Class Notes

1958 Margaret Shelton Meier writes: “A member of ‘the silent generation,’ I was very vocal this year.” Several of her compositions were performed in the Claremont, California, area in 2015. Two choral groups, the Pilgrim Place Chorale and the Claremont Chorale, each commissioned her to compose a choral piece on the subject of aging. Gather Up the Years was premiered last April, and Song of the Chopped-Down Tree was premiered in June. Margaret followed up with a humorous song series, The Joys of Aging, which premiered in May. Margaret sends a photo of herself with her granddaughter, Kathrynne, on stage after the performance of Song of the Chopped-Down Tree.

1965 Drew Frech (see ’66).

1966 Last summer, during his annual performance at the GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance in Trumansburg, New York, Johnny Russo and his East Hill Classic Jazz Band—which also includes Drew Frech ’65 on banjo—celebrated the release of a new CD, Broadway: 1985–2015 (Self-published). The CD represents the band’s favorite cuts from the 30-year period.

1967 Audrey Hardy Lamprey writes: “I retired from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, better known as Cal Poly Pomona, in June 2014. I worked there part time, teaching horn, music theory, and problems in music performance for 31 years. I was honored with emeritus status. In June 2015, I retired from the University of California at Riverside, where I taught horn and introduction to music as a general education course for 27 years. I continue to teach horn in my home studio and play in several regional orchestras.”

1969 The Lamar University Foundation established a fund in honor of Russ Schultz for his leadership as dean of the university’s College of Fine Arts and Communication. Russ retired last May after 16 years at the Beaumont, Texas, university.

1979 Linda Smith (MM) writes that she’s been playing organ for churches in many cities since 1965, including Topeka, Kansas, Oklahoma City, Rochester, and Paris, France, where she studied organ on a Fulbright scholarship in the early 1980s. Last spring, Linda, who was nine years old when she began playing church organ, was honored for her 50 years of continuous service with a celebration at Topeka’s New Mount Zion Baptist Church. Linda has been a music educator for many years, and the program featured some of her former students. While a student at Eastman, Linda played organ at the First Reformed Church.

1983 David Evan Thomas (MM) writes this his four-movement composition, In the Blue Glen, is included on the Debussy Trio’s CD Three by Three (Klavier). He’s also the winner of the 2015 Minnesota Sinfonia/McKnight Foundation New Works Award for Suite Populaire, and the Renee B. Fisher Composer Award from the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, Connecticut.

1990 John Hollenbeck ’91 (MM) has joined the faculty of the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal.

1997 Shane Endsley has accepted a position teaching trumpet and drums at Metropolitan State University’s program in jazz and American improvised music. In addition, he’s leading small jazz combos at the Denver, Colorado, university and has joined the ensemble Rugged Road.