Eastman Faculty
More than 130 highly regarded performers, composers, conductors, scholars, and educators make up the Eastman faculty: Pulitzer Prize-winners, Grammy winners, Guggenheim Fellows, ASCAP Award recipients, published authors, recording artists, and acclaimed musicians who have performed in the world's greatest concert halls. Eastman's full-time, resident faculty members know their students personally, becoming mentors to them and forging lifelong friendships:
Recent Faculty Highlights
September 2008 — Honey Meconi, Professor of Musicology, is the very happy recipient of a $50,400 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, which will allow her to spend a year in Europe and in the United States, studying the manuscripts of chansonniers — one-of-a-kind illuminated manuscripts of songs, each one done by an independent artist — with a book to follow: A Cultural History of the Chansonnier]. Honey is completing a book about the famous 12th-century nun and composer Hildegard of Bingen.
September 2008 — William Weinert, Professor of Conducting and Ensembles, recently led Collegiate Honor Choirs and conducting master classes for ACDA events in Hartford, CT and Norman, OK. After Rochester performances of the Bach B Minor Mass and Bruckner Mass in E Minor in late 2007, he led the Eastman Chorale in a February performance of Pizzetti’s rarely heard Messa di Requiem and the premiere of Onia by current ESM student Michaela Eremiasova. The chorale has been invited to present the Pizzetti Requiem at the biennial convention of the National Collegiate Choral Organization in Cincinnati in October. Bill conducted Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Eastman-Rochester Chorus, Eastman Chorale, and ESSO on May 2, repeating it two days later as guest conductor of the Oberlin College Musical Union and Chamber Orchestra.
September 2008 — Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez was the first ever composer-in-residence with the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra. Carlos curated and presented a series of contemporary chamber music concerts in the BPO’s Explorations Series, and the orchestra under José Luis-Novo premiered his Ex Machina for piano, marimba, and orchestra on April 5 at SUNY-Binghamton. The soloists were pianist Cristina Valdes and marimbist Makoto Nakura.
September 2008 — Ramon Ricker, Professor of Saxophone and Director of the Institute for Music Leadership, participated in an interactive symposium as the 2008 American Educational Research Association annual meeting in March 2008. His portion of the symposium was entitled Preparing Tomorrow’s Musicians to Succeed in a World with Changing Musical Needs and Career Opportunities.
September 2008 — Hans Davidsson, Professor of Organ, was awarded the Culture Prize 2007 by the Swedish Church in Gothenburg -- the home of the GoART organ research center. The award was presented on March 11, in the Gothenberg City Hall. The citation reads: “Hans Davidsson receives the prize for his significance for sacred music, for his rich ability to create ideas and vision, for his passion for the Queen of Instruments, and for his important role in the development of Gothenberg as a city and center of organs.”