This weekend in the IU Jacobs School of Music
(01/29/07 3:51am)
A Night at the Opera
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This week in the IU Jacobs School of Music
(01/26/07 2:36am)
An enthusiastically large crowd gathered in the warmth of the Musical Arts Center Wednesday evening to hear the IU Philharmonic Orchestra launch the spring semester orchestra series with a program of Russian repertoire.\nThe concert opened with a performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto, featuring graduate student Adam Zukiewicz, of Wroclaw, Poland, as piano soloist. \nTall and slender, Zuckiewicz treated the piece and his instrument with great respect. He made a fitting display of his impressive technical proficiency and delicate refinement, giving the concerto a deeply pensive interpretation. It was just a shame the concerto itself, rather short and academic, could not manage to match the level of musicianship applied to it. \nThe piece is not often performed in the United States and it's not very hard to see why. It allows a reasonable amount of showcase material for the soloist (as concerti are meant to do) and possesses some acceptably dramatic moments. But it is, in the end, dry and unfulfilling.\nWith the night off to such an ambivalent start, I found myself worried that the Stravinsky, next on the program, would feel similarly stilted and not quite fully engaged. Then, of course, I remembered what I'm ashamed to have forgotten in the first place -- that there really is no such thing as a half-assed "Rite of Spring." It is truly an all-or-nothing, sink-or-swim, every-other-tired-metaphor-you-can-think-of kind of venture. \nAnd from the first, infamous bassoon notes to the final, explosive deathblow, the work was attacked with breathtaking passion, concentration, and ferocity. There was an incredible show of effort from the strings, particularly the chronically undervalued violas, and the brass most definitely achieved that all-important balance between power and restraint. \nMaestro David Effron, always an exciting figure on the podium, elicited from the student orchestra a fantastic and courageous performance of this notoriously challenging piece, and they all should feel incredibly proud. \nA quick word on concert etiquette before closing: When you're attending a concert and you find yourself on the left side of the hall when you want to be on the right, please, I beg of you, do not then proceed to traipse yourself down one side, across the front row in front of God and everybody, and then up the other side to your seat the way some feckless idiot did Wednesday night. \nYou may have blunt objects flung at you. And you will deserve it.
This weekend in the Jacobs School of Music
(01/22/07 3:32am)
Philharmonic concert\nThe Jacobs School of Music Orchestra Series will continue this Wednesday night when the IU Philharmonic Orchestra presents a Russian repertoire.\nFirst on the program is Sergei Rachmaninoff's fourth piano concerto, followed by Igor Stravinksy's "The Rite of Spring."\n"The Rachmaninoff concerto is a very interesting piece," said conductor David Effron. "It is hardly ever performed (in the United States) and is very difficult to put together."\n"The Rite of Spring," which premiered as a ballet in 1913, has become legendary for the riotous reaction it provoked and also presents a great deal of difficulty, said Effron.\n"But I'm really pleased with the orchestra," he said. "They're doing a terrific job."\nThe Rachmaninoff piece will feature student pianist Adam Piotr Zukiewicz, winner of the school's piano concerto competition.\nThe concert begins at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Musical Arts Center and is free to the public.
This weekend in the Jacobs School of Music
(01/17/07 4:41am)
Chamber music devotees are no doubt looking forward to this weekend's Dubinsky Memorial Concert. The concert, given annually, is piano professor Luba Edlina-Dubinsky's memorial offering to her late husband, Rostislav Dubinsky, who served as violin professor and chamber-music coordinator in the Jacobs School of Music from 1980 until his death in 1997.\n"Everybody who remembers him knows he was a wonderful musician and a wonderful teacher," Edlina-Dubinsky said.\nThis year, Edlina-Dubinsky will be collaborating with faculty clarinetist James Campbell and the Lafayette String Quartet. This all-female quartet comes to Bloomington from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, where its members have served as artists-in-residence since 1991. According to the ensemble's Web site, they recently celebrated their 20th anniversary, making them the only female string ensemble to have retained all the original members for so long a period of time.\nThe concert will be held at 4 p.m. in Auer Hall and is free to the public.\nThe music school also continues its commitment to academic excellence with the next installment of the Musicology Department Colloquium Series this Friday.\n"The departmental colloquium is a forum in which faculty, graduate students and occasional visitors present their research," said Massimo Ossi, the musicology department's chair. "Its primary goal is to keep the members of the department abreast of new work by their colleagues. It can also serve as an important forum to showcase specific areas of scholarly interest."\nThe spring semester was kicked off last week with a presentation by IU musicologist Dan Melamed, who acts as organizer and host of the series. \n"(The Series) is a central part of the department's academic life," he said. "This is a place where we come together as an academic community."\nThis week's lecture will be given by UCLA professor Todd Decker. According to an abstract provided by Melamed, Decker will be offering his observations concerning the nearly 50 dance solos created by the late Fred Astaire over the course of his 35-year career, addressing in particular Astaire's relationship to and interactions with forms of popular music and his frequent collaborations with black artists in a time of racial segregation.\nThe presentation will begin at 12:30 p.m. Friday in Merrill Hall 267. It is free and open to the public.
