University of Rochester

Rochester Review
September–October 2010
Vol. 73, No. 1

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School of Medicine and Dentistry

Eastman School of Music

1968

At the Woodstock, N.Y., Kleinert/James Arts Center in May, Bill Cahn, Bob Becker ’69, and the two other members of the Toronto-based percussion quartet Nexus performed a program of popular music from the 1920s by composer George Hamilton Green, and original music written by Bill to accompany the 1926 silent film A Page of Madness.

1969

Bob Becker (see ’68).

1970

In May, Geary Larrick (MM) performed 12 of his compositions on solo marimba at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Stevens Point, Wis. The pieces, which Geary has written over the past four decades, are part of Special Collections in the Eastman School’s Sibley Music Library.

1979

Judith LeClair, who has been the principal bassoonist for the New York Philharmonic since 1981, writes that she has released a new CD, Works for Bassoon (Avie), on which she is accompanied by pianist Jonathan Feldman and harpist Gretchen Van Hoesen.

1981

Dan Locklair (DMA) has been commissioned by the Greater Greensboro, N.C., chapter of the American Guild of Organists for a new concerto for organ and orchestra. The new piece is expected to premiere at the June 2011 Region IV American Guild of Organists convention in Greensboro. . . . Akmal Parwez (PhD) sends an update. In January, he was one of 23 composer-performers to present his own music in the “Composers Play Composers Marathon” at the club Drom in New York City. Parwez, a bass-baritone, choral conductor, and voice teacher, sang his Three Haiku of Basho: The Frog, the Crow, and the Cicada in the original Japanese. He was accompanied on the piano by Francois Nezwazky.

1983

Trumpeter Byron Stripling, a frequent guest with symphonies and pops orchestras around the country, joined the Grand Rapids Symphony in May for the musical celebration “Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans.” Byron is the artistic director of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra in Ohio.

1984

John Cipolla has been elected president of the International Clarinet Association. An associate professor of music at Western Kentucky University, John has been serving as secretary of the organization.

1985

Stephen Rush (DMA) writes that he has coauthored a book, Better Get It in Your Soul: What Liturgists Can Learn from Jazz (Church Publishing). . . . Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio (MM) (see ’89).

1986

Rebecca Henderson (MM) (see ’89).

1989

David Heuser writes that his one-act opera for children, The Golden Ax, was recorded by the Cactus Pear Music Festival, founded by Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio ’85 (MM) and released on their CD, Klassics 4 Kids, designed to introduce children to classical music. Oboist Rebecca Henderson ’86 (MM) also appears on the CD. David adds that his piece for percussion, Not Here, But There, is the title track on a CD by the University of Houston Percussion Ensemble (Albany, 2009), and his Deep Blue Spiral, for saxophone and tape, is performed by Todd Oxford on the CD Tango Magnetism (Equilibrium, 2009).

1992

Daniel Koontz writes that his 2007 composition, Soft Stillness and the Night, has been recorded by Strike, the duo of pianist Jeff Meyer and percussionist Paul Vaillancourt, on their new CD, Convergence (Luminescence, 2009).

2005

Janet Wightman (see ’05 RC undergraduate).

2008

Saxophonist Ben Britton, trumpeter John Britton ’10, and pianist Jeremy Siskind have released Uncertain Living (Record Craft). The recording is their debut CD as the Britton Brothers Band, a modern jazz quintet that also includes bassist Taylor Waugh and drummer Austin Walker.

2010

John Britton (see ’08).