(06/20/05 12:36am)
Practice paid off for Joseph Sheehan and Jeffrey Stanek. The two composers received awards June 6 in New York City by demonstrating superior creative talent for an original musical composition. The two, who are School of Music students and are both studying musical composition, were two of just eight winners out of more than 500 manuscripts that were submitted at the 53rd annual Broadcast Music Incorporated Student Composer Awards. \nSheehan, a doctoral student in musical composition, was awarded the William Schuman Prize -- named after the former Chairman of the BMI Student Awards -- which is given to the composer whose work is judged "most outstanding." This was the second time Sheehan had received the prize. He is the only composer in the competition's 53-year history to win the honor twice.\nStanek, pursuing a Bachelor of Music in composition, received his second award from BMI for his original solo percussion piece entitled, "I Can't Sleep." In 2003, Stanek was one of two recipients of the Carlos Surinach Prize, which is awarded to the two youngest winners at the BMI contest.\nSheehan's award-winning composition, "Sail Away to Soft Sweet Bells," was first played at IU by an ad hoc orchestra organized by Sheehan and a friend. It was his first completed attempt at an orchestral piece and was influenced by his fascination with sailing and his memories of being on a lake in his uncle's boat.\n"It's exciting and gratifying," Sheehan said. "Writing music is something very personal and you're usually doing it in solitude. You're spending a lot of time by yourself and you don't know if what you're doing is meaningful, and it's pretty great to win recognition from a national competition like this." \nBMI is a non-profit company responsible for collecting licensing fees on behalf of the artists it represents. While BMI was established in 1939, the student awards were not founded until 1951, but have since become one of the most prestigious and challenging competitions for young composers; all applicants must be enrolled in accredited institutions, under 26 years of age and citizens of countries in the Western Hemisphere. Eleven former winners of the prominent awards have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music.\nBefore Sheehan and Stanek were catching the ear of BMI judges, their musical faculties were being nurtured by their parents at a remarkably young age. Stanek was seven years old when he first started to take piano lessons and compose music with an instructor, but was even younger when his parents began to pick up on the signs of his musical talents. \n"He always had a musical ear," said Steve Stanek, Jeffrey's father. "Even when he was learning to play the piano at age five or six it would have a very musical quality to it. He was always musically inclined."\nSheehan also showed similar signs of original and creative musical abilities at an extraordinarily early age when he began playing the piano at only four years old.\n"Even when I young, without really knowing what I was doing, I would improvise on the piano and fiddle around," Sheehan said. \nSince entering the School of Music, their harmonious gifts have only been challenged and cultivated further. \n"The talent level here is incredible," Sheehan said. "The breadth and size of the program; there are so many people here that you can pretty much do anything you imagine if you work hard enough"
(06/09/05 2:22am)
Smokey Robinson, the Tempations and Marvin Gaye boomed from the speakers as the students listened to the base line of each artist. All three artists are a part of the Motown era, which originated in Detroit. \nCharles Sykes, the director of the African American Art Institute, is in his tenth year of bringing Motown from those roots to the campus of IU. With it, he brings a unique way of studying the period of artistic, cultural, and historic change of the 1960s. "It's so important to the history of this country to understand that period," Sykes said. "And you cannot understand that period without understanding the music, because the music is an expression of the period." \nMotown, the influential record company started by Berry Gordy in 1959 and still in existence today, nurtured the rise of such artists as Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Sam and Dave and The Jackson 5. \nIt perfected an assembly-line-like approach to producing and selling music. The name comes from it's home city Detroit and its' nickname the Motor City. Motown successfully integrated aspects of the automobile assembly line into its process.\n"The idea of moving a product from point zero to a finished product was built into the operation and even had a quality control department just like the final steps in an automobile plant," Sykes said. \nOnly instead of kicking the tires, Motown's quality control department would vote on whether a song was good enough to be released.\nSykes, who views himself more as a tour guide for his students than an expert, doesn't view Motown as a music genre, but instead as a variation of urban-black popular music that rose from rhythm and blues into soul music and was shaped by the people of Detroit. \n"It wouldn't be like jazz, blues or Motown," Sykes said. "Motown was much more of a local concept, so you can think of it as a music genre, but I don't."\nAlso an adjunct professor of folklore and ethnomusicology, Sykes was introduced to classical and spiritual music at an early age. Before he finished high school, he was able to recognize all nine Beethoven symphonies. While the classical and gospel influence came from home, Sykes tuned to his radio to hear the melodies of R&B and jazz, instantly being inundated with the music. \n"I grew up listening to all of these kinds of music and each of it served a particular role and function in my life," Sykes said. "Motown was just a part of that."\nIt is a part that he argues is vital to understanding the political events of the era -- the civil rights movement particularly as it affected African Americans. \n"I think Motown is a must, not the only must, but one must understand Motown if you are to understand that period of time," Sykes said.\nHis love and passion for music is not lost on his students. Jeremy Allen, a doctoral student in musicology who is enrolled in the Motown course this summer, said that the best part of the class is learning a subject from a teacher who is passionate about the material. \n"Dr. Sykes loves this music," Allen said. "It comes through whenever he is illustrating a point -- snapping his finger, tapping his feet, and doing his little dances."\nAnother current student, junior Kiwan Lawson, said that while the course is intense, Dr. Sykes' class brings together a network of people who share the same interests, making the class worth the effort. \n"Campus can be very big trying to find four or five people who have the same interests," Lawson said. "I've already met five (in this class)." \nSykes says this can be attributed to the transcending ability of Motown's music, which he has witnessed first hand while at a concert of the Legends of Motown. There, Sykes was enjoying the Temptations when he began to browse the faces of the crowd.\n"I'm looking around the audience and you have people of all shades of complexion and all ages -- young kids and older people -- and you're watching them singing the words to the song. That says something that this music has certainly stood the test of time and I dare say, that it's going to continue"