This weekend in the Jacobs School of Music
(01/12/07 7:35am)
On Saturday night the atrium of IU's celebrated Art Museum will be transformed into a medieval French cathedral as the Jacobs School of Music presents 'Fleury,' a 12th-century liturgical, or church, drama.\n"Fleury," an anonymous manuscript, contains 10 separate dramas that address a variety of biblical stories, such as Christmas, Easter and the conversion of St. Paul. The "Fleury" collection is truly unique, according to scholar Thomas Campbell, who describes it as nothing less than "a supreme example of 12th-century Latin music-drama."\nThe performance of this monumental work will utilize Concentus, an ensemble of Early Music students, as well as members of the IU Children's Choir.\n"It has been a great experience for (the children)," said Children's Choir Director Dr. Brent Gault. "This music is not easy to memorize and perform, and they have really had to stretch musically in order to meet the challenges of the production."\nTwelve-year-old choir member Tony Ponella agreed.\n"The last piece," he said, "the 'Te Deum,' is really hard."\nBut Ponella said it was definitely worth the work.\n"I love the space that we are performing in," he said. "Plus I always love working with IU students." \nDr. Gault said he shared Ponella's affection for the museum.\n"The atrium of the Art Museum is a beautiful space in which to sing," he said, "and performing there only heightens the total effect."\nThe performance of "Fleury" will being at 8 p.m. Saturday and is free and open to the public.
Latest additions to voice faculty discuss 1st semester
(12/08/06 4:31am)
The IU Jacobs School of Music has a long-standing, time-tested strategy of bringing the best available talents to the school. The hope is they will share their skills and worldly wisdom with the school's up-and-coming performers. This year proved no exception, when the voice faculty welcomed to its ranks three distinguished sopranos: Carol Vaness, Scharmel Schrock and Sylvia McNair. Each has already enjoyed several decades of singing and teaching, and each has had her fair share of success as well as difficulty. And now, each calls one of the country's finest academic music institutions home.
IU Music school professor shares money from award
(12/07/06 4:25am)
Mary Wennerstrom was struck by an odd sensation upon receiving her latest academic commendation.\n"It's a little like reading your own obituary," she said with her characteristic laugh.\nWennerstrom, who is the associate dean of the Jacobs School of Music, was recently named the newest recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Center for Music Theory Pedagogy, located at the University of Oklahoma. The award, which included $10,000, was presented at the annual conference of the Society for Music Theory in Los Angeles early last month. \nThe award is yet another star in the crown of a career many decades in the making, but she wants to share it with others.\n"My idea was to put the money towards establishing an endowment and use that for a teaching award," Wennerstrom said.\nThe IU Foundation, she explained, will accept endowments starting at $10,000 and pay out five percent interest, creating an annual award of $500 for outstanding graduate instructors of music theory.\nWennerstrom has been a part of IU history since the late 1950s, when she began her Bachelor of Music in piano performance. She also completed both her masters and doctoral degrees in Bloomington and was appointed to the music theory faculty as a lecturer in 1964.\n"I'm not sure I was ready (for the position)," Wennerstrom said. "It was definitely a trial by fire."\nHer teaching career began, she explained, just as the School of Music was dramatically increasing the size of its student body.\n"I once had two separate sections of 200 students," she said.\nWennerstrom would eventually serve over twenty years as chair of the Department of Music Theory, where she trained hundreds of graduate teaching assistants, including current faculty member Robert Hatten.\n"I was a student here in 1973," Hatten said, "and took Dr. Wennerstrom's pedagogy courses."\nLike Wennerstrom, Hatten holds both a master's and a doctoral degree from the School of Music. Hatten, who came to IU after teaching most recently at Pennsylvania State University, said his opinion of Wennerstrom has not diminished over the years.\n"She's still a great teacher," he said. "She's had an enormous impact on the curriculum. We still use her anthology, for instance."\nThe "Anthology of Twentieth-Century Music" is one of Wennerstrom's many publications, combining analytical and aural musical skills with a chronological study of music literature, and remains an integral part of IU's innovative music theory curriculum. Wennerstrom not only helped develop the curriculum, but also cultivated the vast system of assistant instructors who bear much of the responsibility for teaching the anthology to IU's music undergraduates.\nTimothy Best, who serves as a theory instructor and is also the president of the Graduate Theory Association, had nothing but praise for Wennerstrom.\n"I have taken two courses with professor Wennestrom and cannot emphasize enough what a brilliant and committed pedagogue she is," he said.\nAfter dedicating her career to the development of music theory educators such as Best, Wennerstrom has decided to pass on her recent award in a way that will honor their hard work and commitment to the field.\n"The fact that she has decided to use the award money in this way is such a reflection of her generosity and commitment to teaching," Best said. "The award will be a powerful incentive for AIs in the department to aspire to the kind of excellence that professor Wennerstrom embodies."\nWennerstrom said she could find nothing more appropriate to do with the money than to encourage and reward future educators.\n"It's nice to write articles and get published," she said. "It's how you get tenure, after all. But teaching is what we do"
Music school offers podcasts of student performances in video, audio online
(11/20/06 3:56am)
The IU Jacobs School of Music recently inaugurated a free podcasting service from the school's Web site.\n"Now anyone anywhere in the world will be able to obtain performances from the School of Music," said Gwyn Richards, the school's dean.\nThe School of Music, Richards explained, has been recording student performances since the '40s as a way to keep a record of music being produced by students. He said podcasting is simply an extension of that practice.\n"Our hope is that everything will be recorded," he said. "Now our students have a record of what they did here."\nBoth audio and video are recorded in high-definition and offered online with the highest fidelity possible. \n"The quality of podcast is pretty phenomenal," said Alain Barker, the school's director of marketing and publicity. "It's a great opportunity for people to check out (what the School of Music is doing)."\nKonrad Strauss, professor of recording arts, agreed.\n"There's a huge promotional aspect, but in addition, we can provide classical music to people at little to no cost," he said.\nStrauss, along with colleagues Travis Gregg and Wayne Jackson, oversees the recording of more than 700 performances each year and said he sees great potential in this ongoing project.\n"We'll be adding new episodes every two weeks, so we'll be cycling out old material," he said. "We hope that will get people subscribing to the site for regular updates."\nRichards said the podcasting project has been in the works for some time. \n"It was years getting the infrastructure to support it," he said. "Now, the equipment has gotten less expensive, and we've initiated discussions with manufacturers (for potential user agreements)." \nIt has also taken the past year to sort the legal complexities involved.\nStreaming video, Strauss explained, is considered comparable to live performance, so issues of copyright are covered in the school's contracts with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc., which license the performance of copyrighted music. But downloading a podcast is considered a sale and is subject to royalty payments. For that reason, Strauss said, all the current podcast offerings are performances of works in the public domain.\n"Eventually, we'll just have to make our peace with royalty payments," Strauss said.\nThe podcasts can be accessed at IUMusic Live!, http://music.indiana.edu/iumusiclive. The podcasting service requires iTunes or similar software, but there is also material available for non-iPod users.
