News
Dates to audition for the School of Music have been announced:
November 8- Chicago area
November 15- SIUC
December 6- St. Louis area
February 16- SIUC
Specific locations for these dates-TBA
ANNOUNCING TWO NEW DEGREE PROGRAMS!!
The School of Music is pround to announce the start of two new degree programs Fall 2009. The BFA in Musical Theater is a professional degree program designed to prepare students for a career in musical theater performance. The MM in Collaborative Piano will prepare pianists interested in an ensemble or chamber music career. Both degree programs will begin Fall 2009.
Opera/Music Theater Major to sing with Santa Fe Opera
Emily Fons, (O/MT '08) is spending her summer as one of 16 female apprentices with the prestigious Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. She will be covering the role of Meg Page in their production of Falstaff.
Composition Student Lectures at Aspen Conference
Andrew Smith, Graduate Student in Composition, was invited to lecture at the Aspen Composers' Conference in Colorado in August 2008.
Outside the Box '08 April 3-16
The School of Music presents OUTSIDE THE BOX, the second annual Festival of New Music at SIUC, April 3 through April 16. Outside the Box features over twenty concerts and events at various locations across campus and in Carbondale involving dozens of composers and musicians from SIUC plus a variety of guest composers, performers, and ensembles. Guest artists this year include Hungarian avant-garde vocalist/violinist Iva Bittova, Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Shulamit Ran, the innovative Chicago Composers Consortium, and Los Angeles composer/bassoonist John Steinmetz, with guest performances by the Callisto Ensemble and pianist Amy Dissanayake, leading interpreters of the music of living composers. Other highlights include a performance of Pierrot Lunaire by SIUC’s Altgeld Chamber Players with soprano Diane Coloton, a Fluxus event with Ron Coulter, an evening of World Premieres by emerging composers and the premiere of a new work commissioned and performed by Neoteric. Most concerts and events are free, all are open to the public. For details about these and more events, visit Outside the Box '08.
Ron Coulter Receives Grant
Percussion professor Ron Coulter recently received the Zildjian Family Grant from the Percussive Arts Society. The grant will be used to fund seven interactive performances for percussion and electronics. The performances will take place in schools and youth centers across the Southern Illinois region in 2008. The program will be entitled "Sounds You've Never Seen Before!"
Wind Ensemble gives Carnegie Hall debut!
The SIUC Wind Ensemble, conducted by Assistant Professor and Director of Bands
Dr. Christopher Morehouse, was invited to give their Carnegie Hall debut on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 as part of the 2008 New York Band and Orchestra Festival. The Wind Ensemble was one of only two showcase ensembles selected by competitive audition to give an exhibition performance at the culmination of the festival; the other ensemble was the Northamptonshire Orchestral Winds from England.
The concert featured several SIUC faculty soloists and performers:
Jeanine Wagner, soprano, Suzanne Lord, flute, Edward Benyas, oboe, Eric Mandat, clarinet, Melissa Mackey, bassoon, and Jennifer Presar, horn.
The performance venue, the Issac Stern Auditorium/Ronald O. Perelman Stage, is the largest hall at Carnegie Hall and has been the premier classical music performance space in the United States since its opening in 1891, showcasing the world's greatest soloists, conductors, and ensembles. To exemplify the importance of this world-class performance venue, throughout the month leading up to our concert, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra performed on the very same stage!
Additional contributions to University Bands may be made to the SIU Foundation
[Please clearly indicate that you wish to support the University Bands Fund]:
Southern Illinois University Foundation
Colyer Hall - Mailcode 6805
1235 Douglas Dr.
Carbondale, IL 62901
Phone: (618) 453-4900
Website: www.siuf.org
For additional information please contact:
Dr. Christopher Morehouse
Phone: (618) 453-5813
E-mail: cmoreh@siu.edu
Clarinet Professor performs in Chicago
Eric Mandat performed in Chicago with soprano Dawn Upshaw in a premiere of a cycle of songs by Osvaldo Golijov. Chicago Tribune music critic, John von Rhein, had these fine words for the sold-out performance.:
Dawn Upshaw simply stellar throughout 11-song cycle
---------"Ayre" often demands a grittier kind of singing than Upshaw is known for. She gamely pushed her many voices to their limit without any loss of tonal beauty. By the 10th song, in which she spoke the words of a Palestinian poet over her pre-recorded singing of a Sephardic call to prayer, her vocalism took on a rapturous intensity seldom heard from her before.Her instrumental colleagues entwined their sounds with the singer's most capably -- better than that in the case of Eric Mandat (wailing away on klezmer clarinet) and Michael Ward-Bergeman (uttering weird drones on his hyper-accordion).Golijov, who had worked closely with the musicians during the rehearsals, beamed with delight as he shared in the tumultuous ovation. ----------