Class Notes

Eastman School of Music

1943

Emily Oppenheimer sends a photo and writes: “Just wanted to tell you that Phil and I are enjoying an active life. Although I retired from teaching harp at Juilliard Pre-College last year, I teach privately in my studio at home. We both love to travel and enjoy downhill skiing and sailing with children and grandchildren.”

1959

John Thyhsen ’61 (MM) writes to say he’s released a new CD titled Christmas Music for Friends. With help from Barrington Coleman (professor of voice and director of the men’s glee club at the University of Illinois), he created the melodies featuring trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano. John was an instructor at Eastman from 1962 to 1966.

1968

Percussionist Bill Cahn performed in six concerts during a two-week tour of southern Japan in January 2007. Among the compositions was Bill’s Kebjar-Bali, based on the music of Balinese gamelan ensembles, with Bill as soloist on an array of gongs and bells.

1970

Geary Larrick (MM) writes that he has six titles listed in Books in Print 2006–2007. Published in western New York from 1999 to 2006, the volumes encompass percussion music and instruments, biography, history, criticism, philosophy, and aesthetics, as well as bibliography.

1973

Kenneth Megan was promoted from lieutenant to commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Band.

1975

Classical marimbist Leigh Howard Stevens was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society’s Hall of Fame. Leigh’s contributions include the “Stevens Technique” (a four-mallet method of playing the marimba that is used by marimbists around the world); his “one-handed rolls”; four U.S. patents for keyboard percussion design; his textbook Method of Movement; and numerous commissions, compositions, and transcriptions that have greatly expanded the marimba repertoire.

1984

John Cipolla writes that he was selected as the Kentucky Music Educators Association College and University Teacher of the Year, the association’s highest recognition for teaching excellence. He was also selected to serve as chair of the International Clarinet Association’s Research Presentation Committee for the next three years. John is in his fifth year as an assistant professor of music (clarinet and saxophone) at Western Kentucky University. . . . Susan Gall writes that after 16 years in Boston as a flutist, years spent founding and performing with the contemporary chamber music group Auros, and teaching flute at Brandeis University and the University of Massachusetts, she has gone back to school again—“the combined nine years of college wasn’t quite enough.” She is a first-year medical student at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Susan hopes to graduate with an M.D. in 2010 and “never set foot on a university campus again, at least not as a student.” If she tries, she says, “permission is given for physical restraint.”

1985

Laura Najarian (MM) has been named second bassoonist for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

1989

Pianist Janet Ahlquist (MM) has a new CD, Live in Concert, which includes selections from various international concert halls, as well as an original piece by Janet and a performance with the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra.

1992

Marilyn Nonken is director of piano studies at New York University’s Steinhardt School. A concertizing pianist and recognized teacher, Marilyn performs on two CD anthologies released last fall, Adapting to the Times, a compilation of the music of Charles Wuorinen (Albany Records) and Matrix, a compilation of the music of Louis Karchin ’73E (Albany Records). A highlight of her season, she writes, was an appearance at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, where she performed works written for her by Pascal Dusapin and Jason Eckardt. She continues to play with Ensemble 21, the New York contemporary music performance group which she also co-directs, and Elision, based in Melbourne, Australia.

1998

Harpist Jung Kwak (MM), who also goes by the name Harpist K, was the first Korean harpist to make six consecutive appearances at the triennial World Harp Congress.