Paula Mattheson
Professor of Music Technology Paula Mattheson has been named a MacDowell Fellow. The MacDowell Colony is the most prestigious artist's colony in the United States. Previous MacDowell Fellows include Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Meredith Monk, and Ned Rorem.
Kathleen Kerstetter
Professor of Music Education Kathleen Kerstetter has been elected President of the Florida College Music Educators Conference for the 2009-11 term.
Joel Galand
Assistant Director and Professor of Music Theory Joel Galand was awarded a 2009 Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct research for a book on the German-American composer Kurt Weill. This monograph, under contract with Yale University Press, will focus on Weill's American stage works (e.g., Lady in the Dark, Street Scene, and Lost in the Dark). The NEH has funded Galand's project as part of its "We the People" initiative. The goal of this initiative, as described in the Endowment's literature, "is to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through the support of projects that explore significant events and themes in our nation's history and culture and that advance knowledge of the principles that define America."
On March 12, 2009, in Alice Tully Hall (Lincoln Center, New York), the New York City Opera Orchestra, the Collegiate Chorale, and soloists (including Nathan Gunn in the title role) performed Joel Galand's critical edition of Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's The Firebrand of Florence. This was the first New York performance of this unpublished work since its premiere in 1945. Galand's edition, which has also been performed in London, Vienna, and Dessau, is part of the Weill Gesamtsaugabe published as a cooperative venture between the Kurt Weill Foundation and European-American Music (a consortium of Schott and Universal-Edition Vienna).
Orlando Garcia Latin Grammy Nomination
Orlando Jacinto Garcia’s work cuatro asimetrias (4 asymmetries) was nominated for a 2009 Latin Grammy in the Best Classical Contemporary Composition category. The work was written for and recorded by the Asturias based entrequatre guitar quartet and is included on Garcia’s solo CD temporal, released by Innova Records. Garcia is a Professor of Music at Florida International University where he coordinates the Music Composition program.
For more information please visit:
http://www.orlandojacintogarcia.com/
http://www.entrequatre.org/ http://www.innova.mu/artist1.asp?skuID=379
http://latingrammy.com/en/nominees/17-classic
David Dolata
FIU School of Music Director and Professor of Musicology David Dolata has been contracted to write a book on historical tunings and temperaments for Indiana University Press to be included in their new series on performance practice.
Here is an excerpt from a review of Dr. Dolata's latest CD, Battaglia d'amore, which refers to his program notes as "excellent" and continues with: "Dolata and Coelho are sure-figured and refined lutenists. Their greatest test, passed very successfully, is the monumental Capriccio di battaglia... the sopranos...whose pure, flexible voices are heard in two duets, O Clorida and Fuor di noia. Fabris also sings one delicious solo, O crudel amor... The instrumental accompaniment for all the songs is superb. The theorbo’s clear, deep, saturated tones make it well suited for accompanying the voice, but the continuo is further enriched by the addition of a second theorbo, the tiorbino, an archlute and a harpsichordin different combinations, providing inventive and sensitive figured bass realisations." International Record Review (July 2009)
Click here to read Dr. Dolata's September 2009 review of "Die Laute in Europa: Geschichte und Geschichten zum Geniessen [The Lute in Europe: A History to Delight]," by Andreas Schlegel in MLA Notes.
Daniel Manoiu
The Ives Effect: Musical Xchange
Friday, January 30 2009
7:30 PM
Lincoln Theatre
Miami Beach, FL
Music Theory adjunct faculty member and FIU School of Music graduate Daniel Manoiu was commissioned for a project being organized by the New World Symphony Orchestra to create a new work influenced by the music of Charles Ives. Trei for piano, flute and percussion was premiered in January 2009 by members of the New World Symphony. Daniel was one of four composers selected from around the country to write for this special event. In addition to the premiere, all four composers presented a forum discussing their new work for area music students.
This performance was made possible in part thanks to support from Meet The Composer's MetLife Creative Connections program.
Paula Matthusen
Click here to read the glowing review in the New York Times that characterizes Paula Matthusen's music as "unforgettable" and celebrates her "vivid imagination" and "creative vitality."
Paula Matthusen also garnered additional praise from the New York Times for one or her pieces performed at Tanglewood: "A pleasant surprise in the Sunday morning program was Paula Matthusen’s piece 'of memory and minutiae' (2006), a plaintive, haunting setting of a Norwegian prayer that fragments further with each repetition. Olenka Slywynska gave the soprano line a chantlike quality while cello counterpoint and electronic timbres wove a graceful atmospheric cocoon around it." Click here to read the full review.
