In November, dance faculty member Janis Brenner’s company Janis Brenner & Dancers toured to the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Tivoli, N.Y., with the Maya Dance Theater of Singapore. Also in November, Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble, of which Brenner is a member, joined the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in a celebration of Monk’s 50 years of artistic work. In October, the Maya Dance Theater premiered Brenner’s Soul River/Blues as part of the 92nd Street Y’s Fridays at Noon series; company dancers Esmé Boyce (BFA ’09, dance) and Kendra Samson (BFA ’09, dance) participated.

In July, trombone faculty member Per Brevig (Diploma and Postgraduate Diploma ’67, BM ’68, DMA ’71, trombone) conducted at the Aspen Music Festival. The program included Hindemith’s Concert Music for Piano, Brass, and Harps for which second-year master’s pianist Han Chen was the soloist. Also on the program was Walter Ross’s Concertino in Silver and Bronze, for which Nadine Asin (BM ’73, MM ’74, flute) was the soloist.

On December 2, violin faculty member Kyung Wha Chung (Pre-College ’66; Diploma ’69, violin) returns to London’s Royal Festival Hall for her first U.K. appearance in a decade. She will play works by Bach, Franck, Mozart, and Prokofiev.

Faculty member Jonathan Dawe’s (M.M. ’91, D.M.A. ’95, composition) Concerto for Hard and Soft Fractals (Fourth String Quartet) was premiered in October by the JACK Quartet at the Italian Academy in New York City.

Jazz faculty member Frank Kimbrough, Ryan Keberle (Artist Diploma ’03,  jazz studies), and Marshall Gilkes (BM ’07, Artist Diploma ’09, jazz studies) were backup artists on David Bowie’s seven-minute single “Sue (Or in a Season Of Crime),” which was released on Bowie’s new greatest hits album, The Next Day, in November.

This past year, Historical Performance faculty member David Schulenberg commemorated the tercentennial of C.P.E. Bach’s birth on several occasions. His book The Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was published by University of Rochester Press and he guest-edited the August issue of Early Music, which was entirely dedicated to the composer. He also gave talks and performances for the American Musicological Society, the American Bach Society, the Idaho Bach Festival, and the Focus on Piano Literature festival held at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. See Voice Box on Page 4. With Rebecca Troxler (BM ’73, MM ’74, flute), Schulenberg can be heard on fortepiano in two works from an album released in May called Rebecca Troxler Plays Flute Music by Sons of Bach (Albany Records). Schulenberg’s new critical edition of J.S. Bach’s Organ Preludes and Fugues was issued by Breitkopf und Härtel and was the topic of presentations he gave at the national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Boston in June.

In November, faculty member Kent Tritle (BM ’85, MM ’88, organ; MM ’88, choral conducting) marked his 10th year with the Oratorio Society of New York; he conducted Haydn’s The Creation at Carnegie Hall with soprano Susanna Phillips (BM ’03, MM ’04, voice), tenor Aaron Blake (BM ’06, voice), and baritone Sidney Outlaw (MM ’07, voice); he also gave recitals of music by Bach, Duruflé, and Scheidemann at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and in Rutherford, N.J., and Fort Worth, Tex. Also in November, Tritle conducted the Manhattan School of Music Chamber Sinfonia, Symphonic Chorus, and Chamber Choir in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor. In October, Tritle conducted Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum and John Tavener’s Svyati for choir and cello with soloist Patrick Jee (BM ’03, cello) at St. John the Divine. 

STUDENTS

In September it was announced that first-year soprano Kresley Figueroa won the American Prize in the high school vocal performance division.

In October, second-year violinist Ànnika Jenkins (Pre-College ’13) was concertmaster for the premiere of William Maselli’s opera Draculette held at Merkin Concert Hall. In August, Jenkins was the instrumental prizewinner at the International Richard Strauss Competition held in Salzburg.

On December 21, Pre-College composition student Pablo Rubin-Jurado will perform in the American Protégé International Voice Competition winners recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. He won first place and a Judges’ Distinction Award in the competition’s junior category in July. As guest artist at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival in July, Rubin-Jurardo sang the role of Miles in Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, which was performed at Davies Memorial Chapel in Waimea. 

In November, first-year master’s cellist Julian Schwarz (BM ’14, cello) performed Samuel Jones’s Cello Concerto with both the Northwest Sinfonietta, which is based in Tacoma, Wash., and the Amarillo (Tex.) Symphony. The latter concert was conducted by Jacomo Rafael Bairos (BM ’98, tuba). In October, Schwarz performed Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra in Sylvania, Ohio. In September, he performed Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Orquesta Filarmonica de Boca del Rio, in Veracruz, Mexico. In the same month, he also performed Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Brisbane, Australia; the performance was videotaped for DVD release on the Master Performers label.