Conservatory eNews December 2013

Conservatory eNews December 2013

Faculty News

Long-time faculty member and esteemed composer Conrad Susa died November 21 at his home in San Francisco. His passing was noted in the national press including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Even while struggling with health issues following a bad fall in 2012, Susa returned to the Conservatory this semester to continue teaching. He was due to lead a class on Wagner's Ring cycle the afternoon following his death. His music, including operas and beloved choral works, continue to be performed around the country. Faith Lutheran Church in Clive, Iowa, announced Carols and Lullabies will be the centerpiece of an upcoming Christmas concert. On January 24, the Oakland East Bay Symphony is scheduled to present The Blue Hour in a performance conducted by Music Director and Conservatory faculty member Michael Morgan. Susa's music, sharp wit, keen insights and obvious passion for teaching will be remembered by his colleagues and generations of students.

Matthew Kennedy, general education faculty member and film history instructor, has written a new book about the decline of a once-beloved American art form. Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, published by Oxford University Press, traces the downward spiral of the genre thanks to miscasting, over-spending and bad timing in an era when audiences began favoring greater relevance and realism. The book details the making of Paint Your Wagon, Camelot and Doctor Dolittle, among others, as well as successes like Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret. Kennedy will host a film series inspired by the book at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in February.

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Student News

Forget silver bells. This season, on every Civic Center street corner you'll hear something far more resonant: a quintet of Conservatory brass players. Holiday Lights and Fanfare is a series of outdoor performances being held each weekend between December 6 and 22 at Davies Symphony Hall, Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and other neighborhood locales. The quintet will regale thousands of residents, visitors and patrons who are passing by to attend the area's myriad holiday events. The concerts are a new project of the Civic Center Community Benefit District.

Making their center court debut with the NBA, Noble Trumpets will let ring the National Anthem at Oracle Arena when the Golden State Warriors take on the Houston Rockets December 13. The ensemble has already sacked Major League Baseball games hosted by the San Francisco Giants. Another campaign reportedly is brewing, as well. Noble Trumpets' sovereign, faculty member Mark Inouye, was overheard saying, "the San Jose Sharks are next!!!"

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Pre-College Student News

Pianist Marie Kelly won Second Place at the American Protégé International Competition of Romantic Music. She will perform at Carnegie Hall in April. Marie is a student of Annamarie McCarthy.

Pianist Elliot Wuu won First Prize in last month's Music Teachers National Association California Junior Performance Competition in Santa Barbara. He advances to the Southwest regional competition in January. Elliot was also one of twelve students invited from around the world to participate in the first Allianz Junior Music Camp this fall in Munich, Germany. The camp featured a masterclass with its sponsor, star pianist Lang Lang. Wuu studies with Yoshikazu Nagai.

Pianist Alice Zhu made her concerto debut with the American Philharmonic-Sonoma County in November, giving two performances of Chopin's Concerto No. 1. She is a student of John McCarthy.

Alumni News

Next month, mezzo-soprano Sara Couden (M.M., voice, '11) and soprano Emma McNairy (B.M., voice, '11) will participate in The Song Continues, a week-long series of master classes and recitals founded by iconic American mezzo Marilyn Horne and held at Carnegie Hall. Singers will coach with Horne as well as mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig and collaborative pianist Martin Katz. The week concludes with a celebration of Horne's 80th birthday performed by an all-star lineup of guest artists. Couden studied with César Ulloa and McNairy with Pamely Fry.

Jannie Lo (PSD, piano, '13) is one of 28 pianists from around the world invited to compete in Germany this month at the 2013 Telekom Beethoven Competition Bonn. A winner of last year's Conservatory concerto competition, Lo performed as soloist in Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 in November with the Conservatory Orchestra. She was a student of Yoshikazu Nagai.

On Halloween, Jakub Tchorzewski (PSD, piano, '08) took a call from Venice's Teatro La Fenice, asking him to replace an ailing pianist at an orchestra concert the following week. Tchorzewski was buried in songs by Chopin, Szymanowski and Lutoslawski slated for a November 6 performance with mezzo-soprano Bernadeta Sonnleitner at Serate Musicali, a major concert series in Milan. Not one to refuse either a trick or a treat however, he took the additional gig, learned the piano part to Stravinsky's Petrushka and performed it at La Fenice on November 8 and 10 under the baton of Diego Matheuz.

Pre-college alumnus and violinist Stephen Waarts won First Prize at the 2013 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. The award comes with a three-year management contract, concert engagements and career support services. Young Concert Artists has helped launch the careers of pianists including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Emanuel Ax, Murray Perahia and Jeremy Denk. Stephen is a student of Li Lin.

