff says. “It’s as important for a teacher to say ‘no’ as it is to say ‘yes’ sometimes.”

After four years at Blair, students emerge knowing how to sing in a healthy fashion, no matter what kind of music they favor.

“We try to create the best musician we possibly can in the overall sense,” Retzlaff says. One way he defines this is someone who can prepare quickly and accurately upon demand. “The musical world is very small … whether it’s in NYC or academia, word spreads very quickly. Reliable, artistic musicians get hired over and over again. If you’re not prepared, you’re not going to get called again.”

One venue from which Blair students receive stage experience is Vanderbilt Opera Theatre. The 2007 production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute was presented with a ‘60s counterculture theme for sets and costumes.

Retzlaff, Shay and Jarman all believe learning how to sing in front of panels, whether in competitions or auditions, is a crucial part of the Blair experience. Thus, auditioning is built it into every aspect of the program. Participation in Vanderbilt Opera Theatre productions, for example, is determined through preliminary and call-back auditions. For performance classes, students are required to come properly attired on their assigned singing days. They are guided in decisions about what clothes and shoes to wear, how to style their hair and makeup, how to stand, and how to announce themselves and their music.

“You think that’s easy to do … but if you’re not a native German speaker and you’re singing a Schumann song, you have to practice speaking the title of the song,” Jarman says.

Blair faculty members Amy Jarman and Jonathan Retzlaff as the Count and Countess Almaviva in Act IV of Vanderbilt Opera Theatre’s 2009 production of The Marriage of Figaro. Jarman and Retzlaff have had roles in two VOT productions, giving students the opportunity to see them as working professionals as well as mentors.

Retzlaff even insists that students leave slang—the words “like” and “awesome”—at the door. It’s this kind of attention to detail since his arrival at Blair in 1997 that has helped the school gain an impressive reputation in a relatively short time. His goal has been, he says, to create a curriculum and a sense of readiness in graduates that results in music teachers around the country knowing that Blair is a contender with the top-tier music schools and that the school belongs on their audition lists.

The program’s esteem has begun to spread as its graduates take their place in the music world. Voice department graduates have been accepted into advanced degree programs at Eastman and the New England Conservatory, Indiana and Northwestern universities, the Mannheim Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music among others. They have performed with opera companies, Broadway touring companies and festivals around the country and world. Blair students routinely hold their own at competitions such as the regional National Association for Teachers of Singing and the Graz, Austria-based American Institute for Musical Studies summer program.

“On an undergraduate basis, I would put what we do here up against anybody in the country,” Retzlaff says. “All of us have said if I had had that curriculum, those teachers and that educational experience when I was that age, you’d be interviewing me from backstage at the Met.”

VORTEX’s spring concert featured a 1906 French silent film classic for which the ensemble provided accompaniment, and Sensemaya, music for the ritual killing of a snake, on which the group collaborated with DJ Brad ‘Kali’ Bowden, Daniel Bernard Roumain, BMus’93, Tracy Silverman and the Hart String Quartet.

A vortex is so powerful that it draws everything into it, making the name of Blair’s newest percussion ensemble extremely accurate.

“The name ‘VORTEX’ brings to mind a pulling together of disparate things to create a hybrid,” says Michael Holland, artistic director of VORTEX. “A student will be challenged to perform as more than a musician giving expression to music on a page. This is a direct reflection of my experience in CRASH, Cirque du Soleil and numerous theatrical projects over the years, and it is also a reflection of what is happening in performance companies like De la Guarda, Fuerza Bruta, Blue Man Group—all of these companies ask their performers to reach beyond the conventional approach to percussion performance as it has been defined for many years.”

The music in a VORTEX performance is carefully selected to create a dramatic arc. Central to this is how one piece moves into and influences another, the ebb and flow of energy in the theater and the ultimate effect on the audience.

“Probably the first thing apparent at a VORTEX performance is the look,” Holland says. “I want to catch the audience off guard visually as well as aurally. The next element is the question of how one piece unfolds into another. This is a combination of three things—the actual logistical instrument requirements for each piece, the musical language and color of each piece, and the visual and physical aspects of each piece.

“Percussion performance is a very visual art form,” Holland continues. “When the music integrates nuanced movement into the production of sound, the net result approaches theater. And this is where percussionists in VORTEX have to begin to think like actors and even dancers. The quality of movement becomes just as important as the quality of tone production.”

Holland actively courts composers, filmmakers, musicians of all stripes, choreographers and engineers to create relationships and new opportunities.  This year’s concerts showcased works and collaborations with composers Jeffery Briggs, Mary Ellen Childs, the Eric Stokes estate, Daniel Bernard Roumain, BMus’93, Tracy Silverman, and, on the cutting edge of new music performance, DJ and remix artist Brad ‘Kali’ Bowden, one of the most sought-after DJs in the world. “And I would be remiss without acknowledging the first-rate technical work of [Technical Director] Joe DeBusk and his crew. These guys are the very best in Nashville, and VORTEX could not exist without them,” Holland says.

The next performance, on Halloween, will include a dramatic tour de force with actor Jim Lovensheimer, assistant professor of musicology, in a chilling theatrical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-tale Heart,” backed up by a percussion score composed by Michael Slayton, associate professor of music theory. On April 3, 2011, VORTEX will partner with Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained engineer John Harrison to integrate percussion performance and computer technology with a stunning visual result.

 “One huge reason I’ve had such great success with VORTEX is because Bill Wiggins [associate professor of percussion] has built such a solid percussion program at Blair,” says Holland, who joined the faculty in 2008. “For someone like me coming in with my performance background, it has made it very easy for this less conventional approach to percussion to take root.”

In As You Like It William Shakespeare wrote that “all the world’s a stage.” That expression describes Alicia Enstrom’s life perfectly. Enstrom, BMus’09, has performed on the violin all over the world—from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville to venues in China, Korea and throughout Europe.

Enstrom grew up in Topeka, Kan., in a musical family. Blair appealed to her because of the diversity of the coursework.

“I always had it in my head that I would go [to Blair] because I knew I could get a fantastic classical education as well as learn more about fiddle and jazz,” Enstrom says. “I was also very excited about the alternative music scene in Nashville.”

After her junior year, Enstrom left Blair to go on tour with Barrage—a performance group that’s been described as a cross between Riverdance and Stomp.

“Barrage is an alternative fiddle group,” she says. “It’s choreographed with lots of movement, even high kicks.”

For three and a half years, Enstrom traveled the world with Barrage. Along the way she shared the stage with the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil. A desire to complete her degree brought her back to Vanderbilt just in time to join a new performance group that Matt Combs, adjunct instructor of fiddle and director of the fiddling program, was creating.

Enstrom

“The group was called the Second Stringers and was comprised of bass, mandolin, guitar and three fiddles,” she says. “It was a great experience, and we even got to perform at the Grand Ole Opry.”

After graduation, Enstrom sent an audition tape to Cirque du Soleil. A few months later, she was hired to perform at Madison Square Garden in the troupe’s holiday show, Wintuk. After rehearsing in Montreal, she and the rest of the cast moved to New York City in early November. The show is about a little boy’s journey to find snow.

“I make an appearance on stage for a few numbers,” Enstrom says. “My character is a ‘person of the north’ and the costume and makeup process take almost two hours.”

Enstrom describes the Cirque du Soleil music as a mixture of world and pop music. Add those styles to her classical and fiddle repertoire, and it’s easy to see why Enstrom is at home playing just about anything.

“When I was younger, I used to think that classical music was more serious and that you could smile more playing alternative styles,” she says. “But through my experience at Vanderbilt and at various jobs and festivals, my view of the classical versus alternative world changed. Now I know that whatever style you’re playing, you have to figure out a way to have fun with it.”

Holly is a junior at the Nashville School of the Arts, a magnet school within Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. Since 2006, she has also been a pre-college Myra Jackson Blair Honor Scholar at Blair. As an honor scholar, she takes classes at Blair in music theory, music history, accompaniment and chamber music in addition to study devoted to her instrument. In October, she was one of six finalists in the youth category of the 2009 Seattle International Piano Competition. Between her time at school, her time at Blair and her time practicing, there isn’t much time for anything else.

“I usually wake up around 6:30,” Holly says. “That’s a struggle, because I usually don’t go to bed until 12:30 or 1. It’s not that the schoolwork is all that hard, it’s just the amount of homework I have for each class.”

Holly’s day at the Nashville School of the Arts begins at 8 a.m. She takes three advanced placement classes—biology, English and American history. Piano and choir round out her class load. Her regular class work ends at 3 p.m., but her day is far from over.

“On Mondays I go straight from school to Blair, where I either have rehearsal with my duo partner, or I practice on my own until theory class, which lasts until 5:35 p.m.,” she says. “On Tuesday I have an after-school session for my Advanced Placement U.S. History class and then a performance class at Blair. Wednesdays are free, unless I have a rehearsal, and on Thursdays I have two lessons at Blair. Then on Friday, nothing.”

Holly’s weekends are spent practicing and studying for upcoming tests. For many, a schedule this full would be daunting, but Holly seems to thrive on the constant activity.

“Her first priority has been the piano and music and Blair,” says Holly’s teacher, Roland Schneller, Chancellor’s Professor of Piano at Blair. “She does it because she loves it. She has an inner drive that you find in all of the most successful students.”

Holly recounts her schedule with a precision you’d expect from an engineer, not an artist. Like all musicians, she excels at keeping time.

“I have millions of clocks,” she says, explaining the key to succeeding in both academics and music. “On my computer, my phone, at home, I’m always mindful of the clock. People think that sounds uptight, but it works for me.”

As a junior, Holly is also preparing for college auditions. She is considering an impressive collection of the country’s finest schools when it comes to studying music—Indiana University at Bloomington, Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College, the Peabody Institute of Music at Johns Hopkins University, the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester and the Curtis Institute of Music.

“Connections are a major part of the music world,” Holly says. “You need to have lessons with different teachers at different schools. The thought of college auditions is pretty scary, because I’m not exactly sure what happens.”