Orlando Garcia
FIU Music Professor, composer, conductor, arts advocate, and director of the Music Composition program, Orlando Jacinto Garcia recently had his experimental opera Transcending Time, premiered by the Cantus Ensemble at the 2009 Biennale in Zagreb, Croatia. The 75 minute work scored for a 15 member chamber orchestra, 5 singers, and electronics, includes video by FIU visual art faculty Jacek Kolasinski and FIU architecture faculty John Stuart, as well as text by FIU poet and creative writing faculty Campbell McGrath. The work is scheduled for additional performances in the spring of 2010. A review of the premiere can be found at http://mbz.hr/eng/vijesti/77a5c1452587f2b333007d7b1b6be6d8
David Dolata
See Academic Affairs Update - June 2009 for an article on David Dolata.
Mike Orta
FIU President Modesto A. Maidique recognized FIU faculty members from a breadth of disciplines for their outstanding achievements in research and scholarship at a reception on Tuesday, March 31, at the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Home located at University Park. More than two dozen distinguished members of the FIU academic community - world-class scientists and researchers, authors, and scholars - mixed and mingled at an outdoor reception at an event honoring their accomplishments. “On this occasion, we celebrated the achievements of a diverse community of scholars whose remarkable work inspires both students and peers and extends the academic excellence of FIU,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Ronald M. Berkman. Among those recognized for their impressive contributions in terms of research or createive work were Michael Orta, FIU Associate Professor of Music, who won a 2008 Grammy nomination in the Best Latin Jazz Album category for his Savant Records release “And Sammy Walked In.” Ortiz composed and arranged several tunes for the album, and the noted musical group Sammy Figueroa and the Latin Explosion performed.
David Dolata
FIU School of Music Director, musicologoist, and lutenist, David Dolata and Il Furioso have released a new CD in London by Toccata Classics. An international collaboration of musicians, Il Furioso specialises in early Italian Baroque music for virtuoso voices, lutes and harpsichord, rediscovered and resurrected through the research of Il Furioso musicologists and lutenists David Dolata and Victor Coelho. Il Furioso’s recording of Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger’s Libro secondo d’arie (Rome, 1623) for Toccata Classics was praised by Goldberg Magazine as a ‘polished and pleasurable recording’ with ‘first-classsinging’.
The Modenese firebrand, lute virtuoso, composer, poet and artist Bellerofonte Castaldi (1580–1649) – the Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen of his day – set his own poems to his own music in a lyrical style that captured the dynamism of the emerging Baroque. Castaldi’s dance-songs and madrigals for one, two or more voices – drawn from his monody collection Primo mazzetto (Venice, 1623) and the manuscript Modena 239 (c. 1670) – framed his hopes, dreams and disappointments with fresh and unforgettable melodies. The duos for theorbo and tiorbino, a tiny theorbo that Castaldi himself invented, are contrapuntal showpieces from his Capricci a due stromenti (Modena, 1622), a highly unusual collection of theorbo solos and duos, songs and poetry that he himself engraved and decorated with his own freehand artwork. Click on the CD cover for more information.
Bob Grabowski
Click here to read Miami Herald article about FIU School of Music Professor of Jazz History Bob Grabowski
Nancy Luzko
Pianist and composer Dr. Nancy Luzko, Adjunct Professor of FIU's School of Music, has released her new album entitled "Piano Works". The album is a collection of imaginative piano pieces composed and performed by Dr. Luzko herself. From classical to jazzy sounds, this CD displays versatility of forms, variety of techniques, and a wide range of styles, which blend into a unique mixture of innocence, passion, introspection, and playfulness.
The CD is available at: Apple's iTunes store, CDbaby.com, Rhapsody, Napster.
Kemal Gekic
Review FIU's Kemal Gekic triumphs in a keyboard marathon
03/16/2009
Miami Herald - Online
This year's Miami International Piano Festival opened on Sunday with a double-barreled display of stamina and virtuosity that even days later seems hard to believe.
In the afternoon, Kemal Gekic performed the 27 Etudes of Chopin (Op. 10 and 25), plus the composer's Four Ballades. Tackling those intensely demanding works would have been task enough, but the Croatian pianist followed a few hours later with all 12 Transcendental Etudes by Liszt, capping the day with his epic Sonata in B minor. If the Emperor Joseph II thought Mozart's music had too many notes, imagine what he would have thought had he been at the Broward Center's Amaturo Theatre on Sunday.
