music Archives - Page 9 of 11

Holiday Greetings from Kalamazoo College

Posted on December 8, 2014March 23, 2022

Dear Friends:

Happy holidays and warm wishes for 2015. This is a very exciting time at K. We welcomed an outstanding class of 2018: 362 students from 30 states and 17 countries. The class is one of the most diverse in the College’s history. Thirty-two percent of its members identify themselves as domestic students of color. Ten percent are four-year degree-seeking international students. Many are the first in their families to attend college.

In September we dedicated the beautiful piece of architecture that houses our Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, and one week later the center convened its first biennial conference, gathering our learning community with social justice scholars and activists from across the globe. The purpose of the center folds beautifully into the goals of a liberal arts education at Kalamazoo College, one of which-as articulated by President Allan Hoben in the 1920s-is for each of us to identify a “charter of service” for humankind. To engage in that important pursuit, we study widely and with rigor. We cultivate the courage it requires to ask big questions and act upon the answers even if they differ from conventional wisdom. What a vibrant environment in which to live and work!

Kalamazoo College is in the final seven months of the most ambitious fund-raising campaign in its long and storied history. We are seeking to raise $125 million to support the priorities that will help ensure that the Kalamazoo College of tomorrow is every bit as strong, every bit as vibrant, and every bit as willing to grapple with the big questions, as we are today. This holiday season is a perfect time to give thanks for the incredible support we have received from alumni and friends.

I am grateful to all of you for what you do on behalf of K. You are making a difference in the lives of our students; helping them to learn and to act on their inclination to make the world a better place.

I hope you enjoy this holiday greeting. Its original music was composed by alumnus Robert Severinac ’85 as part of his Senior Individualized Project. Today, he is a renowned plastic surgeon and entrepreneur who does pro bono work with families of children with cleft palates. And he continues to enjoy and make music! The roots of such breadth and service lie in the power of the liberal arts at K.

President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran

Baby Tears and Dancing Twins

Posted on October 21, 2014March 23, 2022

Psychology Press has launched a new social media campaign called “Ask Dr. Tan.” And, yes, it’s “our” Dr. Tan–Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan. Psychology Press is one of her publishers. Their Twitter account has many followers (among the highest number of any academic press). To celebrate having surpassed 50,000 followers, Psychology Press asked Siu-Lan to do #ASKDRTAN.

They chose wisely. Even though Siu-Lan confessed (in a recent BeLight article) to being a neophyte in the world of social media, her blog about a baby moved to tears by her mother’s singing was an incredibly successful “must-read” on two popular blogs in 2013. Psychology Press has launched its Twitter campaign with videos of twin girls dancing to their father’s guitar at ages 1, 2, and 3. The videos had gone viral, and #ASKDRTAN invites denizens of the blogosphere and Twitterverse to ask Siu-Lan any questions that come to mind about the girls’ behavior and their early responses to music. Example: What do most infants respond to first in music: melody or rhythm?

Siu-Lan will receive all questions before October 29 via Psychology Press’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. Submitters of questions deemed top picks get a prize (a free copy of her book, Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance). Top pick questions will be developed as part of an article that will appear on the Psychology Press website and on Siu-Lan’s Psychology Today blog, What Shapes Film?

Philharmonia Director Wins Music Award

Posted on October 20, 2014March 23, 2022

Associate Professor of Music Andrew Koehler, who also serves as music director of the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, is the 2014 winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award—in the community division. Andrew was selected from applications reviewed this summer from all across the United States. The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The award honors the work of Vytautas Marijosius, who served for 35 years as director of orchestral activities at the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford. Andrew has appeared as a guest with the West Michigan Symphony; the Lyatoshynsky Chamber Orchestra in Kyiv, Ukraine; and the Festival South Chamber Orchestra in Mississippi, among others. Recently, he took part in the 9th Grzegorz Fitelberg International Conductor’s Competition in Katowice, Poland, where he won First Distinction and the Youth Jury Prize. Andrew is a graduate of Yale College, where he completed a B.A. in music and German studies (graduating with honors and distinction in both majors). He holds a certificate in conducting from the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, where he studied for two years as a Fulbright scholar, as well as a Master’s degree from Northwestern University.

