Faculty News
Lydia Artymiw’s 2018-19 season included return performances at the Alexandria Festival of the Lakes, followed by a solo recital at the Morningside College Piano Series in Sioux City, IA. She performed the Franck Symphonic Variations with the Minnesota Philharmonic (under alumnus Brian Dowdy) and joined Marcy Rosen for a recital at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library in NY. Rosen and Artymiw’s 2018 CD of The Complete Works for Cello and Piano by Mendelssohn was nominated for a Grammy Award. She also joined Wilhelmina Smith for a recital at Martin Luther College (New Ulm, MN) and a faculty recital at the U of M. Artymiw presented master classes for voice and piano students at Loyola University in New Orleans. In May, she was a juror for the First China International Piano Competition in Beijing featured on Chinese television and Amadeus worldwide and also presented a master class at the China Central Conservatory. Artymiw performed at the renowned Meadowmount Festival in New York and returned to the Juilliard School in New York to guest teach four times.
Dean Billmeyer’s (organ) double CD Straube Plays Bach was released in September 2018 on the Rondeau label (Leipzig Germany), as well as on iTunes and Naxos. Karl Straube, organist and later cantor of the Leipzig Thomaskirche, edited ten of Bach’s most iconic works for publication in 1913. The extensive performance instructions in this volume represent unique documentation of late-Romantic German performance practice. Billmeyer’s recording, made on historic organs in Leipzig and Bad Salzungen, Germany, is the first-ever of all ten works in Straube’s edition. In connection with the project, Billmeyer gave a workshop on Bach, Straube, and late-Romantic interpretation jointly with Professor Christopher Anderson of Southern Methodist University for the American Guild of Organists in Dallas in April 2019. Billmeyer also led a master class on Bach and Straube in Leipzig for students at the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Musik Hochschule in May 2019.
Sumanth Gopinath’s (music theory) book Rethinking Reich, an edited volume with Pwyll ap Siôn, was published by Oxford University Press in May 2019. The book draws from new sources granted via the Steve Reich Collection at the Paul Sacher Archive and includes ranging from experienced and established Reich academics to emerging scholars.
David Grayson (musicology) published two articles in recent books: “‘Passage sentimental’: Si doux, si triste, si dormant...” in Debussy’s Resonance and “The Vagaries of Memory and Notation: Reconstituting the Debussy-Maeterlinck ‘Pelléas’” in Créer, jouer, transmettre la musique, de la IIIe République à nos jours.
In July 2018, Kelley Harness (musicology) read the paper “Laboring for Hercules: Constructing a Horse Ballet in Mid Seventeenth-Century Florence” at the 18th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, held in Cremona, Italy. During the fall semester, she presented an expanded version of that talk, entitled “Constructing Hercules in the Early Modern Horse Ballet: Il mondo festeggiante (1661),” as part of the U of M Music and Sound Studies Colloquium Series. During 2018–19, Harness shared aspects of her scholarship in collaboration with three separate performing groups: in October she partnered with the Minnesota– based Consortium Carissimi on “The Magdalene Project: The Ecstasy in Music” concert; in December, her article “Amazons, Saints, Sorceresses, and La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina” appeared in the program book that accompanied the Boston Early Music Festival performance of Francesca Caccini’s Alcina; and in March she delivered a lecture entitled “Beyond Voices: Women and Instrumental Music in the Baroque” as part of the Baroque Festival sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
Timothy Lovelace (collaborative piano) played on chamber music series sponsored by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, the Isles Ensemble, and the Lakes Area Music 45. In June 2018, Lovelace taught on the second season of the Collaborative Piano Institute, a three-week summer program for college students or young professionals held at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in Faribault, MN. In January 2019, Naxos released a CD Lovelace made with the University of Minnesota Associate Professor of Flute Immanuel Davis. The recording contains the complete flute chamber music of Nikolai Kapustin.
