November December 2023 College News

speaker for a presentation about Fulbright Programs and Global Engagement at the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) 37th Annual Conference in Chicago in September 2023. Hank Hehmsoth and Joey Colarusso performed on “Jazz under the Stars” at the Dallas Jazz Festival on November 4, 2023. The outdoor concert, sponsored by the Dallas Museum of Art, included two separate shows featuring John Mills Times Ten and Count Basie vocalist Carmen Bradford and big band. The show, free to the public, was held in downtown Dallas at the Klyde Warren Park. [2] The Recording Academy released nominations for the 66th annual GRAMMY® awards, and Austin- based Conspirare, conducted by Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson , was nominated in the Best Choral Performance category for House of Belonging on the Delos label. To date, Conspirare has received one GRAMMY® Award and eleven nominations. The GRAMMY® ceremony will take place on February 4, 2024, at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Lynn Ledbetter performed in Washington, D.C. as featured soloist and concertmaster of the Arlington Philharmonic Association on October 29. She also performed as first violin with Mid-Texas Symphony in New Braunfels on November 5. Kevin Mooney gave an invited presentation on his book Texas Jazz Singer for the Center for Texas Music History. At the national joint conference of the American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory in Denver, CO, November 9-12, Mooney was one of ten scholars from around the country who participated in an invited W. W. Norton Focus Group to discuss a proposal for the new edition of A History of Western Music , the most widely used music history textbook. Dimitar Ninov' s book in progress, Chromatic Harmony and Modulation , was accepted for publication by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, after his proposal and a few written chapters were peer reviewed. Ninov also saw performances of his Nuages for saxophone quartet at Illinois College (November 19, 2023) and Cinderella for chamber ensemble and Rondo College of Fine Arts and Communication | 153 for piano at the New Bulgarian Music Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria. Todd Oxford served as an adjudication panelist for the 46th Annual Follow Your Dreams Music Festival State Competition. This year’s theme was “Rock of Ages.” Performers sang, danced, signed, played drums, rang bells, played, and moved to rock-n-roll songs—including great rock from the 1950s all the way up to today! Thirteen state-supported living centers involved as well as eight state hospitals participated. [3] Alec D. Scherer presented two research projects at the 2023 Society for Music Teacher Education Symposium in Salt Lake City, UT. Together with his co-authors Drs. Brad Regier, Melissa Baughman, and Brian Silvey, Scherer discussed preliminary findings pertaining to undergraduate music students’ conducting anxiety as well as research-based practices to help reduce feelings of anxiety. He also presented a pedagogical poster on co-constructing syllabi with students in order to create a more inclusive learning environment and increase student understanding of course construction. During the conference, Scherer was nominated and later elected, as a facilitator for the Program Admission, Assessment, and Alignment Area for Strategic Planning and Action. Nico Schüler presented a paper on “Intercultural Relations and Cultural Diplomacies in Early African American Musical Theatre” at the International Federation for Theatre Research conference in Accra, Ghana. At an international digital music research conference hosted by the German Society for Music Research, he presented a paper on “Measuring Pitch Inflections with Digital Tools.” At the same conference, he co-presented a paper on “Digital Tools and the Analysis of Recorded Performances of a Bach Flute Partita,” and he presented a poster on “Digital Tools for the Rediscovery of African-American Music Business after the Civil War.” Amanda Soto delivered two papers at prestigious conferences this semester: “Music Is Not an Island: The Significance of Interdisciplinarity in the Music Curriculum” (College Music Society National Conference, Miami, FL, October 28, 2023) and “Mariachi Music Strumming Styles & Singing Practices” (Society for Ethnomusicology Conference, Ottawa, Canada, October 20, 2023). MUSIC Music, Music Studies, Per formance, & Sound Recording Technolog y FACULTY ACCOLADES TrevCo Music published Ian Davidson's original composition for oboe solo, Tableaux del Norte, the fourth of his compositions published by TrevCo as part of a long-term publishing contract. The work is inspired by the Detroit Industry Murals in the Detroit Institute of Arts, painted by Diego Rivera in 1932- 1933. In 2012, Davidson traveled to Detroit and was granted access to the “Rivera Court” so that he could improvise compositional themes. The murals are spread across four walls, and Davidson’s four-movement work is divided by the same configuration. This work is the fourth, and final, installment in a larger project entitled “North American Masters” that envisions a series of works for oboe solo inspired by works of visual artists. The first installment, Scenes at the Ranch , inspired by paintings of Georgia O'Keefe, was published in 2021 and the second installment, Five Works of Jackson Pollock , inspired by paintings of Jackson Pollock, was published in 2022. Earlier this year, TrevCo published de Kooning’s New York , the third installment, inspired by five paintings of Willem de Kooning from 1955. [1] In November, Davidson was invited to performed with the San Antonio Philharmonic in a pair of performances that featured Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite and the New World Symphony by Antonín Dvořák. These programs are part of the annual MasterWorks Series and marks the fifth series where Davidson has been asked to serve as guest principal oboe. Davidson and Daris Hale gave a shared recital at the International Rio Winds Festival in Brazil on November 16. Davidson gave two solo recitals while in Rio de Janeiro. The U.S. State Department and the Institute for International Education hosted Daris Hale as a panel Ian Davidson's composition for obeo solo is inspired by the Detroit Industry Murals Hank Hehmsoth and Joey Colarussa performed at the Dallas Jazz Festival Todd Oxford served as a panelist for the Follow Your Dreams Music Festival State Competition 14 | November and December 2023 | College News 1 2 3