Last summer Holly attended the prestigious Indiana University Piano Academy and received instruction from an instructor who plays a large role in determining which students are awarded scholarships at the school.

“I was nervous, but I played something that I’m comfortable with,” Holly says. “Also, now I’m past the prescreening process for IU. I won’t have to send in a tape, I’ll just go there to audition.”

Even though music is her main focus, Holly is also thinking of studying English or something in the medical field. However, it’s hard to imagine that music won’t be her life’s work.

“If I do end up with a career in music, I’d love to just perform,” she says. “But I’d like to teach as well. Maybe I can be kind of a touring, master-class teacher.”

“She’s competing in the big leagues, and she hasn’t even found what she can do best yet, but that will come,” Schneller says. “A pianist has to try everything to find out who they really are.”

It’s only a few blocks from the Blair School of Music to Music Row, but they once seemed light years apart. Today, Blair bridges the gap between the popular music world and the academic study of music by bringing the talent and experience of popular musicians into the classroom.

Keyboard/accordionist Jen Gunderman, solo artist/music journalist Peter Cooper, and Grammy-winning producer Steve Buckingham are music industry professionals who have joined the Blair faculty to teach History of Rock Music, History of Country Music and Music and the Fall of Segregation, respectively. Their students are learning about the lives and music of popular icons like Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles from those who actually knew or worked with them.

As working artists who write, perform, produce and record music, Cooper, Gunderman and Buckingham give students a firsthand look at what it takes to succeed in one of the toughest businesses around. Because of their Music Row contacts, they are able to bring in other artists, songwriters, musicians and music business professionals to share their expertise with students.

Peter Cooper

‘It’s all music’

Clad in red shirt, blue jeans and black boots, Peter Cooper, senior lecturer in music history and literature, offers students a unique personal and professional perspective on country music from its colonial roots to today’s multimillion-dollar global industry.

“So much of the history that I talk about in this class took place within walking distance of Blair,” Cooper says. “There’ve always been connections.”

Several well-known recording artists have attended Vanderbilt, including Dinah Shore, Rosanne Cash, Amy Grant and Francis Craig, who recorded Nashville’s first big-time pop hit and also wrote Vanderbilt’s fight song, “Dynamite.” Many of today’s aspiring musicians and songwriters ply their day jobs in various medical center and university departments at Vanderbilt and others have done so in the past as well.

“I like to tell students stories like the one about Don Schlitz, who wrote ‘The Gambler’ while working in a Vanderbilt computer lab,” Cooper says. The song became a megahit for Kenny Rogers, who won a Grammy for his rendition. “I talk about the musicians as persons as well as historical figures, what they were like that enabled them to do these extraordinary things.”

Cooper’s guests have included country music stars like Vanderbilt parent Kix Brooks of the duo Brooks and Dunn; Dierks Bentley, BA’97; and Joe Nichols.

A multitalented Americana singer/songwriter and respected music journalist, Cooper has had music praised by many, including Kris Kristofferson. Cooper began his career as a middle school teacher in South Carolina and writes for the Tennessean, Esquire and Britannica, among others. He recently released a solo album, Mission Door, and is working on two albums with famed steel guitarist Lloyd Green. He has taught music history at Blair since 2007.

“To me it all feels of a piece,” Cooper says. “Whether I’m on the road playing, writing about it or talking about it, it’s all music.”

Jen Gunderman

Grounded in pop music

In History of Rock Music, Jen Gunderman, senior lecturer in music history and literature, traces the development of rock and roll from the ’50s to the present. Presenting the major artists from each decade, she includes subgenres like rockabilly, rhythm and blues, folk, soul, metal, pop and alternative. Through the use of sound and video clips, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and the Beatles perform once again for a new generation of students.

A classically trained pianist who has played at Avery Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center, Gunderman is also a gifted keyboard/accordionist who records with many different artists, including Cooper. She has played in rock, funk and folk bands, including the Jayhawks and Dag.

“I’ve always loved teaching,” she says. “I try to give students a sense of how the music is put together, while focusing on the technological, cultural and economic changes that helped shape the sounds.”

A Vassar graduate with a master’s degree from the University of Washington, Gunderman joined the Blair faculty in 2004.

“I find that my work outside Vanderbilt continually feeds into the classroom and vice versa,” she says. “Students tell me about new bands I haven’t heard, and musicians I work with often end up as guests in my classrooms.”

A typical day might find Gunderman teaching in the morning, working in the studio in the afternoon and performing on stage at night. She recently produced her first CD by Vanderbilt graduate Ben Cameron, BA’08.

”Making music keeps my feet on the ground,” Gunderman says. “A lot of academics writing about pop music haven’t experienced it in a personal, visceral way. I understand what it feels like to play in front of crowds of people, and that emotional experience grounds the way I think about music intellectually and helps me connect students with ideas.”

Steve Buckingham

Tearing down the rope

Veteran producer and record executive Steve Buckingham began teaching Music and the Fall of Segregation at Blair last fall. His interest in how music helped to advance the Civil Rights Movement is both personal and professional. As a student at Virginia’s Richmond College during the early ’60s, Buckingham played backup guitar for a number of African American artists, including Percy Sledge, Jackie Wilson and the Drifters.

“We could play with them, but we couldn’t eat together or stay at the same hotels,” he recalls about a system some have called American apartheid. “At concerts, a rope separated the black students from the whites. By the end of the show, the rope was down, and the kids were dancing with each other.”

Buckingham became interested in putting together this course when, several years ago, a student innocently asked if segregation was legal in those days. “It struck me that students won’t know about it if nobody talks about it,” he says.

In the course, Buckingham explains how swing and jazz from the ’30s and ’40s, rock and roll and rhythm & blues in the ’50s, and soul music in the ’60s helped to break down barriers between the races. He notes that clarinetist Benny Goodman hired Teddy Wilson, the first African American to play in a big band, 12 years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. During the ’40s and ’50s, thousands of teenagers became fans of rhythm and blues musicians thanks to radio disc jockeys like Nashville’s John R. and Bill “Hoss” Allen, BA’48. Black musicians also influenced white artists like Elvis, who brought their music to a worldwide audience.

Like his colleagues, Buckingham brings his life experiences and music contacts to bear on his subject. During his early career, he played guitar on hundreds of recordings as a studio musician. He served as vice president of A&R (artists and repertoire) and producer for Columbia, Vanguard and Sugar Hill Records for a combined 21 years.

Buckingham has garnered four Grammys, 27 No. 1 singles, 11 platinum and 19 gold albums over the years. Working with artists as varied as Dolly Parton, Sinead O’Connor, and Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), he produced top 10 singles on 11 different charts from country to pop to jazz. The first record he produced—“I Love the Nightlife” by Alicia Bridges—became a worldwide hit in 1978.

“I love teaching,” he says. “This is a dream for me. Compared to the record business, it’s a walk in the park.”

Seniors Alyssa Weinberg, Matt Clark and Ben Hart are exploring septuplets in Marianne Ploger’s advanced ear training and sight singing class. Referring to Robert Starer’s Rhythmic Training, they count and clap together, examining rhythm in a basic way.

“Ta! Ta! Ta-ta-ta-ta!” the student trio intones, all the while lightly clapping their hands on their thighs.

“It’s important to count while sounding ‘ta,’” Ploger says. “Counting and speaking are processed in different parts of the brain.”

The students nod, and after several of these exercises, Ploger decides to work on atonal melody and harmony. She asks the students to identify tetrachords as she plays them on the piano. The students listen intently, and it’s many more hits than misses as they differentiate between Ionian and Dorian chords.

“I’ll respond faster and stop thinking,” Alyssa says at one point.

“That’s it. Bravo!” Ploger exclaims.

The hour quickly draws to a close and Ploger concludes with a few comments about memory and imagination, referencing cooking, language and psychology.

“We have to practice the imagination, always imagining all possibilities to keep from falling into a groove,” Ploger sums up. “The greatest stuff goes into the brain and sticks there. As artists, we have to really develop our memory so we can see the patterns and remember.”

These students are studying the fundamentals of what makes music succeed. Septuplets, Ionian and Dorian tetrachords, atonal melody—these terms may mean little to the nonmusician, but those who want to play music well need to be able to hear and identify them easily. Tuning the ear to hear correctly as music is being made is the foundation of good music-making. But musicianship or the acquisition of aural skills is also one of the most misunderstood areas of study in music. Marianne Ploger, senior artist teacher of musicianship and director of Blair’s musicianship program, is turning around the assumption that one either has aural skills to master pitch, rhythm and intervals or one doesn’t.

“In the past, a high level of musicianship has been associated with natural talent and aptitude,” Ploger says. “As a result, a commonly held belief has been that, because natural aptitude and talent are inexplicable, uncontrollable and unteachable, musicianship training has been largely gratuitous—easy for the gifted and nightmarish for the less gifted. Yet I have found that all musicians can learn to recognize and understand what they are hearing in music, at the same speed that they recognize and understand what they hear and read in their native language.”

Ploger’s approach signals a new direction in teaching musicianship, according to Dean Mark Wait. “The way Marianne teaches musicianship is fundamentally different from the way it has been taught at Blair in the past,” Wait says. “Marianne gets students to respond immediately by making aural skills part of the nuts and bolts of their equipment that is ready to go.”

Prior to joining the Blair faculty in 2008, Ploger spent years exploring musical perception and communication to discover what enables a musician to master aural skills. An accomplished composer and pianist, Ploger founded and directed the Institute for Musical Perception and taught at the University of Michigan’s top-ranked conducting program.

“My work parallels research findings of the last few years on the neuroplasticity of the brain, its ability to continue to build new pathways and structures and to learn new tricks long past what is generally considered our primary period of cognitive development,” she says. “It’s been known for some time that we use very little of our potential mental capacity. My goal is to show my students how to bring more of that capacity to the process and work with musical sound in real time. Not only does this make them far more developed and fluent as musicians, these skills in perception and trained attention also apply beyond music to any work that requires focus and both analytical and sensory modes.”

Marianne Ploger’s approach to teaching aural skills signals a new direction utilizing recent research on brain neuroplasticity.