I caught the second half of the marathon. There's no doubt that Gekic, who teaches at Florida International University, possesses one of the most formidable technical arsenals in the business, with nary a dropped note in all the flood of keyboard torrents Liszt demands. The Sonata in B minor is, arguably, the composer's masterpiece, an epic yet tightly woven work reconciling brilliant display and dramatic development, its long single movement ingeniously built from a variety of musical themes. Gekic attacked the music with leonine ferocity. Rarely will one hear Liszt performed with the forceful command and polish that typified the fugal scherzo section. Yet the pianist also held the lyrical episodes in fine balance and rendered them with limpid tone. The climactic return of the chorale-like theme had a sense of grand inevitability, and Gekic accomplished something only the greatest artists can achieve, which is to make a listener experience even this keyboard war horse with fresh ears. As if the Sonata weren't labor enough, Gekic also tackled Liszt's knuckle-busting Transcendental Etudes without a break, an even more astonishing feat. The fact that he performed these tortuous works -- among the most difficult in the piano repertoire -- virtually note perfect is a testament to his steel-fingered musicianship. Rarely will one hear this repertoire rendered with such fearless bravura.
Even so, the program's 90-minute first half, overstuffed with those etudes, was a bit overwhelming, even numbing, and felt more like the public recording session it was -- Video Artist International is the festival's partner -- than an audience-friendly recital program. For even the most hard-core Lisztian, there was a bit too much music to swallow at one sitting.
Robert Grabowski
Click here to read the Miami Herald article on FIU Jazz Historian and Professor Robert Grabowski's Jazz Roots series at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County.
Kathleen Kerstetter
Dr. Kerstetter's presentation, "Pod-logic: A guide to getting the most out of your iPod in the Classroom," was well received at the Association for Technology in Music Instruction’s national conference in Atlanta in September, 2009. Her article, "Educational Applications of Podcasting in the Music Classroom," will appear in the June 2009 issue of Music Educator's Journal. Dr. Kerstetter is the president-elect for the Florida Collegiate Music Educator’s Association (FCMEA), serving from 2009-2011. Most recently, she was the recipient of an Academy for the Art of Teaching Travel Grant to attend the Technology in Music Education (TI:ME) national conference in San Antonio, TX in February 2009.
Jose Lopez
Dr. Jose Lopez, Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at the FIU School of Music, performed and lectured at the International Congress on the "Origins and development of Dodecaphonic music in Italy in Memorian Riccardo Malipiero (1914-2003)"
held at the German-Italian Center at Villa Vigoni in the Lake Como region from April 14-17, 2008. As the representative of FIU, the only American university invited to the Congress, Dr. López performed works by Riccardo Malipiero for solo piano as well as chamber music with the Canadian-American violist Laura Wilcox, and a song cycle by the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola, a contemporary of Malipiero, with the American soprano Victoria Schneider Malipiero, co-organizer of the Congress and widow of the honored composer. The scheduled performances took place at the Villa Vigoni and at the Schnabel Hall in the neighboring city of Dongo. The paper delivered, "The solo piano works of Riccardo Malipiero: Invenzioni and Costellazioni" will be published in 2010 in a commemorative edition.
Joel Galand
Professor of Music Theory and Director of Graduate Studies Joel Galand's article "Some Eighteenth-Century Ritornello Scripts and Their Nineteenth-Century Revivals" appears in the current Music Theory Spectrum 30/2 (2008): 39-82. Copyright University of California Press. Reproduced by permission.
Catherine Rand
Visiting Wind Ensemble Conductor and Director of Bands Catherine Rand was the guest clinician at the University of Alabama at Huntsville Invitational 2008 Honor Wind Ensemble November 21-22.
Paula Matthusen
Professor of Music Technology Paula Matthusen won the 2008 Morton Gould Composition Award and one of two 2008 Van Lier Fellowships.
Dennis Janzer
Congratulations to Adjunct Composition Professor Dennis Janzer on being honored as a recipient of the 2008-09 ASCAPLUS Award in the Concert Music Division.
Gary Campbell
Professor of Jazz Gary Campbell spent the month of May 2008 in Vienna at the Konservatorium Wien, courtesy of his third Fulbright Award, this time a Fulbright Senior Specialist Grant. During this residency, he also traveled to Graz for teaching and performing activities.
David Dolata
Professor of Musicology David Dolata's review of "The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century,"
by Bruce Haynes appears in MLA Notes, June 2008:767-9. His review is also quoted on the Oxford University Press web site
Robert Dundas
Robert B. Dundas, Associate Professor of Music and Coordinator of the Vocal Studies program was a guest lecturer at the "International Vocal Masterclasses" in Lake Como, Italy, during the summer of 2008. Sponsored by the Communità Montana Alto Lario Occidentale and the Istituto Civico Musicale "Alto Lario," Professor Dundas collaborated with the distinguished American soprano, Victoria Malipiero in a two-week intensive study program for young singers from Europe, Russia, and the United States. Professor Dundas was also recently appointed to serve on the Investment Advisory Committee of the National Association of Teachers of Singing.
Dan Hardin
Music Librarian and organist Dan Hardin was quoted extensively in a recent Sun-Sentinel article on historic organs.
Please send faculty news to dolatad@fiu.edu