Read more alumni news.

From the Archives

The February 1925 edition of the Conservatory news bulletin The Lyre recounts a holiday party hosted by the Adillian Music Club, a social organization founded in 1922 by students Margaret O'Leary and Ruth Cook. The "combined Christmas and Costume party" included an interesting variety of dances:

The games, which were delightfully conducted by Miss Lazelle [a Conservatory voice teacher], added greatly to the evening's merriment. There were prizes for an apple balancing contest and for umbrella, doughnut and match dances. Two prizes for the best costumes were won by Miss Ada Clement and Miss Rena Lazelle.

To round out the wonderful time, refreshments were served. The committee who were in charge deserve highest praise for the surprising manner in which the fete was conducted. Special mention can be made of the beautiful Christmas tree.

Read more from the Archives.

Faculty News continued...

Fade, a new CD of chamber works by composition department chair Dan Becker, will be released digitally this month on Innova Recordings with hard copies hitting the stores in February.

Milissa Carey, a member of the opera program's acting faculty, directs It's A Wonderful Life: A Radio Play this month at Broadway By The Bay, as well as a February production of Little Shop of Horrors at Foothill Music Theatre. Carey was nominated for BroadwayWorld's Regional Acting Awards for her performance as Eleanor of Aquitane in Richard the First, an original trilogy created by Central Works in Berkeley.

The San Francisco Symphony commissioned faculty composer David Conte to arrange three Mexican folk songs for men's chorus and chamber ensemble for the Symphony's annual "Day of the Dead" concert at Davies Symphony Hall. Symphony Chorus director and faculty member Ragnar Bohlin conducted the pieces. Bohlin will also lead the Symphony Chorus in performances of Conte's Christmas Intrada from December 22 to 24.

Faculty member Kip Cranna was presented with the Humanities West Best Lecture Award following a weekend-long seminar last month entitled "Verdi's Masterwork: Opera and the Birth of Modern Italy." Cranna's lectures were titled "O Patria Mia: Bringing Patriotism to Life on the Stage" and "How to Listen to Verdi." They featured live performances by soprano Cheryl Cain (B.M., voice, '98) and Chris Coyne '14, a current student of Daniel Mobbs.

Hong Kong's RTHK radio recently broadcast a program featuring violin faculty Wei He and piano faculty Yoshikazu Nagai. Music of Friends invites artists from around the world to chat and perform in studio. Nagai and He played sonatas by Brahms and Prokofiev and spoke about their careers as international performers and teachers at the Conservatory. They recently taught master classes at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Shenzhen Arts High School and the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou. They also visited Seoul National University as part of an annual regional audition tour organized by the Conservatory Office of Admissions.

Esther Landau (M.M., flute, '91) has been named development director at San Francisco's Pomeroy Recreation & Rehabilitation Center. The center provides opportunities for expression, achievement and independence to people with disabilities. Landau continues to teach and coach chamber music in the Pre-College Division.

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Student News continued...

Soprano Chelsea Hollow joins voice department chair and mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook in a gala performance with West Bay Opera on December 8. The program of opera classics will feature Hollow's rendition of the Doll Aria from Les contes d'Hoffmann. Cook is the event's featured artist. Hollow studies with Pamela Fry.

Sophomore pianist Evelyn Lee won First Prize at the Music Teachers National Association's California Young Artist Piano Competition held last month in Santa Barbara. Second year graduate student Yinqu Zhu received an honorable mention. Lee advances to compete as California's representative at the MTNA Southwest Division competition in New Mexico in January. Lee and Zhu are students of Yoshikazu Nagai.

Junior pianist Yinuo Qian, another of Nagai's students, was a semi-finalist at the 2013 Heida Hermanns International Piano Competition. The contest is held every two years and is open to musicians ages 19 to 30.

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Alumni News continued...

In August, Brian Dowdy (PSD, guitar, '08) and his wife Susan moved to Minneapolis where Brian is pursuing a DMA in orchestral conducting at the University of Minnesota. In coming months, he conducts Mozart's Don Giovanni and assists on Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen. Dowdy returns to San Francisco in April to conduct at the Switchboard Music Festival.

Mist, a new work by Jack Curtis Dubowsky (M.M., composition,'01), premieres January 22 in a performance by the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project.

It's Portable Nutcracker season for Duo Symphonious. Guitarists Michael Roberts (M.M., composition, '08) and Zac Selissen (M.M., guitar, '08) bring their genre-bending adaptation of the holiday classic to San Francisco's Community Music Center on December 14 and to St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Albany on December 15.