In traditional sight singing classes, an assignment was given, and students would practice at home, then take a test. “But memorizing or practicing at home so you can take a test isn’t sight singing at all,” Ploger says. Instead, she works with the students to help them develop tools to create their own “sound imagination.”

“Marianne’s approach differs from others in that she has managed to articulate specific sound markers that anyone can hear inside musical intervals,” says Joshua McGuire, senior lecturer in musicianship at Blair, who studied with Ploger at the Conductors Retreat at Medomak in Washington, Maine. “A visual artist begins by knowing the names of the colors, but the typical musician begins without really being able to identify in tempo the intervals in which most Western music is composed. Marianne’s methods help bridge this gap and allow people to be more deeply aware of what is happening as they listen and perform.”

Through her decades of research, Ploger has observed these specific sound markers in each of the 12 pitches and 11 intervals and has developed techniques to teach others how to instantly recognize these features at the speed of music.

“We can now objectively articulate the sound factors that make up the elements employed in music,” she says. “It works much the same as language. As musicians, we learn the vocabulary, consisting of notes, triads, seventh chords, inversions of these, scales, key signatures, rhythms, instruments, rhythmic note values, rhythmic notation, pitch notation in various clefs and so on. But to be fluent, it is not enough to have a passing, halting knowledge of the elements of music. We must be fluent in real time.”

Ploger draws an interesting analogy between her approach to musicianship and the evolution of the art of cooking. “In the past, musicianship classes were more like cooking classes in which you were given recipes and told what to do without any real tutelage,” she says. “If you were lucky and had been around a good cook for most of your life, you were more likely to succeed. If you were not so lucky, the results could be unfortunate. Even if you were successful in following a recipe, you would not have learned how to prepare a dish of your own design. Nor would you have learned why some recipes taste so wonderful and why others fail so miserably.”

Ploger believes that musicianship classes are moving in a direction that more closely resembles the kitchen science courses now taught at major culinary institutes. “Aspiring chefs now learn food chemistry and how things combine to create specific effects, both in terms of taste and nutrition,” Ploger says. “Similarly, Blair’s musicianship courses train students to be able to identify the specific elements employed by composers in the creation of good music of any style or genre.”

Ploger’s approach is also used in lower-level ear training and sight singing courses taught by colleagues Joshua McGuire and David Williams. “They have found that freshmen are very receptive to this new approach,” Ploger says. “Students seem to appreciate the fact that virtually anyone can now learn to hear well. What a good place to start!”

When teaching upper level musicianship courses, Ploger stresses the similarities between learning sound factors in music and learning language skills.

Besides teaching upper-level musicianship courses, Ploger offers annual intensive workshops each spring at Blair for professional musicians and teachers from around the country, including Blair faculty and graduates.

“We have faculty members who have taken Marianne’s intensives and they call them life-changing,” Wait says. “Because Blair has a very good undergraduate student body in the formative stages of musicianship, this is a wonderful lab for Marianne. Her intensives give her a national platform for her work. So Blair is an ideal match for her teaching and research. She really is a star in her field, and we are lucky to have her.”

Amy Jarman, senior lecturer in voice, took Ploger’s intensive workshop last May. “Many years ago, when I was a student, I was taught aural skills with a fixed set of expectations,” Jarman says. “You were given a cassette tape to play over and over so you could identify intervals—with the assumption that everyone would do that basically by rote. The most remarkable thing about Marianne is that she acknowledges that individual musicians hear sounds differently and learn in different ways. She’s extremely interested in the cognitive process and how the brain works.”

Ultimately, Ploger hopes that Blair’s musicianship courses will provide students with a strong understanding of how the human mind processes and interprets musical information and how to better use this information to fluently communicate inspiring, edifying and illuminating music to listeners of all types. “In music there can be a disconnect between craft and art,” Ploger says. “Playing a musical instrument is a technical craft. Expressing music, by contrast, has been viewed as an art. The alternate view is that expressing music is also a craft. It is the craft of musical communication. The greatest musicians, of course, are highly skilled in both crafts.”

In the process of learning a composition, Ploger explains, musicians decode the abstract symbolic code written on the staff into meaningful expression. “Unfortunately, sometimes in the process of learning the right notes and right rhythms, we lose our love of the composition with endless hours of practice resulting in performances that, like overworked dough, have turned tough and tasteless,” she says. “The trick is to decode complicated scores in a way that brings us to an increasingly rich and textured understanding of the music.”

That understanding leads to better musical performances—and performers. “So many passionate people in music have had terrible experiences with musicianship training and come away feeling they can never really get it,” Ploger says. “Many have expressed their feelings of anxiety and frustration to me in private. My job, then, is simply to help musicians to be joyful in making music.”

Highlights include:

BLAIR SIGNATURE SERIES

A Plucked String Event, John Johns, guitar
Chair of the guitar department, John Johns, duets with Blair’s Marian Schaffer, harp, and Amy Dorfman, harpsichord.
Thursday, September 10, 8 p.m., Ingram Hall

Vanderbilt Wind Symphony, Thomas Verrier, conductor, and Vanderbilt String Orchestra, Robin Fountain, conductor
With guest conductor Michel Camatte, directeur, Conservatoire Darius Milhaud
Thursday, October 8, 8 p.m., Ingram Hall

“Viva La France!” Program to include Debussy’s Danse Sacree et Profane and Milhaud’s Suite Francais.

The Blair String Quartet Celebrates Mendelssohn
Christian Teal, violin; Cornelia Heard, violin; John Kochanowski, viola; Felix Wang, cello; with
guest artists The Ceruti Quartet
Friday, October 30, 8 p.m., Ingram Hall

The Blair String Quartet and guests the Ceruti Quartet bring together two fine ensembles to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn.
Sponsored by Delphine and Kenneth L. Roberts in honor of Norma Gandy, Operations Officer, Blair School of Music

Vanderbilt Opera Theatre and Vanderbilt Orchestra present The Marriage Of Figaro
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Friday, November 13
6:45 p.m. pre-show talk
8 p.m. performance
Sunday, November 15
2 p.m matinee

All shows in Ingram Hall
Fully staged and costumed with Gayle Shay, director, and Robin Fountain, music director.
Friday’s performance features a pre-show talk with musicologist Melanie Lowe. Sung in English.
Sponsored by An Anonymous Friend of the Blair School

BLAIR PRESENTS SERIES

Music on Film
Introduced by John Kochanowski
Sunday, September 13, 4 p.m., Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall

Back for its second year, the Music on Film series presents large-format screenings of contemporary conductors filmed in live performance with 5.1 surround-sound technology.

John Kochanowski, violist for the Blair String Quartet and dynamic coordinator of the student chamber music program, leads the pre-film discussion that will introduce his selection for this fall’s presentation.

BLAIR NIGHTCAP SERIES

The Violin Now!
Guest Artist Peter Sheppard Skærved with composer and Blair faculty member Michael Alec Rose
Thursday, September 24
8 p.m. discussion
8:30 p.m. performance

Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall
Blair’s Nightcap format is the perfect vehicle for this evening’s guest artist, world-class violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved. He will explore in a lecture/demonstration style what it is to be a violinist today, drawing on his unique repertoire of rare works from the 18th and 19th centuries, and the many works written for him.
Sponsored by Nissan North America Inc.

Three by Three: Flute and Friends
Monday, November 2
8 p.m.  discussion
8:30 p.m. performance

Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall
Jane Kirchner and faculty friends Marian Shaffer, Cynthia Estill, Kathryn Plummer and Craig Nies, along with exceptional harp student Frances Cobb, team up to present a program of three charming, highly
varied works.
Sponsored by Nissan North America Inc.

Daniel Bernard Roumain, BMus'93, will be visiting associate professor of composition at Blair for the 2009-10 academic year.

“This is a signal event in the evolution of the Blair school, as an alumnus who has attained national renown as a performer and composer returns to teach another generation of classical music artists at Vanderbilt,” Dean Mark Wait said. “Our students are immensely fortunate that DBR is available for this teaching appointment. He will make extended residency visits to Blair two or three times each semester, and will work with student string quartets and teach extended techniques and performance art.”

DBR’s residency dates at the Blair school are scheduled for September 10–14; October 14–19; January 24–28; March 16–19; and April 19–22. The October residency will take place in connection with DBR’s performance for Vanderbilt’s Great Performances Series on Saturday, October 17, in Blair’s Ingram Hall. Blair students and faculty will perform with DBR on this concert. Ticket information for this concert is at www.vanderbilt.edu/greatperformances.

More information about master classes, performances, lectures and other activities will be released in connection with the residency period.

DBR melds his classical music roots with his own cultural references and vibrant musical imagination. In 2007, he premiered One Loss Plus, the first of three works commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) for their Next Wave Festival. His latest orchestral work and second BAM commission, Darwin’s Meditation for the People of Lincoln is a musical setting of a play by Daniel Beaty that explores an imagined conversation between Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, and the political relationship between England, North America and Haiti. Following its New York premiere in October 2008, Darwin’s Meditation for the People of Lincoln moved to the University of Connecticut as a special celebratory concert on February 12, 2009—the icons’ shared bicentennial anniversary of their birth.

Other recent performances and commissions include: Five Chairs and One Table, a commissioned work for Imani Winds premiering at Carnegie Hall in 2009; WE MARCH!, a guitar concerto premiered by Eliot Fisk and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; The Tuscaloosa Meditations, commissioned by the University of Alabama; Voodoo Violin Concerto, premiered by the Vermont Youth Orchestra; Double Quartet: The Kompa Variations, for the Providence String Quartet; a student quartet which premiered at the First Works Providence festival; and newly commissioned works for the Florida Youth Orchestra, Ahn Trio and Claremont Trio.

As bandleader of DBR and the Mission, he presents an electrifying show described as “an evening of chamber music with the accessible feel of a rock concert” (Albany Times-Union). Touring nationwide since 2004, DBR and the Mission made its international debut at Australia’s 2008 Adelaide Festival.

DBR serves as artist-in-residence of the Starbucks-sponsored Seattle Theatre Group and as music director of Seattle’s More Music @ The Moore program for the third consecutive year. A native of Margate, Fla., DBR completed his master’s and doctoral work at the University of Michigan under the tutelage of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom.