Famed conductor will join Jacobs faculty in fall 2007
(11/16/06 5:02am)
The IU Jacobs School of Music recently confirmed the appointment of renowned conductor Leonard Slatkin to the School of Music faculty, continuing its long tradition of attracting the music world's greatest talent to teach its students. \nThough the announcement was made last month, the excitement has yet to die down.\n"We're overjoyed," conducting professor David Effron said. "He's done so much for American repertoire, and he's a terrific teacher."\nSlatkin will begin his tenure at IU during the 2007--08 school year. Next year will be his final season with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., where he has conducted for 12 years.\nIn Paris, between rehearsals with the Orchestre Philharmonique, Slatkin said he was already thinking ahead to his new role as a professor.\n"I have ideas I want to implement," he said. "I really want to find things that utilize what I do well and will help the institution grow."\nSlatkin has worked with IU student orchestras for the past two years as a guest artist at the Jacobs School of Music's Summer Music Festival, but his roots in Bloomington go much deeper. \n"I studied with (piano professor) Menahem Pressler back in 1962," Slatkin said. \nSlatkin returned home to California, where his father passed away shortly after, then attended Los Angeles Community College and studied English, he said.\nSlatkin eventually entered the Juilliard School in New York as a conducting student and has since pointed his baton in cities nationwide -- including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis -- as well as internationally, as on his current European tour through Stockholm, Sweden; Paris and Lyon, France; Milan, Italy; and Rotterdam, Netherlands.\nHis appointment to the Jacobs School of Music is made possible by funding from the Arthur R. Metz Foundation, which has an extensive history of support for both the theater department and the music school. The foundation currently covers the costs of maintaining and performing on two carillons on the Bloomington campus. \nSlatkin's appointment raises many questions. His initial appointment is limited to a three-year period, but negotiations are underway for an extended tenure. "It's hard to say" what will happen after 2008-09, Richards said.\n"There has always been the question of what he will do after the National Symphony Orchestra," he said.\nBut Richards is optimistic.\n"We know Bloomington will be his academic home," he said.\nSlatkin's work beyond the University remains to be settled as well. Though he will be stepping down as music director of the National Symphony, he will remain music advisor to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, as well as principal guest conductor of both the Royal Philharmonic in London and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.\nHis continued involvement with the National Conducting Institute, which is associated with the National Symphony, is also unclear.\n"That determination has not yet been made," said Patricia O'Kelly of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which houses the National Symphony.\nFor his part, Slatkin said he would probably not get around to planning that far ahead until the current season winds down in April.\n"I don't know what's going to happen," he said. "Finishing my tenure in Washington, it struck me as certainly a good time to be thinking about new challenges. But as far as long range, I'm not sure"
'Hansel and Gretel' has many layers
(11/16/06 4:49am)
An impressive crowd gathered at the Musical Arts Center last Friday night for the opening of the Jacobs School of Music IU Opera Theater production of Engelbert Humperdinck's beloved opera "Hansel and Gretel." The crowd was richly rewarded for its journey.\nThe cast was enjoyable from the start, with graduate students Kathryn Leemhuis and Marie Masters as Hansel and Gretel, respectively, blending with musical perfection. Graduate students Meghann Vaughn and Adonis Abuyen played the roles of their parents. Though Vaughn and Abuyen were less dynamic onstage, they gave well-rendered musical performances nonetheless. \nThe obvious show-stealer was doctoral student Michael Match as the Witch, who, after enticing Hansel and Gretel with her gingerbread house, meets her doom in her own baking oven. Match is a counter-tenor with extraordinary vocal and dramatic abilities and elicited a much-deserved extended ovation for his aria in Act II. \nGraduate students Lindsay Kerrigan as the Sandman and Caryn Kerstetter as the Dew Fairy gave lovely performances of what are in essence lamentably small roles. With any luck, their voices will receive more stage time in the not-so-distant future.\nThe opera itself, a hybrid of Grimm fairy tale and Lutheran morality play, was seen in its time as a new emblem of German opera, successfully building upon Wagner's musical tradition while at the same time preparing the way for 20th-century German opera. No doubt it found popular appeal for the enchanted, romantic world it creates.\nThese days, however, it's a bit of a challenge to accept the music and its accompanying story quite so optimistically. Perhaps it is simply the cynicism of young adulthood, but when Hansel and Gretel's mother Gertrude foolishly sends her children into the forest to collect strawberries after she loses her temper, all I see is the plight of a woman who is simply ill-equipped for the challenges of motherhood. \nShe is plagued by hunger, stretched beyond tolerance by poverty and unable to accommodate her children's need to be playful and careless. When she and her husband Peter glorify his purchase of ham, eggs and butter, some may see nobility in such humble simplicity. I see only two pitiful adults, reduced by their economic condition to celebrating even the basic necessity of food as a luxury. When Peter sings, "hunger is the poor man's curse," my heart breaks for the truth of it.\nLuckily, the children for whom this production is intended are free from such somber readings. They see only the necessary setup for Hansel and Gretel's inevitable triumph over the Witch. They understand that if their mother had not lost her temper and bid them collect berries in the woods, Hansel and Gretel would not have had the opportunity to defeat the Witch and rid the world of the terror she had for so long reeked upon its children. They revel in Hansel and Gretel's cleverness in outsmarting the Witch and can celebrate the duo's victory with enviable innocence. \nIn the end, it was the children -- not only the ones in the audience but the superbly talented on stage -- who provided the greatest satisfaction for the evening. They are, after all, the future generation of music performers and music lovers, who, being exposed to music so early in life, will carry its value and importance with them the rest of their lives. It is for their sake "Hansel and Gretel" must be performed. \nAudiences of all ages will have two more chances to enjoy "Hansel and Gretel" at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Musical Arts Center. Tickets cost between $15 and $35 and are available at the MAC box office.
