EASTMAN NOTESFALL 2015 @ EASTMAN Eastman Weekend is now a part of the University of Rochester’s annual, campus-wide Meliora Weekend celebration! Many of the signature Eastman Weekend programs will continue to be a part of this new tradition, including a Friday evening headlining performance in Kodak Hall and our gala dinner preceding the Philharmonia performance on Saturday night. Be sure to join us on Gibbs Street for concerts and lectures, as well as tours of new performance venues, the Sibley Music Library and the impressive Craighead-Saunders organ. We hope you will take advantage of the rest of the extensive Meliora Weekend programming too. This year’s Meliora Weekend @ Eastman festivities will include: BRASS CAVALCADE Eastman’s brass ensembles honor composer Eric Ewazen (BM ’76) PRESIDENTIAL SYMPOSIUM: THE CRISIS IN K-12 EDUCATION Discussion with President Joel Seligman and a panel of educational experts AN EVENING WITH KEYNOTE ADDRESS EASTMAN PHILHARMONIA KRISTIN CHENOWETH BY WALTER ISAACSON AND EASTMAN SCHOOL The Emmy and Tony President and CEO of SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Award-winning singer the Aspen Institute and Music of Smetana, Nicolas Bacri, and actress in concert author of Steve Jobs and Brahms The Class of 1965 celebrates its 50th Reunion. A highlight will be the opening celebration on Friday, featuring a showcase of student performances in Lowry Hall modeled after Eastman’s longstanding tradition of the annual Holiday Sing. A special medallion ceremony will honor the 50th class to commemorate this milestone. The sisters of Sigma Alpha Iota celebrate 90 years at Eastman with a song and ritual get-together, musicale and special recognition at the Gala Dinner. The SAI Class of 1965 also reunites for its 50th. Registration for Meliora Weekend events is now open! Details are available at rochester.edu/melioraweekend. See you this fall! OCTOBER 8–11, 2015 meliora_weekend_ad.indd 1 8/19/15 4:23 PM { FALL 2015 } ESM goes XRIJF: drummer Eric Metzger (MM ’16), bassist Mike Forfia (BM ’16), and guitarist Gabe Condon (BM ’13, MM ’15) on the Gibbs Street Stage at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival in June. 2 From the Dean 3 Brief Notes 20 New Faculty 22 School News 10 18 27 The End Thank you, Creating a Recordings 14 Eastman, Community 29 of the Chapter and the of Vital Alumni Notes Class of 2015 Connections 33–34 From ultimate frisbee to senior recital, Tributes, a brand-new Eastman graduate Our 90th annual Todd Frazier (BM ’92) In Memoriam commencement is forging connections remembers his senior year. ceremony, in words between medicine 35 and photographs. and music. Faculty Notes 36 ON THE COVER: Trombonist and 2015 Downbeat Award winner Brendan Lanighan (BM ’15) Student Notes at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival. PHOTO BY KURT BROWNELL KURT BROWNELL Fall 2015 | Eastman Notes 1 { FROM THE DEAN } EASTMAN NOTES Volume 33, Number 1 Fall 2015 Editor • David Raymond Contributing Writers • David Raymond • Andrew Psarris • Helene Snihur Contributing Photographers • Kurt Brownell • Adam Fenster • Gelfand-Piper Photography • Kate Melton • Nadine Sherman • Thomas Starkweather • Brandon Vick Photography Coordinator • Karen Ver Steeg Design • Steve Boerner What makes Eastman Eastman? Typography & Design, Inc. I have always believed the name “Eastman” has meant theorbo players and members of a laptop orchestra; something special throughout the music world. Just as it children and senior citizens who study through the Printing is impossible to describe in words the profound impact Community Music School; students and faculty and staff • Canfield & Tack, Inc. a piece of music can have on one’s soul, so too is it diffi- and community members—all flow through Lowry Hall Published twice a cult to express the special magic that makes Eastman, and interact together. year by the Office Eastman. Nonetheless, those of us fortunate enough to Eastman is more than a school—it is a welcoming com- of Communications have experienced this magic, never forget it. munity. It is a sense that we belong, that we support and (Richard Kessel, As I enter my eleventh year at Eastman, I still get a care about each other, that we are all invested in the director), Eastman School of Music, thrill every time I enter Lowry Hall (for- enterprise of studying, creating, and loving 26 Gibbs Street, merly the Main Hall). I often arrive early “My absolute favorite time”: music, and that while our backgrounds and Rochester, NY 14604, in the morning when the hall is quiet and members of the Philharmonia future goals may be diverse, we all care (585) 274-1050. enthusiastically greeted empty, but filled with the presence of his- in Lowry Hall after their passionately about music and its future. Eastman-Notes@ tory and the