Student volunteers Tiffany Tieu and Katherine Nagy from the Blair School of Music board the W.O. Smith Nashville Community Music School van. Blair students make up a large percentage of volunteer teachers at the W.O. Smith school.

For 25 years, the W.O. Smith Nash-ville Community Music School has provided music instruction to schoolchildren from low-income families for just 50 cents a lesson. These talented and dedicated students are often taught by other talented, dedicated students—Blair School of Music students, that is. Every week student volunteers from Blair conduct private lessons with children ages 9-18 in almost every major instrument.

This harmonious relationship benefits both the giver and receiver. “A great many Blair students go on to become teachers,” Dean Mark Wait says. “At W.O. Smith, our students hone their teaching skills and give back to their art.”

Blair students make up more than 20 percent of the W.O. Smith school’s 100-member faculty. Last year, more than 30 Blair students taught at the school. “We just couldn’t do it without them,” says Jonah Rabinowitz, executive director of the W.O. Smith school. “Blair is on the forefront of music education, and their students’ volunteer work here has helped us grow as an institution.”

That growth is evidenced in a modern new facility on Eighth Avenue South and an enrollment of 400 students who come from all parts of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. The school offers individual and group lessons in all band and orchestra instruments, as well as piano, guitar and voice. There are also classes in music fundamentals and theory, composition, music technology and recording. Three choirs, a string ensemble, wind band and other performing groups provide ensemble experience. The volunteer faculty also includes Blair faculty members, Music Row studio musicians, symphony players, public school teachers and church musicians—all donating one to four hours each week.

Blair student teachers are typically sophomores and upperclass students, recruited each fall by Rabinowitz, who visits the Blair campus and talks with the students about service opportunities. “It’s incumbent upon us as musicians to pass along our craft to the next generation,” he says. “There’s a wonderful continuity when we pass along how we play our instruments from person to person.”

Recent Blair graduate Julie Aiken passed along her craft at the W.O. Smith school for most of her college career. For the past three years, Aiken gave private instruction at the school to the same violin student. “Darold was my first student and had never had private lessons before,” Aiken recalls. Over the years Aiken saw her student grow from a shy sixth-grader who had never held a violin and hardly spoke during class to a versatile musician who also plays trombone in his school band and talks with his teacher about his life outside class. The teacher has perhaps grown even more than the student. “I’ve learned how important it is to break down problems into manageable steps and what to focus on,”Aiken says. “I’ve also learned how important it is to be faithful, each week, that what you’re doing can bring about change.”

Blair sophomore James Larson instructs David Horner on violin.

Sigma Alpha Iota music fraternity members Hannah Hickerson (rising senior, clarinet) and Lara Pitts (rising junior, trombone) are also volunteer teachers, and the entire SAI membership helps out at special events at the school. “The Smith school has a Halloween recital and last year our members baked treats, handed out goodie bags and had an arts and crafts activity for the kids,” says Shona Goldberg-Leopold, SAI president and musical arts/teacher education major at Blair. In March Goldberg-Leopold and her fellow SAI members organized a joint recital by members of the Blair and Belmont SAI chapters at the W.O. Smith school. Proceeds from a bake sale and door prizes at the recital were donated to the school.

Members of the men’s music fraternity Phi Mu Alpha volunteer at the school as well. “The birdhouse auction is our major fundraiser,” says Lynn Adelman, assistant director at the W.O. Smith school. “Phi Mu Alpha members help us with everything from setting up tables and hauling equipment to emptying ice chests and cleaning up after the auction.” The annual event features one-of-a-kind birdhouses created by local artists that are auctioned off to the highest bidder.

“Our students get a tremendous satisfaction and joy from their experiences at the Smith school,” says Pam Schneller, associate dean and liaison for Blair student volunteers with the school. “All of us at Blair feel privileged to be in music at Blair and at Vanderbilt. With that comes the responsibility to give back to others who don’t have those opportunities.”

In giving back through their art, Blair students find they also receive. “An hour a week is such a small part of my life,” Aiken says of her time commitment. “Yet teaching at the Smith school has helped me see my own playing—and my life—in a new way.”

Blair and Community Service

The W.O. Smith Nashville Community Music School is not the only institution to benefit from the Blair school’s talent and knowledge. As long as Blair has been in existence, the faculty and students have served Nashville and surrounding communities by offering free lectures, performing free concerts and volunteering to teach in a number of venues. For instance, faculty members in musicology have given free lectures at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville Public Library and at several Tennessee universities. Pre-college and undergraduate soloists and ensembles frequently perform, not only to entertain listeners at lunchtime concerts or art exhibit receptions, but also at area hospitals to give patients a musical respite during their stay. The following is a listing of places faculty and students from Blair have performed, lectured or taught as a community service during the last three years.

• The Blakeford at Burton Hills
• Fireside Reading Room in the Peabody Library
• Frist Center for the Visual Arts
• Health Center at Richland Place
• Leah Rose Residence for Senior Citizens
• McKendree Village retirement center
• Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools
• Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt
• Park Manor retirement center
• Parthenon Towers
• Psychiatric Hospital at Vanderbilt
• Richland Place Retirement Residence
• Rutherford County Schools
• Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
• Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital
• West End Home for Ladies
• Williamson County Schools
• Wilson County Schools

“I happened to get her CD out of the library,” Huebl says, remembering the stacks of CDs she worked her way through during the process. “Michael Jones, one of our librarians, said, ‘Oh, listen to this.’ I latched on to it pretty quickly. Her music for violin—it’s beautiful, with lyrical, singing lines. The colors feel new and unusual. They grab you. It’s not like what I’ve heard before.”

During the same period, Huebl, cellist Felix Wang and pianist Amy Dorfman were looking for a composer for the Blakemore Trio, which is one of the three Blair ensembles participating in the commissioning project, thanks to generous funding from the James Stephen Turner Family Foundation. The trio, whose recent performances in Florida were described in a review as precise and exciting with “expressive phrasing” and “a high quality of artistry,“ was developing a shortlist of composers. Huebl shared Botti’s music with Wang and Dorfman. They loved her work.

“Botti’s music is very imaginative,” Wang says. “The thing that draws me—there’s often a sense of drama. Even in the dissonances and timbres, there’s a sense of singing in her work. The kinds of sounds she gets are very emotional and surprising.”

Eventually Huebl and the trio decided to combine the two commissions to create a larger-scale piece that they could perhaps record in the future. Botti is now composing Gates of Silence, three connected but independent pieces that can be performed together as a cohesive program or individually.

For the trio, an important part of the selection process was getting a better sense of the most current developments in contemporary chamber music.

“If you program something written 10 years ago, that’s considered new,” Huebl says. “But 10 years ago was very long ago if you’re composing something now. There are so many wonderful composers out there, but you have to decide what you really value in new music. That it was innovative was important to me. I knew we would be surprised by what we got from Susan.”

“The selection process was exciting, but exhausting,” Wang says. “It’s one thing to play new musical works, but it’s different when commissioning premieres. People who do this a lot, it’s almost all they do. We haven’t been together very long. We really have to get out there, to hear what’s going on. But it’s something the trio loves to do. We love embracing contemporary music, and we want to be more active in getting new pieces written for us.”

Once the trio chose Botti as their composer in early 2006 the long wait set in. Like prospective parents, the trio members knew to temper their sense of great anticipation and excitement with patience.

“All of us knew that we weren’t going to get anything very soon,” Wang says. “We were selecting composers in demand.”

Felix Wang, cello; Amy Dorfman, piano; and Carolyn Huebl, violin, rehearse for the premiere of Gates of Silence, a work by Susan Botti created for the Blakemore Trio through funding by the James Stephen Turner Family Foundation.

So far, two of the Blair commissions have been completed. The first is the trio for horn, violin and piano that Lowell Liebermann composed for faculty member and horn player Leslie Norton through funding from the Office of the Dean. It premiered at Blair in April 2008. Peter Schickele’s A Year in the Catskills, commissioned for the Blair Woodwind Quintet through funding from the James Stephen Turner Family Foundation, premiered in March to great acclaim. Botti’s Gates of Silence will debut next.

The Botti work has three parts: “Lament: The Fallen City” for violin and piano; “The Journey without Her” for piano trio; and “Dido Refuses to Speak” for piano trio and soprano. Botti, widely acclaimed as both a soprano and a composer, will perform with the trio when Gates of Silence premieres in Nashville and New York City.

“I think that the biggest factor in being a singer—and bringing that into my composition—is that I have a strong sense of the music from a melodic standpoint,” Botti says. “There is a certain amount of line that I tend to use. But on the other hand, when I write for violin and piano, I’m not thinking of voice.”

In composing Gates of Silence, Botti was inspired by Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid, and the rhythms of loss, renewal, hope and continuation that she feels resonate powerfully today.

“I was reading the description of the fall of Troy, and then I’d pick up the newspaper and read about the destruction of Baghdad or the devastation of a small town in Oklahoma after a storm—this experience of your home and community being devastated through war or natural disaster, the emotion of that, and the question of how people continue on,” Botti says. “I read about the people in Greensburg, Kansas. It’s been two years since the terrible tornados that devastated the town. And they’re rebuilding—it’s going to be this incredible green city. It’s remarkable, people’s sense of hope. So the line of the piece is inspired by that in a way—that no matter what we lose, there’s a sense of hope and the ability to look forward. I find it very inspiring and beautiful.”

For “Dido Refuses to Speak,” Botti commissioned original poetry from Linda Gregerson, whom she met during her tenure on the composition faculty at the University of Michigan. She has used Gregerson’s poetry in her work before.
“Linda knows my music well. Her words are meant to be sung,” Botti says. “The more I work with them, the more I love them. Linda has a background in theater, so they have a sound world to them, because they were meant to be performed.”

The members of the Blakemore Trio are excited by the prospect of working so closely with a composer. They have commissioned pieces before, but their interaction with Botti has been much more extensive, especially since it culminates in a joint performance.