Once upon an Opera
(11/09/06 4:17am)
Friday night, a Southern farm girl will become a witch. \nJamie Barton, a 25-year-old mezzo-soprano, will move into her gingerbread house Friday night as the Witch in the IU Opera Theater production of "Hansel and Gretel." Before she came to IU as a graduate student in the renowned Jacobs School of Music opera department, Barton performed bluegrass music with her family on their farm in Rome, Ga. \n"I also played the piano for nine years," she said, "but that doesn't mean anything stuck. I think honestly I took up classical music because it was different."\nThis love of classical music eventually led her to Shorter College, also in Rome, Ga., where she began voice lessons under Brian Horne, an IU alumnus.\n"I first met Jamie when she was in eighth grade, and my wife was her music teacher in school," Horne said.\n"I was delighted to take her on," he continued later. "She is very musical naturally, but we did work a great deal on her technique, and fortunately, the theater department at the time was very strong, and Jamie took an interest in that as well."\nWhen it came time to find a graduate school, Barton found the Jacobs School of Music to be just one of many choices. Horne, who at the same time was offered a faculty appointment to IU, stepped in to champion his alma mater.\n"My wife and I brought Jamie and her accompanist up here in the summer," he said. "I took them on the 'Brian Horne tour,' as I call it, which is entering the house of the Musical Arts Center through the orchestra pit, as though you are the maestro making his way to the podium."\nHorne said he has yet to find anyone who can resist the appeal of that trip, and Barton did not change that record.\nBarton has since spent a great deal of time in the MAC as a performer in the IU Opera Theater, which has been one of the school's claims to fame for decades.\nThe school performed several short operas and operettas in the first half of the 20th century -- including a 1942 production of "Hansel and Gretel." It was not until the first production of Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" in 1949, however, that opera became a regular fixture of the school's performance -- not to mention marketing -- structure. The presentation of "Parsifal" quickly became an annual event, prompting a Life magazine reviewer to claim that IU's "majestic settings and dynamic staging ... beat hands down the 'Parsifal' given by New York's Metropolitan (Opera)." The school has since attracted some of the greatest talent in the field -- from the late conductor Ernst Hoffman and stage director Hans Busch to celebrated sopranos Sylvia McNair and Carol Vaness.\nThis tradition was not lost on Barton as she made her decision to attend IU. She said the best part of being a singer at IU is the opportunity to work in such a high-caliber theater.\n"We get used to it," she continued, "but I've seen regional theaters that aren't nearly the size of IU. My old school had 22 practice rooms, which was unheard of (in such a rural area). I used to give recitals in a carpeted chapel."\nHorne said he finds IU's opera program to be of great benefit to voice students in Bloomington.\n"The main strength, I think, for someone like Jamie is certainly the opera program and the MAC stage," he said. "We are one of the very few places that offer real opera with real orchestra and a real stage."\nProfessor Mary Ann Hart, chair of the voice department and Barton's teacher for the past year and a half, said she also feels the size of the opera program provides unique "real world" benefits to students.\n"In the real world, you don't make every audition," she said. "In a smaller school, where there are fewer voice students, your turn (to sing a role) might come up more quickly."\nBoth her former and current teachers said they have high hopes for Barton's future. Hart said she can imagine Barton's voice in a number of roles, and Horne echoed that sentiment. \n"I will say that I think Jamie's unique voice and the humanity she shows will earn a career for her," Horne said.\nBarton, for her part, has already started her professional career. She recently won the district level for the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions, qualifying her to perform at the regional level in January. This past summer, she participated in the Opera Theatre of St. Louis' summer program and the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts, where she had the opportunity to sing for James Levine of the Metropolitan Opera and take lessons with renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw. Barton will return to St. Louis this summer to make her professional debut as Annina in Verdi's "La Traviata."\n"Jamie is very fortunate in that she does have an amazing instrument," Hart said. "It's not typical; (it's an) individual sound, which is a huge, huge advantage in the real world. That's the kind of thing we're preparing our students to do ... you have to (have) something to say that will set you apart." \nThose who can't wait until July to hear Barton's instrument, however, can see her Friday night as the Witch in Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel." Performances begin at 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Nov. 17 and 18.