Ensemble Kalamazoo Includes K Harpist

Posted on July 3, 2014March 24, 2022

Harpist Eleanor Wong — Eleanor Wong ’12 plays harp for the group “Ensemble Kalamazoo.” Photo by Aaron Geller ’08

A group known as “Ensemble Kalamazoo” recently proved that music can be equal parts silence and sound. The group performed a collection of atonal pieces during a late June concert. Its harpist is Kalamazoo College alumna Eleanor Wong ’12.

Eleanor came to the harp by way of her reluctance for the piano. An early hint: during childhood piano lessons she much preferred to strum the strings inside the instrument rather than finger the keys outside. Not a problem when a musical tradition is as strong as it is in the Wong family. Eleanor’s uncle, Bradley Wong, who attended the June concert, was recently named Western Michigan University’s director of music.

The concert’s compositions sounded like a musical equivalent of the post-war art movement of abstract expressionism. Peter Ablinger’s Weiss/Weisslich 3” (White/Off-White), for example, sounded like a blank white canvas painted white and splashed with a few drops of various colors that seldom coincided.

“It was difficult to play at first,” said Eleanor. And she remarked on the long rehearsal sessions the unorthodox song structures required, “But the emphasis on texture rather than traditional melody and harmony trains your ear in a new way,” she added.

The unorthodox selections featured some fascinating instruments–such as WMU graduate Zachary Boyt’s comb-and-Macbook combination (part of fellow WMU graduate Valeria Jonard’s composition The Broken Harp) that produced a sound that seemed to blend a wind chime and a leaky faucet. The composition’s simplicity and complexity turned on the Boyt’s strumming of the comb, which was amplified by the computer.

“Watching the performance refueled my own artistic opinions,” said Adam Schumaker, an instructor of musical composition at Kalamazoo College. He stressed the importance of experiencing live performances. “Even though I approach music differently, avant-garde performances reinforce what I want to do with music.”

If he, or anyone else, wishes to enjoy Eleanor’s work with “Ensemble Kalamazoo,” then he will have to attend the group’s summer concerts. Eleanor is off to the University of Oregon in August to study arts administration.

Kalamazoo College Symphonic Orchestra Presents Valentine Concert

Posted on January 29, 2014March 24, 2022

Enjoy a musical valentine when the Kalamazoo College Symphonic Orchestra presents a concert of romance on (of course) February 14, at 8 PM in Dalton Theatre of the Light Fine Arts Building. The event is free and open to the public. Selections include Exhilaration (Larry Clark); Scheherazade (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov): Wedding March (Felix Mendelssohn); music from West Side Story (Leonard Bernstein); Fur Elise (Ludwig van Beethoven); Dans Bacchanale (Camille Saint-Saens); and Mambo (Leonard Bernstein). The Symphonic Orchestra is conducted by Thomas G. Evans, professor of music and director of bands.

Piano Concert

Posted on January 21, 2014March 24, 2022

Cedarville University Professor John Mortensen at a piano — John Mortensen

John Mortensen, pianist and professor of music at Cedarville University, will present a concert at Kalamazoo College on Thursday, January 30. The event is free and open to the public.

The concert will feature Mortensen’s original improvisations of works by Domenico Scarlatti (Sonatas), Robert Schumann (selections from Davidsbündlertänze), Sergei Rachmaninoff (Selected Preludes), and Astor Piazzolla (Tangos). The concert begins at 7:30 P.M. in Dalton Theatre in K’s Light Fine Arts Building.

In addition to the concert, Mortensen will teach a master class culminating in performances by K students. Those performances will occur at 4 PM on January 30 in Dalton Theatre.

In addition to his work as a concert pianist, composer, and teacher, Mortensen performs and teaches Irish and American roots music, playing mandolin, octave mandolin, Irish flute, Irish button accordion, five-string banjo, Uilleann pipes, and Irish whistle. He leads The Demerits, Cedarville University’s premier roots ensemble, and he created America’s only college-level traditional Irish music session class.