“Susan’s visited here,” pianist Amy Dorfman says. “She’s come to hear us play. She wants to meet with us individually.”

Botti says she loves to write with musicians, rather than just instruments, in mind.

“I’m writing for these players,” Botti says. “It’s very personal, but I don’t think that makes it so particular. I use the example of Handel. The arias are so powerful, and they’re such
great writing, and each time he had a production, he rewrote the aria for who was singing it.”

Like the members of the trio, Botti has high praise for Dean Wait, his approach to the commissioning project and the process he has created for his faculty.

“Mark Wait is a visionary,” Botti says. “He’s creatively looking at what is going to make his faculty and his school grow and empowering them. What greater gift to give them than to say, ‘Here is something to be created for you.’”

Wang, Dorfman and Huebl especially appreciated the autonomy they were given over their choice of composer and the process.

“It’s all centered on chamber music, which is really exciting,” Dorfman says. “That we can play in a major city—it benefits the school, it benefits the groups. It’s a far-reaching gift.”
The trio members also feel that the commissioning project gives them a new avenue to contribute to the musical community.

“We view our work with our students as having a long impact,” Huebl says. “And then there will be our impact through this. When we talk to our friends and tell them about this opportunity we have, they are floored.”

“It’s very important to me that there’s a certain level of risk and terror to the whole process.” Botti says of performance in general. “I love that moment in the theater when the lights come down, and you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a fragile, wonderful thing.”

The premiere of Susan Botti’s Gates of Silence will take place at Blair at 8 p.m. on February 19, 2010, in Ingram Hall. The New York City premiere will take place in Merkin Concert Hall on March 13, 2010.

Myra Jackson Blair Scholar Alec Holcomb

Alec Holcomb claims that he’s not very good at the popular video game “Guitar Hero.” That’s hard to believe, though. The 14-year-old is an accomplished guitarist who has already won two competitions.

“It just takes a lot of hard work to be great at an instrument,” Alec says. “You have to really focus on how you’re playing. You have to be scientific about it and make sure you can overcome each little obstacle.”

Alec is a Myra Jackson Blair Scholar at Blair, where he has been studying with Associate Professor John Johns for two years. He started playing when he was 7 and became serious about it at age 10.

“He’s a phenomenal talent because of his age,” Johns says. “He’s only 14, and he’s playing music that’s generally not played until you get much older. I have music majors who aren’t playing some of Alec’s repertoire.”

The Myra Jackson Blair Senior Scholarships nurture young talent like Alec. The funds are awarded to pre-college students in grades 7–12 on the basis of their talent and ability. Each scholarship recipient receives private lessons. They also take a music theory course and a music history course—all at no charge. Roland Schneller, Chancellor’s Professor of Piano, oversees the program which currently funds about 40 students. The value of each scholarship is $2,500 to $3,000.

“You would be amazed at the level of some of our junior and senior high students,” Schneller says. “And at our last auditions, there were half a dozen students that just blew us away. The maturity level of some of these teenagers is incredible. I never played at that level at that age.”

Blair also offers need-based pre-college scholarships to students in grades 3–12, namely the Valere Blair Potter Scholarships. In all, close to 200 Blair pre-college students are on scholarship.

“We try to attract kids who can’t afford to come to Blair,” Schneller says. “We have kids who come from schools where music isn’t cool. Then they come to Blair and see all the other kids playing the piano and carrying their instruments, and they feel like they’re part of something.”

The sense of belonging is something that Alec has noticed about Blair as well.

“It’s really nice being here because there are other people in the same boat as you,” he says. “They understand what it is to work at an instrument. It’s just fun to walk down the hallways and hear and see all the different instruments playing.”

Many of Blair’s pre-college scholarship students have gone on to careers in music, whether it be playing or teaching. However, a musical career is not necessarily the goal, according to Schneller.

“If a student can feel the excitement of what it is to make beautiful music, that’s a success story,”
he says.

Like all teenagers, Alec isn’t sure what the future holds.

“I don’t know yet where the guitar will take me,” he says. “But I know that if I keep working at it, it will take me pretty far.”

And that’s a good thing, because in this case, the octogenarian-plus is string master Robert Mann, who founded the Juilliard String Quartet in 1946 and remained first violinist until “retiring” in 1997.

“Bobby is a joy,” says Dean Mark Wait, marveling at the October visit during which Mann played second viola with the Blair String Quartet and gave master classes.

A violin master class with Grammy-nominated guest virtuoso Andres Cardenes was held this fall in Blair's Turner Hall. Here Cardenes works with Blair freshman Caroline Hart.

Mann’s visit set a vigorous tone for the school. “It’s a good year for us,” Wait says. This “good year” also included the visit to Blair by world-class musicians who recreated iconic composer Elliott Carter’s textured, challenging work as part of a worldwide observance of his 100th birthday. And it includes Renée Fleming—“the best soprano in the world,” according to Wait—who is setting aside her usual requirement for 1,000-plus-seating to perform in the 618-seat Ingram Hall. Additionally, the Blair String Quartet presented the local premiere of Triptych, esteemed New York composer Robert Sirota’s rumination on 9/11. The composer, who is president of the Manhattan School of Music, attended the performance, which he regaled as “transcendent” in a congratulatory note to the quartet.  

Those may seem highlights enough for one year, but it shouldn’t be overlooked that the generosity of benefactors allowed Blair to push forward by commissioning works by great composers for performance by the faculty of musical virtuosos.

Deserved pride lights Wait’s face as he reviews these accomplishments. “The Blair School is relatively young. We’ve only had a collegiate program since 1986. And the trajectory is definitely upward,” he says. “Just the fact that we can bring in great artists for the students and the faculty is a great pleasure,” he says. 

Equally excited by the year—most especially by the Mann visit—are members of the Blair String Quartet. 

First violinist Chris Teal, a 35-year member of the BSQ, recalls it as “unforgettable.” Mann “gave a wonderful master class,” he says. “And even though he’s known as a great, great violinist, he also played viola.” In fact, Mann, the Juilliard String Quartet founder—whose biography includes a 1952 visit to Albert Einstein’s house during which the scientist joined in on violin—played the second viola part in the Blair group’s performance of Mozart’s Quintet in C-Major for String Quartet and Viola.

Mann “has been an incredible force in chamber music in America,” says Teal. “He’s a living legend …. His commitment and passion and his vision of the vitality of chamber music has inspired a lot of players.”

One who speaks to that inspiration is BSQ violist John Kochanowski, who has known Mann for 37 years. “I was a student at Juilliard, and he was my teacher,” he says. “I’ve been at Vanderbilt 21 years. Before that I was the violist and founding member of the Concord String Quartet, which Bobby Mann put together. [He] was my mentor.”

Kochanowski says the visit was “one of those great, once-in-a-lifetime things. To have him sit next to me and make music is the great thrill of my life.”

The performance aside, Mann’s visit also was reaffirming to these musicians and students. 

“What was so profoundly moving to me: That (master) class he gave so beautifully explained why music is important to everyone,” Kochanowski says. “He showed our students a level of intensity that is hopefully going to run through their lives.”

Robert Mann (center), founder of the Juilliard String Quartet, presented a master class at Blair during the fall semester. He and Blair’s John Kochanowski (right) work with Ben Hart.

Voice students will seek similar inspiration in the April appearance by Metropolitan Opera star Fleming, who only agreed to perform in Ingram Hall after hearing raves by fellow soprano Dawn Upshaw, who has sung at Blair twice. The sopranos share the same agent, and word of the gem that is Ingram convinced Fleming to appear at Blair, according to Wait. Both sopranos’ visits were made possible through a fund endowed by the late Mary Ragland, an accomplished soprano who settled in Nashville and became a patron of the arts. 

The November “Music for 100 Years—The Elliott Carter Centenary Concert” was another peak. Carter’s 100th birthday was celebrated throughout the classical world, as ensembles explored the works of the composer who consistently challenges textural, tonal boundaries.

“There might be some long, lyrical line contrasted with a skitting, jittery musical figure,” Wait explains. “The interest in his music exists in how these lines of music intersect.”

The visiting artists in Blair’s salute included Tara O’Connor, flute; Charles Neidich, clarinet; Rolf Schulte, violin; Fred Sherry, cello; and Steve Gosling, piano.

“These are some of the best musicians in the world,” says Wait. 

O’Connor, New York-based music educator and flute player, notes that “there are only two places you can hear this program with these players: the Blair School and Carnegie Hall.

“It’s quite something the Blair School is on board,” O’Connor says. “[It shows a] commitment to the music of the future.”

“We are not principally a presenting organization,” Wait says, emphasizing how special the opportunities and circumstances were that brought these acclaimed artists to perform at the Blair School. “This year we were especially fortunate to get some of the great artists in the musical world.” 

“Every year the Blair School has very good artists come visit: This just happened to be a great year.”

Tim Ghianni, a veteran journalist who lives in Nashville, is serving this year as Journalist-in-Residence for Vanderbilt Student Communications.

Blair musicologists Joy Calico and Jim Lovensheimer

With politics at the forefront of the news cycle, particularly given the past election year, it’s easy to assess the impact of today’s constant barrage of instantaneous news on the artists of our time. Tune in any radio—or perhaps more accurately, access YouTube—and you can hear the latest lullaby, parody or pop tune geared to a particular political viewpoint.

This is no less true for composers working in classical music or musical theatre, nor is it limited to those working in the present day. Cultural context, including the role of politics, has always shaped how music is composed and performed, and Blair School of Music professors Joy Calico and Jim Lovensheimer feel that as musicologists they are charged with helping students to understand music within the cultural context of its creation. Both will tell you, however, that this context is perpetually shifting, subject to the vagaries of history and society. Through their own scholarly pursuits, Calico and Lovensheimer come a little closer to grasping the profound complexities of music as it is experienced in the real world.

“I try to discourage my students from thinking of music only as entertainment,” Calico says. “Composers don’t live in a vacuum. We have this idea that they operate in a parallel universe where outside forces don’t affect them, but politics—on any number of fronts, and interpreted any number of ways—affects what they do.”

