Class Notes
Eastman School of Music
1953
Arnold Berleant ’55 (MA) has released his eighth book, Aesthetics Beyond the Arts: New and Recent Essays (Ashgate Publishing). Arnold is professor emeritus of philosophy at Long Island University.
1957
Ann Myers Patrick Green ’59 (MM) writes that her book Piano Music for Little Fingers, an introductory volume of a three-book set, has been published by Dover Publications. . . . Sydney Hodkinson ’58 (MM), who holds the Almand Chair of Composition at Stetson University, served as the artist-in-residence for the New Music Festival in Louisville, Ky., in November. The festival, hosted by the University of Louisville, features a new guest composer each year.
1974
Trumpeter Allen Vizzutti ’76 (MM) has released a new CD, Ritzville (Village Place Music), featuring pianist Chick Corea and bassist Stanley Clarke.
1980
Kate Light ’82E (MM) writes that the “one-act ‘sit-com’ opera,” The Life and Love of Joe Coogan, based on an episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show, with her libretto and music by Paul Salerni, was performed in November by the Otterbein University Opera Theater at Battelle Fine Arts Center in Westerville, Ohio.
1981
Greg Danner (MA), professor of music theory and composition at Tennessee Technological University, has released the CD The Music of Greg Danner, Vol. I: Walls of Zion (Mark Masters). . . . “From the Rising of the Sun,” a festival piece by Dan Locklear (DMA) for brass quartet, percussion, and organ, premiered in September at United Methodist Church in Atlanta.
1983
Chris Norton ’86 (MA) (see ’94).
1984
Leslie Boggs Norton (see ’94).
1991
Licia Jaskunas (MM) (see ’94).
1993
Katharine Smithrim (PhD) has coauthored Prayers for Women Who Can’t Pray (Wintergreen Studios Press). Katharine is a professor of education at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario.
1994
Zeneba Bowers ’96 (MM), violinist, founder, and the artistic director of Alias Chamber Ensemble, based in Nashville, Tenn., writes that the group released its second CD, Boiling Point (Delos Records) in September, and that the recording had sold out of its first printing in two days. Alias also includes among its members harpist Licia Jaskunas ’91 (MM), horn player Leslie Boggs Norton ’84, and percussionist Chris Norton ’83, ’86 (MA). Zeneba adds that Nashville Mayor Karl Dean officially declared last September 25th “Alias Chamber Ensemble Day” and the Tennessee General Assembly declared last September 23 through 29 as “Alias Chamber Ensemble Week.” . . . Kevin Puts ’99 (DMA), who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his first opera, Silent Night, has premiered a new work, To Touch the Sky: Nine Songs for Unaccompanied Chorus on Texts by Women. The work was performed in Austin, Texas, last September by the Grammy-nominated choir, Conspirare. The piece is set to poems and writings by women spanning more than two millennia, from Sappho to the contemporary poet Marie Howe.
1996
Jeremy Gill has edited and written the introduction to George Rochberg’s A Dance of Polar Opposites: The Continuing Transformation of Our Musical Language (University of Rochester Press).
2008
Shauli Einav (MM) performed in the Israeli Jazz Expo in November. He writes that he’s also at work on two new studio recordings.