The California Symphony and Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra in Texas recently reached the same decision: both named Naomi Hoffmeyer (B.M., harp, '11) as principal harp. Hoffmeyer was a student of Douglas Rioth.

Urðarmána (Moon of Fate), a monodrama by Jeffrey Holmes (B.M., guitar, '97), will be released in 2014 on a CD recorded by bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood. Isherwood, himself a composer, commissioned the piece from Holmes and performed its premiere in Germany earlier this year. Holmes also enjoyed having his String Quartet No. 2 performed by the acclaimed JACK Quartet at the 2013 June in Buffalo festival presented by the University of Buffalo.

Gwen Hutchings (M.M., clarinet, '02) will be featured soloist in performances of Aaron Copland's Concerto for Clarinet with the Rogue Valley Symphony this month. Hutchings performs frequently with the Symphony and is also a member of the recently-formed Firebird Wind Trio.

The Living Earth Show, the duo of Travis Andrews (M.M., guitar, '09) and Andrew Meyerson (M.M., percussion, '10), recently released its new album High Art with a celebratory performance at San Francisco's Salle Pianos. The CD includes pieces written for the pair by Samuel Carl Adams, Chris Cerrone, Timo Andres and Adrian Knight, all scored for percussion, guitar and the ensemble's endlessly variable mix of "electronic accoutrements."

This month, pianist Eliane Lust (piano, '74) releases Entangoed, a recording of six tangos written over the course of the past hundred years, including one composed specifically for her by composer Robert Elkjer. A CD release party and performance at San Francisco's Center for New Music on December 8 marks the occasion.

The acclaimed Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir premieres Hubble by John Reager (M.M., composition,'91) at its holiday Candlelight Concerts on December 14 and 15. The work and its text are inspired by views of the universe revealed by the Hubble space telescope. Reager also directs the Oakland City Chorus on December 7 in a concert of works by Josquin, Rossi and Pergolesi. Reager is on music faculty at Laney College in Oakland.

Two virtuosic and adventurous brass ensembles featuring Conservatory alumni recently performed a joint recital at San Francisco's Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin. The program included Renaissance and twentieth-century works, plus an overture by Björk. Tamalpais Brass includes Graham Taylor (M.M., trumpet, '03), Alison Sawyer (B.M., horn, '03), Kathryn Curran (M.M., trombone, '05) and Tiffany Bayly (M.M., tuba, '13). The Monteverdi Brass includes Richard Roper (B.M., trumpet, '94), Robert Wilkins (M.M., trumpet, '96) and Brendan Lai-Tong (M.M., trombone, '09).

Trinity Alps Chamber Players, led by pianist Ian Scarfe (Artist Certificate, chamber music, '10), are performing Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen and selections by Brahms, Milhaud and Piazzolla on a tour of California, with upcoming performances scheduled throughout the Bay Area. Other players include violinist Edwin Huizinga (M.M., violin, '08) and cellist Charles Akert (M.M., cello, '08).

Julan Wang (M.M., piano, '12) won Second Place at the Fifth Louisiana International Piano Competition this past October. In addition to a cash award, Wang receives a performance in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. Wang was a student of Yoshikazu Nagai.

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From the Archives continued...

In March 1926, The Lyre included this article about a masquerade ball held the previous December at the Conservatory:

The Adillian Club of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music entertained members and friends at a Masquerade Ball on the evening of December 19th.

Many beautiful and original costumes were worn. Miss Marion Lewis and escort were dressed in red soldier costumes and attracted the guests with their drums.

Miss Constance Reed was undoubtedly the most originally costumed lady. She represented a "Boy Dressed in Sacks." Her costume was made of sacks and the trimmings were of assorted tin cans. The hat was of the same material as the suit and was decorated with a feather on one side.

Miss Eleanor Hirsch was perhaps the most beautiful, being dressed in an old-fashioned costume of deep rose. She wore red flowers in her dark head.

Mr. Al Carroll surprised many his very clever representation of "The Phantom of the Opera."

Miss Lillian Hodghead was masked as a fortune teller and caused a sensation by her mysterious atmosphere. She told the "good luck and bad" of many. She wore green trousers and a purple velvet jacket trimmed with rhinestones. Her shoes were red and a large wrapped silver turban having many yellow plumes made her headdress. A long gray beard and mustache helped to deceive her most intimate friends.

Miss Julia Peterson danced. Her grace and beauty delighted the guests.

Mr. Ward Bertrand, director of the Alhambra Studio, did a real Charleston.

Invitations were sent to one hundred and fifty friends.

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