This idea is at the core of Calico’s latest research-in-progress, Musical Remigration: Schoenberg’s “A Survivor from Warsaw” in Postwar Europe, a study of the celebrated modernist’s 1947 choral work, which gives powerful expression to the experiences of Polish Jews during the Holocaust. The composer died in 1951, leaving behind A Survivor in Warsaw as a kind of thorny posthumous legacy.

“The piece is a lens through which to view what was happening in postwar Europe,” Calico explains, “so I’m looking at how the piece was received in seven different countries on both sides of the East/West divide. It managed to hit every exposed nerve of the European psyche at the time. It was written by a Jew; it’s about the Holocaust; it makes the Germans look like fiends and the Jews look heroic; it’s a 12-tone composition; and though Schoenberg (who moved to the United States in 1934) never returned to his home in Austria, this piece serves as a kind of symbolic remigration.

“The buttons it pushes are the same everywhere, but the specific contexts that emerge are interesting.”

As a case in point, Calico cites the piece’s mixed reception in West Germany during the 1950s. “We have this image of West Germany in the 1950s as a nirvana for modern music, but that’s not entirely true. My research shows that there was an anti-Semitic sentiment running through the country at the time, and that influenced the reception of Survivor. The American version of West German history isn’t an accident—in this case, history was quite literally written by the victors.”

Calico will continue to work on the book during the next academic year, thanks to having received a highly competitive ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars, which will allow her to spend 2009-10 as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Her archival research thus far in Warsaw, Oslo and Paris has been funded by a Vanderbilt University Research Scholars Grant and a Howard Fellowship from the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation; the latter will fund Calico’s additional archive work in Prague, Vienna and Leipzig this summer.

“There’s a huge body of literature on Holocaust studies that I’m just now getting into,” Calico says, “and I have no doubt that this scholarship will affect the way I’m handling this project.”

Lovensheimer has encountered his own share of revelations about the postwar era in his latest research project, South Pacific: Paradise Rewritten, due to be published by Oxford University Press later this year. Though Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hugely popular musical would seem to have little in common with Schoenberg’s jarring piece, the two works premiered within a year of each other. And, like A Survivor in Warsaw, South Pacific has a lot to tell us about the mid-20th-century mindset.  

“When I was doing some research at the Library of Congress in the Oscar Hammerstein II Collection, I discovered that the show started out much more political than it ended up being,” Lovensheimer says. “At the same time, it does have a message of racial tolerance. So the playwrights had to find this fine line between edifying and entertaining their audiences. My work at large is about looking at issues of gender, race, colonialism and the new corporate system, and demonstrating how South Pacific deals with those issues.”

In the field of musicology, American musical theater remains a relatively unexplored topic of discussion. This is, Lovens-heimer says, because it’s a popular genre. “Classical music critics don’t take it seriously because they think it’s middlebrow, and theater people don’t take it seriously because they think it’s not legitimate theater,” he says. “This is starting to change, though, and I’m hoping that this book will be a part of creating that change. Within this genre, there are some powerful cultural texts that tell us about who we are: Showboat addresses the issue of race, for instance, and Oklahoma is all about being an American in a time of war.”

Lovensheimer routinely brings his irrepressible enthusiasm for research into the classroom, where he urges students to open their minds to new ways of thinking. It’s for this reason, among others, that he was named not only the 2008 winner of the Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching at Vanderbilt, but also the recipient of the Chancellor’s Cup, given annually to a faculty member whose dedication to teaching spills out of the classroom and into student life (see below). For Lovensheimer, it’s all a part of getting people to understand the fundamental vitality of the culture that surrounds us every day.

“My goal is to make people aware of the vast body of music that’s out there to be experienced,” he says. “One of the few soapboxes I get on is to instill in my students the idea that American music is not inferior to European music. It’s an intersection of cultures and people and ideas and traditions that most of us don’t think go together. And yet they’re always bumping together and creating something new, and that’s what makes American music so exciting.”

The Nashville Boychoir at Blair performed with the Cathedral Choir of Ely Cathedral (in red) at Nashville’s St. George Episcopal Church last fall.

Under the direction of Paul Trepte, organist and director of music at Ely Cathedral, the combined boychoirs sang four songs by English composer Richard Rodney Bennett. An hour-and-a-half long workshop was preceded by a vigorous dodge-ball game between the two choirs (a great hit with the boys). Also that evening, Peter North, music director of the King’s School, Ely, conducted a workshop for the Young Men’s Chorus, leading to their singing alongside the professional lay clerks (men singers) of the Ely Cathedral Choir.

Both groups combined in concert at Nashville’s St. George Episcopal Church the next afternoon. Both Trepte and the head chorister of the choir praised the Nashville group for their professionalism and sound.

Ty Jackson (right) with John Corigliano

Ty Jackson, a member of the Nashville Boychoir at Blair, is the treble soloist in the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus recording of John Corigliano’s A Dylan Thomas Trilogy, released in the fall on the Naxos label. The work was conducted by Leonard Slatkin and recorded in December 2007 at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Joining Jackson as soloists for the piece were Sir Thomas Allen and John Tessier. 

Jackson’s solo on “Fern Hill” was originally scored for mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra, but was changed in its final form for boy-soprano. In its review of the piece on ClassicalSource.com, Jackson was praised for his “marvelous voice, and it’s clear he understands the text, too.”

Boychoir member Jake Moor shared the treble solo with Jackson during performances of the Corigliano piece with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus during its 2007-08 season, singing the part at the Saturday performance. Moor has sung numerous solos with various groups, including Nashville Opera’s Amahl and the Night Visitors in December.

The British and Nashville choirs participated in a joint workshop prior to their performance at St. George’s.

Parker Ramsay

Parker Ramsay, former member of the Nashville Boychoir at Blair, has accepted the prestigious position of Organ Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge University, England. He will be the first American to hold this position and will begin his studies there in the fall of 2010. The Organ Scholarship at King’s College is one of the premier positions in the world for training young organists. Previous holders include Simon Preston, later organist of Westminster Abbey, and Sir Andrew Davis, later conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. 

During his three-year course of study, Ramsay will accompany the world-famous King’s College Choir for services, concerts, tours, recordings and broadcasts, including the annual worldwide live BBC radio broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve. 

Ramsay has distinguished himself as a performer on both organ and harp and as a composer, earning diplomas in both harp and organ performance from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) in 2006. He was twice awarded first prize in the Music Teachers National Association National Composition Competition, was a national prize winner in the American Harp Society National Competition, and was awarded the ABRSM Hedy King Robinson Award for music theory in 2008. 

In addition to being a member of the Nashville Boychoir at Blair, he served as principal harpist of the Curb Youth Symphony, under the direction of Carol Nies. He played continuo for Belle Meade Baroque under the direction of Murray Somerville, and studied harp with Carol McClure, artistic director of The Harp School Inc. He studied organ with Wilma Jensen, music director, emerita, of St. George’s Episcopal Church, Nashville, and piano with Robert Marler of Belmont University. He was supervised in his theory and composition work by Wes Ramsay. 

He is currently a student at the King’s School, Ely, U.K., where he serves as Sixth Form Organ Scholar for Ely Cathedral, studying with organist Paul Trepte and regularly performing and conducting in the weekly schedule of services in the cathedral. During his time in Ely, Ramsay has continued to distinguish himself, winning the Composer of the Year award offered by the Cambridge Young Musicians Trust. A member of the Nashville Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, the American Choral Directors Association and the American Harp Society, Ramsay participated in the Cathedral Choir of Ely Cathedral tour, including its stop in Nashville, which reunited him briefly with the Nashville Boychoir at Blair.

Schickele

“When we received word of the James Stephen Turner Family Foundation funding of the Blair Commissioning Project in 2006, I let the ensembles pick the composer they wanted,” Dean Mark Wait says. The Blakemore Trio selected composer Susan Botti, whose new work is set for its world premiere with the trio in New York City in spring 2010, while Blair String Quartet chose Gyorgy Kurtag.

After reviewing the works of dozens of composers, the Blair Woodwind Quintet picked Schickele, perhaps best known for his satirical/musical alter-ego P.D.Q. Bach, but also an outstanding musician and composer in his own right. “The woodwind quintet is a strange animal,” says Jane Kirchner, quintet charter member since 1971. “It’s unlike a string or brass quintet, in which the instruments’ sounds are produced in basically the same way and the timbre of the group is homogenous.” The Blair ensemble consists of Kirchner, flute; Jared Hauser, oboe; Cassandra Lee, clarinet; Cynthia Estill, bassoon; and Leslie Norton, horn. “We felt we needed a composer who understands these instruments—and Schickele is a bassoonist as well as an incredible composer,” Kirchner says. “We also love this man’s humor, because, even though we take music seriously, we find much joy in our work, too.”

Schickele has been finding joy in music since childhood. Born into a musical family in Iowa, Schickele grew up in Washington, D.C., and Fargo, N.D., where he studied composition with Sigvald Thompson. “We used to have lots of chamber music in the home,” Schickele recalls. “My brother played the viola and was always getting people together to play chamber music, so I was around string quartet music a lot.”

Schickele himself gravitated to the woodwinds as a young boy—and laid claim to being the only bassoonist in Fargo at the time. By the time he graduated from Swarthmore in 1957, he had already composed and conducted orchestral works, chamber music and a number of songs. He went on to study composition with Roy Harris and Darius Milhaud, and with Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma at the Juilliard School of Music, where he returned to teach in 1961.

Schickele gave up teaching four years later to pursue a career as a freelance composer/performer and gained international acclaim when he “discovered” the works—and indeed the very existence—of P.D.Q. Bach, the great composer’s long-lost (yes, some would say fictional) offspring. While he still has a warm and fruitful working relationship with this branch of the Bach dynasty, Schickele has earned as much if not more acclaim in recent years composing for symphony orchestras, choral groups and chamber ensembles. A short sample of recent Schickele premieres includes: Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, with Danielle Farina and the Pasadena Symphony under Jorge Mester; Symphony No. 2 The Sweet Season, premiered by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra under Stefan Sanderling; New Goldberg Variations for cello and piano, performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax; Symphony No. 1 Songlines, premiered by the National Symphony under Leonard Slatkin and performed by such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra; and Blue Set No. 1, a jazz string quartet commissioned by the Greene Quartet and recorded on the Virgin label.

