University of Rochester

Rochester Review
July–August 2013
Vol. 75, No. 6

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Class Notes

Eastman School of Music

1960

Loa Jewell Eastman (see ’06 College).

1968

Alan and Nancy Young Molitz send an update. Alan has been principal double bass of the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra since 1991. The highlight of this past winter season was Tristan und Isolde, and the spring season featured Salome, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Dialogue of the Carmelites. In March, he presented a master class for the double bass studio of Jeff Stokes ’69, ’74 (MA), associate professor at the University of Western Ontario, and this summer marks his 13th season as principal double bass at the Oregon Bach Festival. Nancy has established an integrated psychotherapy practice and has presented workshops in performance enhancement at Opera Lyra Studio in Ottawa and at the Eastman School’s Music Horizons summer program in July 2012, to which she returns this summer. Finally, they add that their sons, Julian and Alexander, “thrive in their music and cuisine careers, respectively.” Julian, a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music in percussion, and his wife, hornist Angela Wilmot, who studied with Verne Reynolds at Eastman until Reynolds’s retirement in 1995, freelance in Charlottesville, Va., with the Richmond Sym-phony and ensembles in the region. Alexander, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, is executive chef at Farmhouse Tavern in Toronto, which was named one of the top 10 new restaurants in Toronto in the April 2013 issue of Toronto Life.

1969

Jeff Stokes ’74 (MA) (see ’68).

1970

Geary Larrick (MM) has published a bibliographic essay, “Multicultural Percussion Music,” in the spring 2013 issue of the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors Journal.

1978

Greg Mulligan sends an update. He writes: “Rebecca Steppleton Nichols ’82 and I have performed together as founding members of the Atlantic String Quartet since 1995. We—Rebecca and I along with violist Karin Brown and cellist Bo Li—are all members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The quartet has performed extensively throughout Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, including at Professor Charles Castleman’s quartet program. By now the quartet has worked its way through most of the Beethoven, Bartok, Mendelssohn, and Brahms quartets, as well as many others.”

1979

The Vermont professional vocal ensemble Counterpoint has recorded a CD of sacred choral music by Michael Isaacson (PhD). The CD is An American Hallel (Michael Isaacson).

1981

Dan Locklair (DMA) composed Hail to the Coming Day (A Festive Piece for Orchestra) to celebrate the centennial of the city of Winston-Salem, N.C. The piece was commissioned by the city and was premiered in May by the Winston-Salem Symphony.

1982

Rebecca Steppleton Nichols (see ’78). . . . Pianist Karl Paulnack has been named dean of the Ithaca College School of Music.

1989

Soprano Nancy Allen Lundy (MM) made her debut at La Scala in Milan last spring in A Dog’s Heart by Alexander Raskatov. . . . David Rogers ’97 (PhD) has been named executive director of the Yakima Symphony Orchestra. He moves to Washington state from Florida, where he was in charge of artistic planning, program oversight, and other operations at the Tampa-based Florida Orchestra.

1995

Jeffrey Zeigler (see ’06).

1998

Vicente Avella (MM) has released a CD, All the Days of My Life: The Wedding Album (Pandora’s Boombox Records). Vicente writes: “Through working with couples over the years, I have encountered an ever-growing need for music that, simply put, gives a current expression to the traditional wedding classics. I kept finding that brides and grooms loved the timelessness of the classics but that, at the same time, they really wanted music that spoke today’s language—their language.” Vicente adds that the CD is produced by Windham Hill founder William Ackerman.

1999

Jason Treuting will be a creative and performing arts fellow in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton beginning in fall 2013. The fellowship, open to early career artists with extraordinary promise, extends two academic years.

2002

Soprano Erin Palmer Morley won a $10,000 Richard Tucker Music Foundation Career Grant. The foundation selects the best young opera singers in the United States after two days of auditions in New York City.

2006

Nathan Motta, a freelance director, conductor, and composer, has been named artistic director of the Dobama Theatre in Cleveland. Nathan joined the Cleveland Heights theater in 2012 as associate artistic director. . . . Cellist Jungin (Sunny) Yang has joined the Kronos Quartet. She replaces Jeffrey Zeigler ’95, who will be joining the faculty of Mannes College of Music, at the New School in Manhattan, and devoting time to solo projects.

2008

Shauli Einav (MM), a New York City–based jazz saxophonist and composer, received a 2013 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.