Class Notes
Eastman School of Music
1968
Bill Cahn and Bob Becker ’69E, members of the Toronto-based percussion quartet Nexus, celebrated the group’s 40th anniversary season with two back-to-back performances at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival last July. The first performance featured works by Bill, Steve Reich, and John Cage. The second show featured Reich’s Drumming.
1979
Gary Stith (MM), professor and coordinator of music education at Houghton College, has written a book, Score & Rehearsal Preparation: A Realistic Approach for Instrumental Conductors (Meredith Music Publications).
1983
David Evan Thomas (MM) writes that the Debussy Trio performed his chamber work, In the Blue Glen, at the 2011 World Harp Congress in Vancouver.
1987
Carolyn Ray ’90E (MA) (see ’88).
1988
Derrick Smith (MM), a baritone and senior associate voice instructor at the Eastman Community Music School, has released a CD, One Nation Indivisible: Songs of the Civil War (Self-published). Pianist Carolyn Ray ’87E, ’90E (MA) accompanies Derrick on the recording.
1989
Jim Lowe writes that he’s the music director and conductor of the current Broadway production of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, starring Sutton Foster and Joel Grey, which opened last April at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. The production won three 2011 Tony Awards, including Best Revival, Best Leading Actress in a Musical, and Best Choreography. Jim also conducted and served as associate producer of the new Broadway cast album, which was released in September on Ghostlight Records; appeared in performance with the cast on The Late Show with David Letterman, The CBS Early Show, and Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion; and conducted the cast in the National Anthem at Citi Field before a Mets game. This spring, he’ll conduct Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men with the Utah Opera.
1996
Joseph Byrd (MM) received a doctor of ministry in spiritual direction degree from the Graduate Theological Foundation in Mishawaka, Ind. He was awarded the school’s Charles Wesley prize in Sacred Music and Liturgy for his work on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Morning Prayer, a worship liturgy based on Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison.
1998
Kathleen van Bergen has been named chief executive officer of the Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples, Fla. Previously, Kathleen was artistic and managing director of the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minn. She holds an MBA from Dartmouth in addition to her Eastman degree in violin performance.
1999
Lena Perkins Wilder (see ’99RC).
2005
Sarah Chan (DMA) has been named assistant professor of music and keyboard studies at Northwestern Oklahoma State University. . . . Ian Fry writes: “I’ve been playing drums and acting as musical director for the band Tortilla Factory in Austin, Texas.” The band’s CD, Cookin’ (Tortilla Records)—“the last album under the late Chicano trumpet legend Tony (Ham) Guerrero,” Ian adds—was nominated for the 2010 Grammys’ Best Tejano Album of the Year and won the 2010–11 Austin Music Awards Best Latin Traditional Album. In 2010, group was inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame.