Schickele has also created music for feature films, documentaries, television commercials and several Sesame Street episodes. He was one of the composer/lyricists for Oh! Calcutta!, and his weekly syndicated radio program, Schickele Mix, has been heard nationwide over Public Radio International since 1992. Then there are his orchestral programs P.D.Q. Bach: The Vegas Years and P.D.Q. Bach Strikes Back, as well as his chamber program, P.D.Q. Bach and Peter Schickele: The Jekyll and Hyde Tour, that continue to explore his musical satirist persona. 

“He is truly a multifaceted composer,” Wait says. “He has an incredible catalog of compositions and has written for every medium. So one thing I know about his Blair commission is that it will be very well-crafted.”

The Blair Woodwind Quintet is, from left, Leslie Norton, horn; Cynthia Estill, bassoon; Cassandra Lee, clarinet; Jane Kirchner, flute; and Jared Hauser, oboe.

Part of the fun of this particular commission for Schickele is the challenge presented by writing for woodwinds. “I’ve written several pieces for string quartets, but with strings, the instruments are similar and inherently have a strong blend,” he notes. “With woodwinds, each instrument is so different. The flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon, though all winds, are all different sounds, and the French horn, well, that isn’t even a woodwind and so it can really stick out. The blending is tricky—so while I want to take advantage of the variety, I also want to explore the blending.” 

Schickele’s new work explores variety and blending in five movements. The first movement, called “Fantasy,” showcases the virtuosity of the five instruments and is “hefty and involved,” according to the composer. The second movement, called “Imitations,” is a series of canons where the instruments mimic each other for what Schickele calls a “hypnotic, trance like effect.”

The third movement is inspired by the bass line from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a rich musical vein Schickele has mined in the past, resulting in several other compositions. “I still had sketches on the bass line that I had never used and had never even decided which instruments they were suited for,” Schickele says. “When I began working on this commission, I realized these sketches were perfect for a woodwind quintet.”

The fourth movement features a prominent oboe solo and a clarinet solo—and invites audience reflection. “It’s slow and still,” Schickele says.  “I don’t like to use words like ‘sad’ because it’s like telling the audience what to feel.” The fifth movement, while not overtly humorous, certainly sounds like it may leave audiences smiling. “The final movement is a bebop jazz kind of thing,” says Schickele. 

If composing for woodwinds poses a challenge, tackling a new work also tests the musicians debuting the work. “You practice even harder and study the score more closely because you don’t have previous recordings to listen to,” Kirchner says. “You have to determine the character of the music, have colleagues coach and counsel you, and tape yourselves playing the piece to listen, critique and learn more.”

Despite the extra attention a new work requires, it is perhaps the most exciting kind of music to perform. “New works offer a great opportunity to grow and learn,” Kirchner says. “And we especially need new music because the woodwind quintet doesn’t have as extensive a repertoire as the strings or brass, whose music goes back centuries. A lot of what woodwind quintets play is 20th century music. We hope Schickele’s work will be a new classic of this century.”

“We need original music,” agrees Jared Hauser, the newest member of the Blair Woodwind Quintet. “This is my first season with the quintet and one of the things that really excited me about joining the ensemble was the commissioning project. This whole series of commissioned pieces is really rare and is a big feather in the cap of the school.” 

“Not many schools of music do this,” Wait concurs. “We teach our students to play the music of the past, but it is equally important to support and nurture and present the music of the future.”

Below is a brief listing of a few of the featured events and favorite concerts. For more information about these and more concerts, lectures, master classes and special programs, visit the Web site Calendar of Events at www.vanderbilt.edu/blair

BLAIR SIGNATURE SERIES

John Johns and His Lady Friends, Part Deux
Friday, September 26, 8:00 p.m., Ingram Hall
Guitarist John Johns performs with Carolyn Huebl, violin; Jane Kirchner, flute; and Kathryn Plummer, viola. Selections include works by Marais, Haydn, Paganini and Matiegka.

Craig Nies, Piano Series – The Complete 48 Preludes and Fugues: The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach
Friday, October 10, 8 p.m., Ingram Hall
Pianist Nies continues with performance No. 4 begun in 2007 of an eight-concert series celebrating the famous works.

The Blair String Quartet
Friday, November 7, 8 p.m., Ingram Hall
With Christian Teal, violin; Cornelia Heard, violin; John Kochanowski, viola; Felix Wang, cello
Sponsored by Wilma Ward in memory of Anne Potter Wilson and David K. Wilson

Vanderbilt Opera Theatre and Vanderbilt University Orchestra present Kurt Weill’s Street Scene
Friday, November 14, 8 p.m.
Saturday, November 15, 8 p.m.
Sunday, November 16, 2 p.m.
all shows in Ingram Hall
Fully-staged with orchestra; Gayle Shay, Stage Director; Robin Fountain, Music Director. Friday’s performance features a pre-show talk by musicologist Joy Calico. Sponsored by an anonymous friend of the Blair School

The Blair Brass Quintet
Monday, November 17, 8 p.m., Ingram Hall
With Allan Cox, trumpet; Pat Kunkee, trumpet; Leslie Norton, horn; Lawrence Borden, trombone; Gilbert Long, tuba

BLAIR PRESENTS SERIES

Christian Teal – Complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by J.S. Bach
Friday, September 19, 7:30 p.m.,
Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville
This second in a series of two very special concerts is the completion of Christian Teal’s virtuoso performance cycle for the “Sacred Space for the City Arts” series co-sponsored by Blair School and Christ Church Cathedral. THIS IS A TICKET EVENT. To purchase tickets, contact www.christcathedral.org or call 615-255-7729.

Three Times Slow – Plus the Blair String Quartet
Saturday, October 4, 8 p.m.,
Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall
Guest Artist Robert Mann, composer, founder and first violist with the Juilliard String Quartet, joins the Blair String Quartet for an evening of his music and the music of Mozart.

100 years of Elliott Carter
Tuesday, November 18, 8 p.m.,
Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall
Blair proudly presents a concert celebrating the 100th birthday of Elliott Carter, in an all-Carter program that will also include excerpts from films by Frank Sheffer. This extraordinary guest artist concert features some of the finest performers in contemporary music: flutist Tara O’Connor, clarinetist Charles Neidich, violinist Rolf Schulte, cellist Fred Sherry and pianist Steve Gosling.

NEW FOR 2008-09

Music on Film
Sunday, January 18, 4 – 6:30 p.m., Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall
A concert each semester featuring specially selected composers captured in action on a large screen format with 5.1 surround sound technology. Introductions and discussions by Vanderbilt University Orchestra conductor Robin Fountain. Presented free of charge and open to all. The first presentation was in September.

FAVORITE SERIES OFFERINGS

Presented free and open to all, except where noted

BLAIR NIGHTCAP SERIES

This popular series returns with offerings of informal talks by favorite faculty musicologists, followed by one-hour concerts by faculty performers, plus coffee and dessert treats. New this year an earlier performance time! All Nightcap Events are sponsored by Nissan North America Inc.

Monday evenings:
7 p.m., Coffee and Dessert in Turner Lobby
8 p.m., Lecture
8:30 p.m., Performance in Steve and Judy

Turner Recital Hall

October 13 – Kathryn Plummer, viola, and Mark Wait, piano, perform two rarely heard gems of the repertoire: Mendelssohn’s Sonata for Viola and Piano in C Minor and Rochberg’s Sonata for Viola and Piano. Michael Alex Rose leads the pre-concert talk.

November 10 – Winds at Play allows the Blair Woodwind Quintet solo spots away from their colleagues. Cynthia Estill, Jane Kirchner and Cassandra Lee present sonatas for bassoon, flute and clarinet, and the Blair School is pleased to introduce its newest faculty member, oboist Jared Hauser. Collaborative pianists include Charlene Harb, Jama Reagan and Melissa Rose present composers Saint-Saens, Etler, Muczynski and Poulenc in music woodwinds play for their own pleasure and yours! Jim Lovensheimer leads the pre-concert talk.

2008 Fall Concert Season

The Blair Fall Concert Series promises to be a season of superb music from a variety of faculty, student and acclaimed guest artists. Below is a brief listing of a few of the featured events and favorite concerts. For more information about these and more concerts, lectures, master classes and special programs, visit the Web site Calendar of Events at www.vanderbilt.edu/blair.

Deakin

Music theory, according to Paul Deakin, the Blair School’s purveyor of music theory to students in the precollege and adult program, is the flip side of practice. “It’s the nuts and bolts of music, really,” he says. And Deakin is a true champion of the discipline. 

“Basically, I’ll teach it to anyone who will stand still and listen.” 

Teach it he does, though the means and methods he employs may surprise his students at first. 

Deakin, who has been at the Blair School since 2004, has taken a class that was once taught as a weekly classroom lecture and turned it into an interactive learning experience where students,whomay come into the program at various levels of knowledge, are able to work at their own pace. In this learning environment, selfpaced study is combined with one-on-one attention and occasional front-of-the-class lectures during any one of four 50-minute sessions held during the week, a format that makes scheduling easier for the students. 

“It’s proven to be very effective,” says Deakin, “because each learner has his or her individual needs and challenges, and this method of instruction allows me to work one-on-one with themand address their issues specifically in terms and concepts they can understand—rather than addressing the students en masse fromthe front of the classroom, which is a more traditional approach.” 

The precollege music theory program uses the same textbook that Blair’s college students use. Starting off with pitch, scales, intervals and chords, the students are prepared for four-part writing in the style of J.S. Bach by the end of the first semester. Depending on how long they elect to stay in the program, students continue on through more advanced harmony, moving into the Romantic Period and then on to contemporary musical practices such as graphic scores, electronic and 12-tone music. 

Deakin, whose background includes curriculum design, has taken the textbook and divided it into eight divisions. Study materials for each division include taped audio lectures and study guides that lead the students through the main concepts in the book and highlight certain features of the text. There are also extra tips, advice and insights that elaborate on some of the more challenging aspects of music theory.