Guerino Mazzola (creative studies and media) co-authored a new book titled The Future of Music Subtitle: Towards a Computational Musical Theory of Everything as part of the Computational Music Science series to be published by Springer Publishing Company. Co-authors of the new book include Jason “J-Sun” Noer (dance, University of Minnesota), Yan Pang (PhD 2019, composition), Shuhui Yao (MM, composition), and PhD composition students Jay Afrisando, William Neace, and Christopher Rochester.
Matthew Mehaffey (choral) had a busy year, which included conducting the U.S. premiere of The Great War Symphony by Patrick Hawes, preparing The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh for a recording with the Pittsburgh Symphony, creating a new oratorio about Queen Victoria with U of M alumni Josh Bauer (DMA) and Andrew Stoebig (MM), and conducting many concerts with the University Choirs both on and off campus.
Maja Radovanlija premiered new works for Minneapolis Guitar Quartet (MGQ), in collaboration with Linda Chatterton (flute) and Clara Osowski (mezzo-soprano), at several locations in the Twin Cities this spring. MGQ also performed at Iserlohn International Guitar Festival 2019, one of the biggest guitar festivals in Europe. MGQ was part of judging and teaching team, for the festival’s competition and masterclasses. Radovanlija also participated in an artist residence for improvised music workshop in collaboration with Hungarian violist/composer/ improviser Szilard Mezei. After the festival in Germany, Radovanlija traveled to Bangkok for solo and duo concerts, master classes and competition jury duties at the Bangkok Guitar Festival and Competition.
Fernando Meza (percussion) served as percussion/timpani coach for the Orchestra of the Americas’ residence at the Krzysztof Penderecki European Center for Music in preparation of their tour of Europe and Ukraine last July. Meza performed with the Minnesota Orchestra at the BBC Proms in London, as well as during their historic trip to South Africa in August. He also toured in Spain with the Costa Rica-UNED Percussion Ensemble and performed with the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra in Detroit last November. He was an invited jury member for the Chicago Symphony Youth Competition in Feb. and was in Costa Rica for a single- semester leave during spring semester transcribing traditional marimba music from Santa Cruz, Guanacaste. He will be traveling to Cuba in June as percussion/ timpani coach for the Cuban-American Youth Orchestra and in July to Mexico for his 16th summer as coach of the Orchestra of the Americas.
Tanya Remenikova’s (cello) highlights included a number of chamber music recitals with the Hill House Chamber Players, presented by the Schubert Club at James J. Hill House in St.Paul, and the St. Croix Piano Trio, presented by University of Wisconsin–River Falls. Remenkova performed as a cello soloist with the Minnesota Sinfonia Orchestra in St. Paul and The Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. Summer activities included teaching and two master classes presented by International Cello Institute in Northfield and a master class at Shattuck-St. Mary’s Summer Bravo Festival in Faribault, MN. She was also a judge for the Tuesday Musical Club’s 2019 Young Artists Competition in Strings in St. Antonio, Texas.
David Walsh (opera) returns to the School of Music from a sabbatic year in which he served as interim director of opera for Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he collaborated with students from music, theatre, and dance on full productions of Giacomo Puccini’s II Tabarro and Gianni Schicchi, as well as Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, and a major retrospective of post-World War II American opera titled Reflections on the American Dream. In June and July, he again participated as faculty in the summer opera program Opera Viva in Verona, Italy.
ORGAN NEWS
The historic, completely restored Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ at Northrop was unveiled to the public with great fanfare on October 12-13, 2018. Two concerts given by the Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä featured the world premiere of John Harbison’s “What Do We Make of Bach?” for organ and orchestra with Julliard organist Paul Jacobs as soloist. University Organist Dean Billmeyer also performed the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony and was the featured interview on the live radio broadcast. Events also included a live broadcast recital given by seven organists and an open house allowing thirty organists to try out the newly restored instrument. Northrop’s organ was featured in the Star Tribune and was a cover feature in The American Organist magazine. The Northrop organ, Aeolian-Skinner’s Op. 892, was originally installed in 1932-35, and removed in 2011 prior to the demolition of the old hall. Foley-Baker, Inc. completed the restoration from 2016-2018.
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Tutti is the annual magazine of the University of Minnesota School of Music.
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