Jacobs School of Music adds 2 new courses for spring
(11/07/06 3:35am)
The Jacobs School of Music will offer two new courses for the spring semester to music and nonmusic students alike. They are Choral Masterworks, taught by Katherine Domingo and Opera Theatre Series I, taught by Constance Glen.\nChoral Masterworks will "introduce (its students) to the masterpieces of choral music through musical, historical and cultural contexts," according to the Schedule of Classes Bulletin. \n"There are nearly 30 million people in our country who sing in choruses of all types," Domingo said. "I hope that students who take this course understand how choral music has been used as a powerful and effective tool for communicating ideas throughout our history and culture."\nDomingo said she will expose her students to a wide variety of choral ensembles -- from traditional symphonic and a cappella choruses to more recent developments like show choirs and vocal jazz ensembles.\nDomingo said that she hopes there will be many students in her class who do not have particularly strong musical training.\n"I love teaching nonmusic majors because their knowledge of music comes from such varied backgrounds and experiences," she said. \n"I have had business school students, students who are now in medical and law school and students who have been playing piano or violin for over 10 years -- all in the same class," she added.\nMusic lovers of all sorts will also be able to take Glen's Opera Theatre Series I. Glen will be offering a window into the "passion and drama of the operatic stage through its stories, characters and music," according to the Schedule of Classes Bulletin. \n"I'll emphasize the most popular opera composers and two or three of their works," Glen explained. "The structure will be historical ... but I'll also differentiate and organize by genre as well."\nGlen said she too looks forward to working with a variety of students.\n"I hope some students who have never had any experience with opera will take the course and learn to love the art form," she said. "I hope students with some background in opera will become more immersed in the musical meaning and context, deepening their understanding of individual works and composers."\nGlen said she will do this both through reading and listening, as well as through tours of the various opera production shops and possibly attendance of dress rehearsals.\nOpera Theatre Series I will meet only once a week, 6 to 8:45 p.m. Tuesdays. Choral Masterworks will meet 10:10 to 11 a.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Registration for the spring semester remains open until Jan. 12.
Metropolitan opera auditions draw varied crowd
(10/31/06 6:16am)
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, surrounded by the first act set from the Jacobs School of Music production "Manon," graduate student Miroslaw Witkowski, 27, began his aria, "Aleko's Cavatina" from Rachmaninoff's opera "Aleko," accompanied by pianist Kim Carballo.\nWitkowski, who appeared on the Musical Arts Center's stage earlier this semester as the Commandatore in Mozart's "Don Giovanni," was taking part in the district level of the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions. The Auditions Program, sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera National Council, was created in 1954 to give leaders in the field of opera the opportunity to recognize and help develop young singers' talents. \nSome of today's most celebrated singers, including IU alumnae Sylvia McNair and Angela Brown, have been named as winners.\nSaturday's auditions, which were open to the public, drew a small but varied crowd. Some were there just as music-lovers.\n"I've come to these several times in the past," philosophy professor emeritus Paul Eisenberg, said, "just for the enjoyment of singing."\nOthers had a more vested interest in attending, such as Witkowski's teacher, voice professor Tim Noble.\nNoble was straightforward about his hopes for his student.\n"I don't have any expectations for these kind of things," he said. "I would like for him to have a good, confident sing.\n"If he learns from it," he added, "I'll be happy."\nNoble said he was primarily interested in exposing Witkowski to the audition atmosphere, even with the little preparation time they had available. Witkowski has only been in Bloomington for two and a half months, coming from his hometown near Krakow, Poland, to study at the Jacobs School of Music as one of the first recipients of a Jacobs Scholarship. \n"I could have waited longer (to sing in the auditions)," Witkowski said, "and I'll be much better prepared next year. But it's very important to do these competitions because they give you new contacts with people." \nIn his case, he explained, he received valuable feedback from the panel of judges that echoed much of what his own teacher has told him.\n"They told me exactly what I have to work on, exactly what Noble said," Witkowski said.\nWitkowski, Noble explained, comes from the Eastern European singing tradition that emphasizes darker, deeper tones than the brighter sound he is hoping Witkowski will acquire.\n"I'm happy with his work so far," Noble said. "It's a great instrument, and he's very passionate, intelligent and hard-working."\nWitkowski, the first member of his family to travel to the United States, began corresponding with Noble after discovering he had also taught Jordan Bisch, IU alumnus and 2005 Met National Council Auditions grand prize-winner. \nJudging Saturday's auditions were Richard Bado, chorus-master of the Houston Grand Opera; William Farlow, director of operas at University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Roger Pines, dramaturg for the Chicago Lyric Opera.\nIf Witkowski is selected as the district winner, he will go on to perform at the regional auditions held at Butler University in January 2007. \nRegardless of the outcome, both student and teacher said they remain optimistic.\n"I think he's got a future in the business," Noble said.\nWitkowski, for his part, is already looking ahead to possible summer programs in Brevard, N.C., or Cincinnati and, of course, next year's district auditions.
