Class Notes

1955 Elegy, by the late Richard Lane ’56 (MM), has been published posthumously by Editions BIM. The 1989 composition for piano and violin has also been selected as a required piece by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in the UK. Editions BIM has also recently published Richard’s Fourteen Easy Pieces for Piano.

1969 Max Stern, a professor of music at Ariel University in Israel, writes that his symphony Beyond the Sambatyon premiered at the 19th Israel Music Days in Be’er Sheba last October. He adds: “An unusual feature of the work is its integration of the folk instrument doira, from Bukhara in Central Asia, into the orchestra texture.” This spring, he’s an honorable research fellow of the Institute of Musical Research at the University of London.

1972 Ted Piltzecker, a vibraphonist, composer, and associate professor of music at SUNY Purchase College, spent last fall on sabbatical. He writes: “I presented concerts, performed in clubs, and taught master classes at conservatories in Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Turkey, India, and Nepal, and then went on to study gamelan music in Bali.”

1981 Bill Picher (MM), organist and music director of the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe, in Orlando, Florida, writes that the Basilica Choir has released a CD, Ave Maria (Stemik Music). “This is our fourth full-length album release, and I’m pretty proud of it,” Bill writes. “The music is by such diverse composers as Palestrina, Mozart, and Bach, and six of the tracks are written especially for us by living composers.” . . . Paul Schwendener is the executive director of the All-Star Orchestra, an ensemble of 95 top musicians from orchestras around the country. He developed a partnership between the orchestra and the online educational organization Khan Academy. In recognition of that project, the publication Musical America named Paul one of the top 30 innovators in the performing arts industry in 2016.

1994 Kevin Puts ’99 (DMA) (see ’63 College).

1999 Suzanne Stevens Aaron (MM) (see ’93 College).

2002 Pianist Mirna Lekic´ has released her solo debut album, Masks (Centaur Records). She writes that the recording “features Claude Debussy’s final ballet, La Boîte à joujoux, and includes shorter pieces by Muczynski, Debussy, Martinu, and Villa-Lobos.” Mirna is an assistant professor of music at Queensborough Community College, City University of New York.

2009 Trombonist and composer Nick Finzer has released Hear & Now (Outside In Music), and began a two-month, 23-city tour in February. His third album, it includes eight originals and a Duke Ellington classic, and is “an artistic interpretation of the current social and political scene in the United States.”