Face Time

Posted on November 21, 2013March 24, 2022

We love faces; our lives depend on it from an early age. And a close-up on a face is one of the most notable differences between the experience of a movie and the experience of live theater. When we choose to see a film instead of a play it may be, in part, because were drawn to the human face. In her latest installment of her Psychology Today blog (What Shapes Film?) Associate Professor of Psychology Siu-Lan Tan explores what attracts us to cinematic face time. Her article is aptly titled “3 Reasons Why We’re Drawn to Faces in Film.” Maybe it should be four reasons, because music plays a big role as well. It’s a fascinating read, and Tan demonstrates her points with faces from some pretty famous films, including Amelie, It’s a Wonderful Life, Saving Private Ryan, and Toy Story 2, among others. Of particular interest is how facial close-ups make us, the audience, both mirror and blank-canvas-and-painter, depending on a face’s intensity or nuance, respectively.

Symphonic Band Does Spin

Posted on November 6, 2013March 24, 2022

The Kalamazoo College Symphonic Band presents its Fall 2013 concert: SPIN CYCLE: A Concert of Theme and Variations. The concert takes place on Friday, November 15, at 8 PM in the Light Fine Arts Dalton Theatre on the Kalamazoo College Campus. The event is free and open to the public. The Symphonic Band is directed by Professor of Music Thomas Evans and functions as a beloved creative outlet for woodwind, brass, and percussion students. The Symphonic Band holds one concert each quarter playing exciting arrays of band music both challenging and simple but–as Dr. Evans attests–never “simple-minded.” The band is a great favorite for both its members and its audiences, as the programs are usually coordinated around greatly diverse themes that allow for performances of much-loved pieces, both classic and new. SPIN CYCLE selections include Fantasy on Yankee Doodle (Mark Williams), Pachelbel’s Canon (Calvin Custer), Variations on a Korean Folk Song (John Barnes Chance), Themes from Green Bushes (Percy Grainger), Variations on Scarborough Fair (Calvin Custer), Variations on a Shaped Note Tune (Johnnie Vinson), First Suite in E-flat (Gustav Holst), and Joyful Variations-Ode to Joy (Brian Beck). The concert is sponsored by the Kalamazoo College music department.

Music Down in My Soul

Posted on November 6, 2013March 24, 2022

The Kalamazoo College Singers and Women’s Ensemble presents the choral composition, Music Down in My Soul, on Sunday, November 17, at 3 p.m. at Stetson Chapel on the Kalamazoo College campus. The concert is free and open to the public. Music Down in My Soul was arranged by Moses Hogan, an African-American composer and arranger of choral music best known for his settings of spirituals. The concert also features selections by Benjamin Britten, Anders Edenroth, Joan Szymko, Randall Stroope, and Eric Whitacre. The songs evoke a spiritual theme within oneself–understanding the emotions within and celebrating them through music. The Kalamazoo College Singers and Women’s Ensemble consists of some 60 students and under the direction of Professor of Music James Turner. The event is sponsored by the K music department.

REGENERATION Features Four Last Songs

Posted on November 6, 2013March 24, 2022

REGENERATION, the Kalamazoo Philharmonia’s Fall 2013 concert, features soprano Rhea Olivaccé, whose work as a concert and recital soloist has been widely recognized for her versatility of repertoire and medium. REGENERATION occurs Saturday, November 16, at 8 PM in the Light Fine Arts Dalton Theatre on the Kalamazoo College campus. Tickets are $5 general admission and $2 for students. The concert is free to Kalamazoo College students. Olivaccé and the Philharmonia will perform the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. The content of Four Last Songs features a solo soprano voice given remarkable soaring melodies against a full orchestra, and all four songs have prominent horn parts. The combination of a beautiful vocal line with supportive brass accompaniment references Strauss’s own life. His wife, Pauline de Ahna, was a famous soprano and his father, Franz Strauss, a professional horn player. The Kalamazoo Philharmonia will also perform Mahler’s First Symphony, referred to as “The Titan.” The symphony lasts around just under an hour, making it one of Mahler’s shortest symphonies. The Kalamazoo Philharmonia is under the direction of Associate Professor of Music Andrew Koehler. The event is sponsored by the Kalamazoo College music department.