Opening night cast delivers strong vocal performances in 'Manon'
(10/25/06 2:24am)
Jules Massenet's "Manon," which opened Friday night at the Musical Arts Center, is melodrama of the highest degree. Its tale of youthful love and folly, with accompanying displays of overwrought anguish and excessive jubilance, is at once an achievement of musical art and a pinnacle of theatrical camp.\nManon Lescaut, performed by graduate student Betsy Uschkrat, is the epitome of self-absorbed hedonism. She consistently exploits the love and devotion of her lover, Chevalier des Grieux -- sung beautifully by graduate student Brian Arreola -- for the sake of wealth and luxury. Only at the brink of death does she acknowledge her folly, denying both herself and her lover the happiness he so desired and she never deserved.\nUschkrat, a lovely young woman with a jewel of a voice, established a solid rapport on stage with Arreola, who turned out a fine vocal performance with lyricism and passion. The two made quite the young (and foolish) couple, even though their sound could not pierce some of the orchestra's fuller moments. Uschkrat's shimmering soprano was agile and light, befitting the coquette she was portraying, and Arreola's performance displayed great emotional strength and nuance.\nTheir love affair faced considerable resistance from a number of characters, not the least entertaining of whom was Guillot de Morfontaine, a classic dandy of a nobleman, played by graduate student Daniel Shirley. Also discouraging the young lovers were tax-collector \nDe Bretigny, played by graduate student Jonathan Green, whose full baritone was among the strongest voices to grace the stage, and Count des Grieux, Chevelier's father, played by graduate student John Huckle. Huckle's thunderous bass has filled the MAC for several years, and the hall welcomed him as warmly as ever.\nThe only ally the couple could rely on was Manon's own cousin, Lescaut, performed by graduate student Michael Weyandt. Weyandt played Lescaut to gentlemanly perfection, employing a lovely, lyrical sound that revealed a softness and sympathy underneath his decidedly masculine exterior.\nThough framed by an \noccasionally ill-fitting set piece, and encumbered by often less-than-inspired staging, this remarkably strong cast delivered a fine performance, reminding at least this critic just how extraordinary the opportunities at IU are. The opera will be performed again at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and should prove to be a satisfying adventure -- though at three-and-a-half hours long, it's certainly not for the faint of spirit.
Documentary celebrates Beaux Arts 50th anniversary
(10/25/06 2:21am)
In an interview for the Indiana Daily Student two years ago, Menahem Pressler, distinguished professor of piano for the IU Jacobs School of Music, said he did not expect his chamber music ensemble to have much longevity.\n"I expected it to last a week to make a record," Pressler said.\nBut much to the joy of chamber music lovers everywhere, Pressler's prediction was anything but accurate, as the ensemble, known as the Beaux Arts Trio, has now practiced and performed for half a century. This 50-year mark is currently being celebrated by the PBS documentary "Beaux Arts at 50," which was broadcast Monday. \nThe documentary features performance footage from the trio's 50th-anniversary concert at IU's Auer Hall from summer 2005 as well as interviews with the three ensemble members. The trio consists of British violinist Daniel Hope, cellist Antonio Meneses and pianist and founder Pressler.\nWhen asked to explain the group's longevity, Pressler tells the camera it must have to do with the satisfaction the music gives the audience and the members of the trio.\n"Pleasure is really the wrong word," he says in the movie. "In music, it is more than pleasure. It is the satisfaction of feeling filled. ... It is the search for that indefinable thing we call inspiration."\nThe inspiration for the 50th-anniversary concert came from Ludwig van Beethoven. The ensemble performed his trios at its debut concert in 1955 at the Berkshire Music Festival, now called the Tanglewood Music Festival\nEmphasizing the group's return to the repertoire of its birth was an integral part of the documentary, executive producer Steve Krahnke says on WTIU's Web site.\n"I think it is important for audiences to understand that, in some ways, music is both a historical artifact to be studied, but also an expression of new ideas," Krahnke said, according to the WTIU Web site. "The trio performed the Beethoven trios as its first public concert 50 years ago -- they've performed them since -- yet they are still discovering new meaning in each movement."\nOne of the more entertaining moments of the program is footage of the ensemble discovering this meaning together during a rehearsal in Auer Hall. Viewers have the chance to watch the members of the trio work through the subtleties of a group trill and witness them employ a method as elementary as counting beats aloud. But for a few moments, the audience is given a rare glimpse at the intimate level of collaboration required to produce the kind of effective, nuanced performances that have kept the Beaux Arts Trio at the top of the chamber music world for five decades.\nPressler summed up the ensemble's rehearsal method with a line from Irving Berlin's musical "Annie Get Your Gun": "Anything you can do, I can do better."\n"We try to better each other," Pressler says in the documentary.\nWTIU will rebroadcast "Beaux Arts at 50" at 3 p.m. Sunday. DVD and VHS copies of the hour-long program are also available for purchase at the PBS shop Web site, www.shoppbs.org.
