Class Notes

1955 Tom Hohstadt ’62 (DMA) has published a book, Film Music: A Journey of Felt Meaning (Damah Media). Tom is a conductor, composer, and senior lecturer and director of the philharmonic orchestra at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

1963 Diane Deutsch Thome, who was among the first women composers to venture into computer-synthesized music, has published a memoir, Palaces of Memory: American Composer Diane Thome on her Life and Music (FriesenPress). Diane is a professor emerita and former chair of the composition program at the University of Washington.

1968 Bill Cahn writes that Nexus has released the CD The City Wears a Slouch Hat: Nexus Plays John Cage (Nexus). The ensemble also includes Bob Becker ’69, ’71 (MM).

1969 Bob Becker ’71 (MM) (see ’68).

1972 Nancy Uscher has been named dean of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, College of Fine Arts. Nancy was previously president of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

1977 Deborah Brown ’79 (MM) writes that she completed a solo piano recital tour of 22 concerts in Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., last spring. She’s recording a CD that will include Bach’s Fantasia in C Minor, Mozart’s Sonata in D Major, Godowsky’s Transcriptions of Renaissance Dances, Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, and the Horowitz transcription of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz.

1979 Diane Abrahamian ’86 (MM) writes: “I’m teaching at Nazareth College near Rochester in the musical theater department after serving 35 years as a voice teacher and choral director at Penfield High School. I was nominated and selected as a quarter-finalist for the Grammy Music Educator Award for four years in a row. I was a semifinalist in 2015.”

1980 Richard Kravchak has been named director of the University of Southern Mississippi’s music school. Richard was previously the founding director of the school of music at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.

1985 Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio (MM) has released a CD, Soaring Solo: Unaccompanied Works for Violin and Viola (MSR Classics). Stephanie is an associate professor of violin and viola and director of the orchestral career studies graduate program at the University of Nevada, Reno.

1986 Diane Abrahamian (MM) (see ’79).

1990 Linda Chatterton has released a CD, French Connections (Proper Canary), with pianist Matthew McCright. Recorded at Ordway Concert Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota, the CD includes sonatas by Sergei Prokofiev and Yuko Uebayashi as well as Linda’s transcription of Camille Saint-Saens’s Violin Sonata No. 1. Linda toured Australia with Matthew McCright, performing in Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney.

1993 Kelly Hall-Tompkins received an honorary doctorate and delivered the commencement address at the Manhattan School of Music last spring. A New York City violinist who performs solos as well as chamber and orchestral music, Kelly writes that the honor was “one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.” Kelly has been the violin soloist for the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof this past year. She writes: “It has been a very exciting season in my career, at Fiddler on the Roof and beyond. I have now played close to 200 shows. As time goes by, I am enjoying the opportunity to explore deeper levels of nuance, collaboration, and interaction with our music director/orchestrator Ted Sperling and fellow musicians, and especially with the actors on stage, particularly Danny Burstein and Jessica Hecht. The violin solos help to bring to life several key and poignant moments in the drama and, for me, the connection between us is often electrifying. I’m also enjoying a close collaboration with my co-Fiddler, dancer Jesse Kovarsky.” . . . Linda Lister (MM) is the coauthor, with Matthew Hoch, of Voice Secrets: 100 Performance Strategies for the Advanced Singer (Rowman & Littlefield).

2005 Composer Zachary Wadsworth writes that he’s released The Far West (Bridge Records), the first CD entirely of his own work. The CD includes a cantata set to the poetry of Tim Dlugos, a prominent New York City poet who died of AIDS in 1990 while studying to become an Episcopal priest.

2010 Silviya Mateva (MM) has completed a DMA in organ performance at the University of Oklahoma. . . . Malcolm Merriweather has been named the ninth music director of New York City’s Dessoff Choirs. He’s also an assistant professor and director of choirs at Brooklyn College, a faculty member and guest artist-in-residence at Union Theological Seminary, associate choirmaster at Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the music director of the “Voices of Haiti” children’s choir in Port-au-Prince.