“It’s interactive,” says Deakin about his approach to teaching the subject. “For the most part students work at their own pace, completing self-tests at the end of each chapter, checking their answers, and self-correcting if necessary. I’m always on hand to give extra assistance where it’s needed, to check over their work, or to spot-test them on key terms and concepts.When students finish a chapter I’ll give them a practice test and then a more formal test under exam conditions. This allows me to see whether they’ve reallymastered the material. It also gives me an opportunity to address any issues before they move on. I will occasionally do small teaching segments and cover something in more traditional style if enough students are working on a particular topic. I’ve also experimented with rolling in composition projects at the end of each section so students have an opportunity to bring what they have learned out of the realm of the purely theoretical and into a concrete project.

“I’m delighted when a student comes to me and says, ‘I was with my piano teacher and I played this half-diminished seventh-chord and I recognized it!’ Suddenly theory and practice, two worlds that have been artificially separated, have come together—that’s what it’s all about for me.” 

Deakin is emphatic in his belief that music theory is as important as performance and that both are indispensable to becoming a well-rounded musician. 

“Virtuoso performance without an understanding of what’s going on under the hood, so to speak, is one that is, arguably, lacking in some important aspects, and the reverse is also true,” says Deakin. “That’s what the program is about—raising theory to an appropriate level of importance, and making sure that when our precollege and adult students leave the program they do so as well-balanced musicians and can demonstrate proficiency and excellence in both theory and practice.” 

The Blair School’s precollege music theory program teaches students from age 12 to adulthood. Students are tested upon entry to determine their level of knowledge and may enter the class at any time. Currently, 40 to 50 students are studying in this self-paced program, which can take up to eight semesters to complete. For more information on registering, contact Trisha Johns, registrar, precollege and adult students, at (615) 343-3825.

From left, Seth Link, Connor Crenshaw, Kevin Pittman, Preston Vienneau, David Roberts, Houston Goodrich, Morgan Vice, Chris Blakeslee, and Sarah Elizabeth Musgrave. Musgrave presented each of the students with their own dulcimer at a ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on May 3.

VSA secured funding and 10 dulcimers for instructional use, and Blair provided teaching andmeeting space. In January, Musgrave began looking for students with autism in Sumner County, Tenn., who showed a natural affinity for the dulcimer or who had so much fun in group lessons that they wanted to continue spending more time with the instrument.A group of eight students emerged: four fromSumner County, three from Davidson County and the student with whom Musgrave was already working.These students have been receiving weekly private lessons. 

Musgrave loves the versatility of the instrument she’s been studying since she was six. “It’s like a blank palette, and I can do anything I want with it.The dulcimer has a level of simplicity that allows anyone to play it, yet it can also be really complex.” 

Musgrave’s work with the dulcimer choir has served as her senior project at Merrol HydeMagnet School in Hendersonville, Tenn. She also organized a benefit concert held in March that raised enough funds to buy more dulcimers.As a result, the eight students currently in the program were given their own dulcimers at a ceremony in May. 

This fall,Musgrave, student of the late David Schnaufer and current student of G.R. Davis, will attend Belmont University on a Presidential Scholarship.The most prestigious scholarship Belmont offers, this award covers tuition, roomand board, books and fees.Accepted into both the songwriting and honors programs, she will design her own major to incorporate performance, songwriting andmusic business into one degree. 

Musgrave received the 2008 Award of Excellence in Leadership, a national award, from VSA arts, for teaching these students. She plans to continue their instruction throughout her college years.Conatser has been assisting Musgrave with the students’ private lessons, and she, too, plans to continue teaching students with autism. 

There’s much instant gratification in working with the students says Musgrave. “It’s been so neat to see the interactions, to get a hug, or for the first time to have a student respond vocally.” She describes a student who was not very verbal but who, when he strummed the dulcimer, broke into a big smile because he was so amazed that he could do it. 

“I always knew music was a communication tool,” notesMusgrave. “I see that it’s not a cliché, that music touches and communicates with everyone.”

The Blair School is fortunate to have many “scholars of music” who are contributing to various specialties within the discipline. From how music informs AIDS education in east Africa to studies of how music was taught during medieval times, from the popular music of the barrios of LosAngeles to the complete works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach—Blair’s musicologists are covering new territory and contributing to intellectual history at an astonishing rate through their scholarship and recordings.

Greg Barz, associate professor of musicology (ethnomusicology), is known for his studies of how music contributes to education and healing, particularly in regard to HIV/AIDS in Africa. His CD Singing for Life: Songs of Hope, Healing and HIV/AIDS in Uganda, released last year through Smithsonian Folkways, was nominated for a Grammy Award this winter in the Best Traditional World Music Album category. His most recently produced CD, God in Music City, accompanied a class offered through the transinstitutional Center for the Study of Religion and Culture. Recent publications include: Music, Medicine, and Culture: Medical Ethnomusicology and Global Perspectives on Health and Healing, associate editor (B. Koen, editor) (NY:Oxford University Press, 2008); Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, 2nd Edition, co-editor with T. Cooley. (NY: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Singing for Life: Music and HIV/AIDS in Uganda (NY: Routledge, 2006).

Joy Calico, associate professor of musicology, has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships for her research focusing on music and politics in former Soviet-bloc countries, particularly the former German Democratic Republic. An NEH summer stipend helped support research for her most recently published book, Brecht at the Opera, released in August by the University of California (Berkeley) Press as volume 9 in the California Studies in Twentieth Century Music series. She also was the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, in support of the Brecht book. Two external fellowships are supporting her current book project,Musical Remigration: Schoenberg’s ‘Survivor fromWarsaw’ in Postwar Europe (also for the University of California Press): an ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for which she will be a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard in 2009-10 and a Howard Fellowship fromthe George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation for summer research in 2008-09.

Dale Cockrell, professor of musicology, focuses onAmerican musical idioms.He has written extensively on blackface minstrels and his book Demons of Disorder: Early BlackfaceMinstrels and TheirWorld (CambridgeUniversity Press,1997) received the Hugh Holman Award for best book in Southern Studies for that year.His current work includes The Pa’s Fiddle Project, which, in collaboration with Butch Baldassari, adjunct associate professor of mandolin, has produced two CDs—Happy Land: Musical Tributes to Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Arkansas Traveler: Music from Little House on the Prairie. He has published articles in academic journals, such as The Bulletin for the Society forAmerican Music and Theatre Annual, and for reference works, such as the Encyclopedia of New England Culture,The Harvard Dictionary ofMusic, The New Grove Dictionary ofMusic andMusicians (second edition), and the Encyclopedia of Country Music.

Cynthia Cyrus, associate dean and associate professor of musicology, takes an approach to her scholarly work that combines musical, historical and gender studies. Her most recent work focuses on women as writers, scribes and teachers of musical literacy in medieval and renaissance Europe. Her book, The Scribes for Women’s Convents in LateMedieval Germany, forthcoming from University of Toronto Press, looks at the control women monastics had over their own intellectual life, identifying over 400 women scribes and 38 women’s scriptoria. She has two other books coming in 2009 for which she is co-editor: Reading and Writing the Pedagogy of the Past: Studies in Musical Learning in the Early Modern Era (with SusanWeiss of Peabody Conservatory and Russell E. Murray of the University of Delaware, Indiana University Press) and Music, Dance and Society: Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Memory of Ingrid G. Brainard (withAnn Buckley ofNational University of Ireland—Maynooth,Medieval Institute Publications).

Douglas Lee, professor of musicology, emeritus, retired from teaching a number of years ago, but his research on 18th century and modern orchestral music has continued.Most specifically, his work has focused on Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the second son of J.S. Bach. Prof. Lee is one of several contributing editors to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach:The CompleteWorks, published by The Packard Humanities Institute of Los Alto, Calif., in cooperation with the International Bach-Archiv, Leipzig; the Saechsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig and Harvard University.The work will comprise 114 volumes when completed for the 300th anniversary of C.P.E. Bach’s birth in 2014. Prof. Lee has currently completed Sei concerti per il cembalo concertato (1772) (Series III, vol. 8, the first volume in the series, which came out in 2005),Arrangement of OrchestralWorks I (Series I, vol. 10.1, 2007) and the upcoming Keyboard Concertos in G and D,Wq. 44/5 (Series II, vol. 9.15, 2009).

Jim Lovensheimer, assistant professor of musicology, has worked in musical theatre as an actor, playwright,musical supervisor and director, and dramaturge, so it is no surprise that his scholarly research focuses on musical theatre as well. He has had encyclopedia articles, chapters and reviews in The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, The Encyclopedia of the Midwest (forthcoming), The Sondheim Review and The Kurt Weill Newsletter, and he is currently writing South Pacific: Paradise Rewritten forOxford University Press (2009). Prof. Lovensheimer is the 2008 winner of the Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching at Vanderbilt, one of only two faculty teaching awards given each year at Vanderbilt.

Melanie Lowe, associate professor of musicology and chair of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, has contributed articles and reviews to numerous journals and books, including the Journal ofMusicology, AmericanMusic, PopularMusic and Society, Beethoven Forum, The Cambridge Companion to Haydn (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Popular Music Scenes (Vanderbilt University Press, 2003). Her book Pleasure and Meaning in the Classical Symphony was released last year by Indiana University Press. Prof. Lowe is a past winner of theMadison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Vanderbilt.

Helena Simonett, adjunct assistant professor ofmusic literature and history, studies ceremonialmusicmaking and dancing among indigenous people of northwestern Mexico and also looks at indigenous cultural identity in contemporary Mexican society. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters in publications such as Popular Music Studies Reader,TransculturalMusic Review, and Historia Temática de Sinaloa, vols. 5 and 6.Her books include Banda:MexicanMusical LifeAcross Borders (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and En Sinaloa Nací: Historia de laMúsica de Banda (Asociación de Gestores del Patrimonio Histórico y Cultural deMazatlán, 2004). She recently edited TheAccordian onNew Shores,which is forthcoming.