Graduate student and Miss Indiana performs lead role in opera 'Manon'
(10/20/06 3:16am)
Betsy Uschkrat, Jacobs School of Music graduate student and reigning Miss Indiana, will lead the school's production of Jules Massenet's classic opera "Manon" Friday, playing the character bearing the opera's name.\n"I love the role," said Uschkrat. "I feel like I'm playing two characters."\nManon, she explained, begins the opera as a simple, provincial 16-year-old girl who is forced into mature womanhood by the cruel realities of life.\nSince Uschkrat had to compete in the Miss Indiana pageant this past June, she rushed to learn her part before the competition began.\n"Over the summer, we worked really hard to have the arias learned before Miss Indiana," she said. "Of course, as soon as Miss Indiana was over, there were rehearsals for 'Manon,' and after that there are preparations for Miss America."\nThe Miss America Pageant will take place in Las Vegas in January 2007. At the pageant, Uschkrat will be performing "Musetta's Waltz" from Puccini's "La Bohème," which she also performed at Miss Indiana. \nHer voice teacher, School of Music professor Costanza Cuccaro, played a key role in helping her to prepare, Uschkrat said.\n"She has really helped me a lot with maintaining good posture," she said, "as well as establishing a good rapport with the audience. She also makes sure I stay in good vocal health with all the public speaking engagements, making sure I have the stamina."\nIn addition to fulfilling roles as a music student and Miss America hopeful, Uschkrat maintains a busy schedule of duties as Miss Indiana. \n"There's been a lot of traveling, performing, speaking and community service," she said. "I'm going to do a speaking tour to 20 middle schools about making right decisions."\nIn addition to her public appearances, Uschkrat uses her Miss Indiana status to fight hunger. According to the Miss Indiana organization, she is the founder of Heart and Soul Indiana, an organization that allows performers to use their talents to raise money for local and national food banks. Her efforts have raised nearly $80,000 for food banks in both Indiana and Texas, where she lived prior to studying at IU.\nUschkrat is also a regional spokesperson for Feeding Indiana's Hungry, which, according to its Web site, seeks to meet the needs of the nearly 600,000 Hoosiers who go hungry each day.\nBalancing this kind of work schedule isn't easy, but Uschkrat says she is working it out.\n"Everything's been very flexible," she said. "The Miss Indiana organization is happy to have me in the opera, and the music school is happy to have me in the pageant."\n"Manon" opens 8 p.m. Friday n the Musical Arts Center. Additional performances are 8 p.m. Friday Oct. 27 and Saturday Oct. 28. Tickets are $10 to $20 for students and $15 to $35 for the general public. Two casts of performers will alternate between the four shows.
New faculty member brings 45 years of experience to SPEA
(10/03/06 2:14am)
Christopher Hunt is a four-and-a-half decade veteran of the professional music world whose achievements include fostering Pink Floyd's early career and directing Australia's most renowned art and music festival, the Adelaide Festival of Arts. \nNow, Hunt will add "IU faculty member" to that list as he joins the School of Public and Environmental Affairs' arts administration program.\nHe is expected to bring a "real-world sensibility to a program devoted to balancing artistic ambitions with management proficiency," according to a press release from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.\nHunt said he was officially retired when he was offered the position but experienced a change of heart.\n"I was traveling around Southeast Asia about two years ago," Hunt said, "and I had a realization around Myanmar that I didn't just want to be retired."\nHunt said it was a friend of a friend on the search committee who initially told him of the position, which was made possible by a grant from the University's Commitment to Excellence program. But Hunt's connections to the University go back earlier.\n"No question, I knew a lot about the School of Music," Hunt said. "I came several times to see the operas in the '70s and '80s."\nTwice, Hunt used Jacobs School of Music productions in festivals he directed. The first was a production of John Eaton's "The Cry of Clytemnestra" -- featuring then-student and current Jacobs School of Music faculty baritone Tim Noble -- which Hunt took to the San Francisco Opera. The second time was in 1985, when he transported IU's production of Handel's "Tamerlano" to the now defunct PepsiCo Summerfare Festival in Purchase, N.Y. \nIt was also at PepsiCo Summerfare that Hunt collaborated with renowned director Peter Sellars to create the now-legendary productions of the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy -- "Don Giovanni," "La Nozze di Figaro" and "Cosi Fan Tutte." \nAsked if the Jacobs School of Music has the potential to sustain the prestige that originally attracted him to it, Hunt remained optimistic.\n"A lot depends on two things: the character and adventure expressed in opera and the level of professional performers associated with the school," he said.\nWhile direct involvement with the Jacobs School of Music is pending, he said he is enjoying his teaching responsibilities in SPEA.\n"I'm teaching the Capstone course," he said, which is the last course taken by arts administration students before a professional internship in the spring. "And I'm trying to do it in a way that probably baffles them -- not nuts and bolts, but what I think they can learn about approaches to the whole business of arts administration."\nPart of this approach, he said, involves stressing the necessity of the arts.\nMusic and other arts "are not an optional extra," Hunt said. "Art is to comfort the destitute and discomfort the powerful"
Italian opera takes comic look at classic tale of 'Cinderella'
(11/19/04 4:18am)
Aclose friend asked me if there would be mice singing "Cinderelly, Cinderelly."\nThere are, thankfully, no singing, sewing mice in Gioacchino Rossini's "La Cenerentola." Nor is there an evil stepmother or a slipper left on the steps of the palace. Instead, what takes place in this particularly unique treatment of the popular fairy tale "Cinderella" is delightful romantic comedy replete with mistaken identity, sinister foils and hilarious slapstick comedy.\nFor "La Cenerentola," the IU Opera Theater's final fall opera, stage director Vince Liotta has crafted a vaudevillian spectacle that proves, as did "Turk in Italy" last season, that there is indeed room in the world of opera for the silly and absurd. His staging, enacted on faculty member David Higgins's story-book set, took great advantage of the briskness of Rossini's score and was as visually appealing as it was entertaining.\nThe cast, which carried out Liotta's farcical vision with remarkable discipline, was led by graduate students Lisa LaFleur in the title role and Brian Stucki as the Prince, Don Ramiro, the inevitable love of Cinderella's life. \nLaFleur's Cinderella was understated yet poised, and her vocal performance often quite lovely. Stucki was in fantastic form, executing one impressive cadence after another. \nAs Cinderella's monstrous and narcissistic stepsisters, graduate students Kristen Robinson and Kristin Brouwer were beyond hilarious in attitude and action.\nThe undisputed show-stealer of the night, however, was graduate student Kory Bickel as the delightfully flamboyant Dandino, the prince's valet. Bickel's rich baritone voice and impressive comedic instinct combined in wonderful effect, giving the audience no end of amusement.\nThe IU Opera Theater has, I believe, ended the semester well with a strong entertaining production that, in the end, reminds us all that true love will indeed prevail and the corrupt and delusional will at last be humbled.