anticipation of a new and February 2, 2015 concert. A colleague recently suggested, “Eastman esm.rochester.edu exciting day. As I walk through the hall in is where the best musicians in the world the afternoon, I relish how the space is abuzz with the come together to make each other better.” I agree. energy of students, faculty, and staff members interact- Eastman is the vessel where teaching, learning, artist- ing, laughing, and greeting each other with the knowing ry, scholarship, innovation, experimentation, creativity, Find us on Facebook and Twitter. familiarity of friends. My absolute favorite time is late in and fabulous music making simmers with colleagueship, the evening, when members of a performing ensemble mentorship, and friendship. Meliora, Eastman. exit the Eastman Theatre stage into Lowry Hall, and are greeted by the wildly enthusiastic cheers and applause of their peers as though they just brought home a state Visit the Apple Store to download and read championship trophy. Notes on your iPad. Lowry Hall serves as a mirror in which the very nature of our school is reflected. It is the pot in which many dif- ferent ingredients come together to make a fabulous stew. Composers and performers; jazz musicians and opera Jamal J. Rossi 10% Total Recovered Fiber 100% Post-Consumer Fiber singers; Renaissance scholars and film music aficionados; Joan and Martin Messinger Dean 2 Eastman Notes | Fall 2015 NADINE SHERMAN { BRIEF NOTES } At one Eastman Opera rehearsal, Steve Crowley briefly traded his hammer for a baton. conducting during an with a long resume in Eastman Q&A: “You give, theater and TV, and in just you take, and then you give shy of 30 years served back what you take.” as technical director for almost 90 Eastman Opera An Operatic Finale productions. “My first A Sousa serenade for David Letterman with the First Lady and the “President’s Own.” With this spring’s Our contact with Eastman was Town, Eastman Opera a conversation with Steve, Stripes Forever included Donald V. King (BM ’64, A Farewell Theatre’s Steve Crowley almost twenty years ago,” solo cornet Master Gunnery MM ’65) recently donated a put down his hammer. says Daigle. “His guidance to Dave Sgt. Matthew Harding Hanson letter to the Sibley EOT’s Technical Director/ and knowledge have been It was one of the major (MM ’96), percussionist Music Library, written in Producer since 1985, invaluable and rewarding. events in western civiliza- Master Sgt. David Murray 1960 to his father, Homer Crowley came to Eastman He will be missed.” tion this year, and of course (MM ’95), and clarinet play- W. King of the Democrat Eastman alumni were er Gunnery Sgt. William and Chronicle, from there. Among the parade of Bernier (BM ’98). Hanson’s vacation home guests bidding farewell to on Bold Island, Maine: “I longtime late-night super- More Hanson Memories am actually working on host David Letterman in Angeline Schmid (BM ’52) a symphony—or suite— the final weeks of his CBS sent Notes an interesting inspired by the rushing of talk show was First Lady bit of Hansonia with this waters—not Niagara it is Michelle Obama, accom- note: “After reading about true, but the waters of the panied by the “President’s Hanson’s opera, Merry North Atlantic. [This be- Own” U.S. Marine Band. Mount being performed in came Hanson’s Bold Island The “President’s Own’s” New York . I came across Suite.] In other words I too rendition of the Marine this picture that I took at have finally succumbed to Hymn and Sousa’s Semper an outing in 1950, while the urge to write of the sea. Fidelis and Stars and I was an ESM student.” Debussy has already done it magnificently—but we can all try!” A French Connection As the musical world observed Pierre Boulez’s birthday in 2015, we were reminded that the great French composer and con- ductor visited Eastman. In February 1974, while he was In June, Eastman hosted a visit from musicians of the Ying musical director of the New Wa College in Hong Kong, whose choir, string orchestra, York Philharmonic, “The concert band, and Chinese instrument orchestra were on a French Correction” (his North American tour. On June 30, they presented a concert nickname among orchestra of music ranging from traditional Chinese songs to music by musicians) rehearsed the Strauss and Sibelius. Pictured are Dean Jamal Rossi and his Philharmonia in music wife Pam, on either side of Evans Lam, a Ying Wa College by Webern and Haydn. A graduate and member of the University of Rochester’s Board very detailed rehearsal, of Trustees, and his wife Susanna, who sang the “Farewell of as Boulez was famous for Lady Zhaojun” from an opera by Xian-nü Hong. The Ying Wa Dr. Howard Hanson and a merry mutt enjoy the great outdoors his sharp ears and sense string orchestra is directed by Gary Ngan (BM ’09). in this 1950 photograph.