UBC High Notes Newsletter of the School of Music at the University of British Columbia Fall 2012 Director’s Welcome Welcome to the fourteenth edition of High Notes, celebrating the recent activities and major achievements of the faculty and students in the UBC School of Music! I think you will find the diversity and quality of accomplishments impressive and inspiring. A major highlight for me this year is the opportunity to welcome three exciting new full-time faculty members. Pianist Mark Anderson, with an outstanding international reputation gave a brilliant first recital at the School in October.Jonathan Girard, our new Director of the UBC Symphony Orchestra, and Assistant Professor of Conducting, led the UBC Symphony Orchestra in a full house of delighted audience members at the Chan Centre on November 9th. Musicologist Hedy Law, a specialist in 18th-century French opera and ballet is, has already established herself well with students and faculty in the less public sphere of our academic activities. See page 4 to meet these new faculty members who are bringing wonderful new artistic and scholarly energies to the School. It is exciting to see the School evolve through its faculty members! Our many accomplished part-time instructors are also vital to the success and profile of the School. This year we welcome to our team several UBC music alumni who have won acclaim as artists and praise as educators: cellist John Friesen, composer Jocelyn Morlock, film and television composer Hal Beckett, and composer-critic-educator David Duke. They embody the success of our programs, and the impact of the UBC School of Music on the artistic life of our province and nation. We also salute two newly-minted Professors Emeriti who stepped down from the Professoriate at the end of June: revered pianist Jane Coop, and acclaimed Bach and Mozart scholar Gregory Butler. Happily, they both remain vigorously engaged in their professional activities, and connected to the life of the School. And they share our enthusiasm for the new faculty members who are following in their footsteps. On page 13 you will find information about a new piano scholarship in Jane Coop’s name. The School of Music draws its strength and character from the faculty members and students it attracts and nurtures, and from its supporters and benefactors in the wider community. As I embark on a second term as Director of the School, I draw inspiration from all the people around me. They shape the always-evolving artistic and intellectual community of the School, and I look forward to the exciting music, research, and new initiatives we will create together in the years ahead. High Notes offers you a sense of the School’s activities and its upward trajectory into the future, and I hope it will encourage your participation and inspire your support. Please visit www.music.ubc.ca to learn about our many public concerts and lectures, or about ways to support our students or projects. I also welcome ideas, questions, or comments you may wish to share with me. Thank you for being part of our musical community! Sincerely, Richard Kurth Director, UBC School of Music High Notes 2012 UBC African Music and Dance Ensemble Contents 4. Appointments 9. Music Technology 17. We Remember… 5. Spotlight on Opera 10. Beyond the Gates 18. Summer at UBC Music 6. Publications and Lectures 12. Faculty Awards and Research 19. Start an Evolution – 7. UBC Music in the Community 13. Jane Coop Scholarship The School of Music Campaign 8. Composition 14. Catching up with Our Students 23. Performances – Dates at a 8. Recordings 15. Alumni Making Waves Glance in the Spring Term Appointments The UBC School of Music is pleased to announce appointments Hedy Law graduated from the of three Assistant Professors: pianist Mark Anderson, conductor University of Chicago with a PhD Jonathan Girard and musicologist Hedy Law. Girard’s in Music History and Theory; she appointment fills an extended vacancy while Anderson and Law also holds a master’s degree from replace retired senior faculty members Jane Coop (piano) and Oxford. In 2005 she received the Gregory Butler (musicology), respectively. In addition, Richard Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship Kurth has been reappointed as Director of the UBC School of of the American Musicological Music for a second five-year term. Society. In the same year she won the prize for best student Pianist Mark Anderson has won paper from the Midwest Chapter numerous accolades, including of the American Musicological prizes at the prestigious Leeds, Society. From 2009-2012, Law Busoni, and Kapell competitions. was Assistant Professor in Music His many acclaimed recordings Photo Credit: Rueben Gonzales History at Southern Methodist of music by Brahms, von Bülow, University in Dallas, Texas where Mussorgsky, Stravinsky and she won a university-wide teaching award. Her articles have Gershwin, have established appeared in Cambridge Opera Journal and Musique et Geste en his international reputation. France, and are forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook in Music Commenting on his first term at Censorship and Noise, Audition, and Aurality. She is writing a UBC Anderson said: “It has been book on music and pantomime in eighteenth-century France. very rewarding both personally and professionally. The overall standard here is high and I have been especially inspired by the very rewarding concert life of UBC and the Vancouver area in general. Find biographies of new faculty in the Faculty Directory I look forward to making significant contributions to UBC and on our website: the region artistically, through my own work as well as through www.music.ubc.ca/faculty-and-staff/full-time-faculty- the achievements of my students.” Highlights for him include his biographies.html October 3rd solo recital; recording a solo piano disc for Nimbus Records in the UK of works by Hans von Bülow; arranging and mediating a live audio/video presentation with Patricia Stroh, curator of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California and a coloquium presentation on the life and work of Hans von Bülow, focusing on his piano music. Bravo Maestro Tovey Jonathan Girard received his DMA from the Eastman School of Music where he studied conducting with Neil Varon and served Bramwell Tovey will receive an as the assistant conductor for the Eastman Symphony Orchestra, honorary degree from UBC in the Eastman Philharmonia and the Eastman Opera Theatre. He November 2012. As the renowned is currently assistant conductor of The Ohio Light Opera. From and highly respected director of the 2010-2011, Girard was the Visiting VSO since 2000, Tovey has made Artist Conductor at the University significant contributions to music of Northern Iowa School of Music around the world. Through his where he conducted the symphony previous work with Luxembourg orchestra and a production of Die Philharmonic and Winnipeg Fledermaus, which was broadcast Symphony Orchestras, Tovey has live on Iowa Public Radio. Girard been praised for his expertise in has previously conducted the Photo Credit: David Cooper operatic, choral, British and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, contemporary repertoire. Tovey has the Boston University Symphony conducted the UBC Symphony orchestra in a joint concert with Orchestras and the Cambridge the VSO and most recently, students in the UBC Opera Ensemble Symphony. He also holds music had the privilege of working with him in his roles as both degrees from Boston University and composer and conductor in a concert production of his opera, The Hartt School. The Inventor. 4 | High Notes 2012 Spotlight on Opera Spring 2012, several students joined Vancouver Opera’s production of Verdi’s Aida. In addition, the Ensemble Connecting Circles appeared with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Last spring (March 2012) the UBC Opera Ensemble in the ever-popular Pacific Arbour Tea and Trumpets performed a wonderful production of Dvořák’s Rusalka. series featuring Lehár’s masterpiece, The Merry Widow. They also joined Bramwell Tovey and baritone Richard Ben Heppner (BMus’79, LLD’97) sang the role of the Stuart in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury. As a finale Prince in Rusalka for his first time in March 1977 with to their work with the Symphony, the Ensemble joined the UBC Opera Workshop at the Old Auditorium. The Maestro Tovey in a concert production of his own Canadian tenor went on to pursue an international opera, The Inventor. The Ensemble was honoured career, and in 1998, he recorded Rusalka with fellow and privileged to share the stage with Judith Forst Metropolitan Opera star, Renée Fleming. Heppner’s (BMus’65, DLitt’91), James Westman, Erin Wall, Laura performance of the Prince in this recording is often Whalen, Roger Honeywell and Philip Ens. The recorded regarded as one of the best in existence. performance will be available in the near future. Many student performers on stage, and in the orchestra In June, the Ensemble performed The Merry Widow pit, in the 1977 production have also moved onto to sold out houses in UBC’s historic theatre, the Old exciting careers in the music industry. Auditorium. After the production, students traveled Continued on page 12… within North America and Europe. During their annual tour in the Czech Republic, the Ensemble presented Mozart’s Così fan tutte in Teplice. Additional performances were given in Karlovy Vary, Usti nad Labem and Jablonec. Other Ensemble members attended various programs in Salzburg, Banff, Santa Barbara, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto. Students also traveled to Sulmona, Italy to attend the Centre for Opera Studies where Prof. Hermiston was on faculty. The Ensemble returned to Vancouver to begin their season with four performances at Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach, presenting an evening of French operatic excerpts together with conductor Les Dala (MMus’96), members of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra and the Bard himself, Christopher Gaze (DLitt’08).