'Onegin' a pleasant surprise
(10/28/04 5:14am)
I have a confession to make: I did not plan on writing a positive review of Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin." I was fully prepared to lambaste the School of Music for even entertaining the idea of performing a Russian opera in English. I had drafted in my mind a cutting, though tactful, manifesto decrying those who would dare remove the beauty of Pushkin's poetry from its native language. I was certain the decision to sing "Onegin" in translation would utterly ruin the production. On Friday evening, my prediction was, fortunately and to my pleasant surprise, completely wrong.\nTranslation is a delicate matter in opera. Adapting an opera to a language other than the original libretto requires alterations of the vocal line. The end results of the translation are sometimes awkward melodies. However, in this instance, British conductor David Lloyd-Jones's translation maintained the integrity of Pushkin's poetry and gave the vocal line a much more song-like quality than operatic English tends to have. This no doubt gave the cast a greater degree of security because they gave comfortable and confident, though sometimes under-acted, interpretations of their roles.\nThe opera's ill-fated couple, Onegin and Tatyana, sung by Scott Skiba and Michelle Auslander, respectively, gave a heart-wrenching display of unrequited love and duty-bound misery. Skiba's voice was as sonorous and dramatic as Auslander's was shimmering and melodious. Their on-stage chemistry was at times as passionate as the two lovers they portrayed. In other moments, the two were as restrained as their characters' societal boundaries would have required. \nCarrie Reading gave a warm interpretation of Tatyana's mother, Madame Larina, and Crystal Jarrell made for a plucky Olga, Tatyana's sister of greater energy but significantly less personality. Jordan Bisch turned in a magnificent performance as the Prince Gremin, bringing a moment of pure loveliness to the third act. As Onegin's close friend Vladimir Lensky, Christopher Sponseller was in serviceable form, but his voice suggested a greater resonance than was present in the performance. Many of Sponseller's greatest dramatic moments were also left underserved. \nThis, however, was more indicative of guest director Yafim Maizel's apparent tendency to leave many of the score's most intense passages insufficiently staged. The large and lively chorus on hand could have certainly been used as a greater resource, but aiding the situation was the small delightful corps de ballet, choreographed by Guoping Wang. Though all in all a slow starter, this production of "Onegin" is nonetheless a satisfying display of the marvelous talent present here at IU and makes a fine addition to the season.
Wagner discusses family connection to Holocaust
(10/28/04 5:09am)
In a lecture hall most musicians never see, a diverse audience gathered Tuesday night in Jordan Hall Room 124 to hear from Gottfried Wagner, the great-grandson of opera composer Richard Wagner, and expectations were high.\n"I love the music, but I'm uncomfortable with his writings and actions as a person," said senior Elizabeth Pearse, a vocal performance major. "I'd like to reconcile that."\nThough Richard Wagner is considered a monumental figure in the world of opera, he was an adamant anti-Semite, writing numerous tracts on the danger of a Jewish presence in Germany. It has also been documented that Richard Wagner served as a great inspiration to Adolf Hitler during his rise to power. What was less known, however, was just how personally connected the Wagner family was to the dictator. Less known, that is, until Gottfried Wagner began researching his family's history, resulting in the publication of his autobiography "Twilight of the Wagners." \nThe book and the uncomfortable issues it raised led to a rift between Gottfried Wagner and his family, which has disowned him. He has for years committed himself to exposing the truth of his family's legacy and opening the avenues for constructive dialogue. It was this commitment that brought him to IU to deliver his lecture, "Wagner's Music and Ideology in the Political Climate of the 21st Century." \nCalling his great-grandfather a "megalomaniac," Gottfried Wagner explained that Richard Wagner was an enthusiastic communicator and desired greatly to dominate German culture and politics.\n"Were he alive today, (Richard) Wagner would have his own satellite channel and would talk 24 hours, every day of the year," Gottfried Wagner told the audience. "He wanted not to be misunderstood."\nWhat Richard Wagner wanted to communicate, however, was his utter distaste for Germany's Jewish population.\n"(The) main aspects of (Richard) Wagner were nationalism and racial superiority ... and anti-Semitism," Gottfried Wagner said.\nRichard Wagner's music often reflected his ideas on a superior race -- ideas, some have argued, that contributed to the gruesome Holocaust executed under Hitler's regime. Part of Gottfried Wagner's mission is to examine these ideas, uncomfortable though they might be, to heal the remaining wounds of that era. \n"Those who do not confront the past do not understand the present and will repeat it in the future," he told an audience member during a question and answer period following the lecture.\nGottfried Wagner said he also hopes to bring about a more honest and responsible manner of directing to the works of his great-grandfather.\n"Most directors today are cowards," he said after the lecture. \nOnly by presenting the violence that is truly a part of the music, he asserted, can critical understanding of the man, his music and his politics be achieved.\nHis comments left some members of the audience deeply moved.\n"I was enormously impressed by (Gottfried) Wagner and his efforts to call attention to the connection between his famous ancestor and the Holocaust," said Religious Studies Professor Steven Weitzman. "Gottfried Wagner shows real bravery and moral integrity by standing up against his own family and others who would choose to ignore the hateful and dangerous ideas inextricably woven into Richard Wagner's music."\n-- Contact staff writer Eric Anderson at eraander@indiana.edu.
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