Press Release

For Immediate Release:
April 3, 2006

New England Conservatory will honor a composer, a renowned cellist, and two jazz greats at its 135th Commencement Exercises, May 21 in NEC’s Jordan Hall. The musicians receiving honorary doctorates are Joan Tower, Janos Starker, Ran Blake, and David Baker. Tower will give the commencement address. Retiring President Daniel Steiner will confer diplomas and degrees to the Class of 2006.

Preceding the exercises on Saturday night, May 20, New England Conservatory students, selected by audition, will be featured in concertos, chamber music, jazz, and original compositions. Donald Palma will conduct the Commencement Orchestra, composed of musicians chosen from all four student orchestras. The concert, also in NEC’s Jordan Hall, takes place at 7:30 p.m.

Biographies of the awardees are attached below.

For more information, call NEC’s Concert Line at 617-585-1122 or visit NEC on the web at http://concerts.newenglandconservatory.edu/index.php?Date_Year=2006&Date_Month=05&Date_Day=21

Composer Joan Tower

Hailed as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time" in The New Yorker magazine, Joan Tower was the first woman ever to receive the Grawemeyer Award in Composition in 1990. She was inducted in 1998 into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters, and into the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the fall of 2004.

In January 2004, Carnegie Hall's Making Music series featured a retrospective of Tower's work. This special event showcased numerous artists who regularly perform her music, including the Tokyo String Quartet, pianists Melvin Chen and Ursula Oppens, violist Paul Neubauer, oboist Richard Woodhams, and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble. Most of the featured works were then recorded for August 2005 release on the NAXOS recording label. Performed on that showcase, Tower’s DNA was written for the NEC Percussion Ensemble and director Frank Epstein as the first installment in a series of new works for percussion commissioned by Dorothea and Brad Endicott.

Tower was also the first composer chosen for the ambitious new Ford Made in America commissioning program, a collaboration of the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet the Composer. In October 2005, the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra, conducted by NEC’s Charles Peltz, presented the world premiere of Tower's orchestral work, Made in America. The work will go on for performances by 65 orchestras in every state in the Union through April 2007. This is the first project of its kind to involve smaller budget orchestras as commissioning agents of a new work by a major composer.

Born on September 6, 1938 in New Rochelle, New York, the composer grew up in South America, where her father was a mining engineer. There, she eagerly absorbed the native culture, and discovered a love for performing, playing percussion and piano in family musicales. Upon her return to the United States at age 18, she attended Bennington College and Columbia University, where she received a doctorate in composition. In 1969, Tower founded the Da Capo Chamber Players, the distinguished ensemble that won the Naumburg Award for chamber music in 1973, and with which she served as pianist for 15 years. In September 1985, Tower was appointed by conductor Leonard Slatkin to a three-year term as Composer-in-Residence with the Saint Louis Symphony. She is now Composer-in-Residence with the Orchestra of St. Lukes. She has written many chamber and solo works for such major artists as the Emerson and Muir Quartets, the Kalichstein-Robinson-Laredo Trio, Carol Wincenc, Elmar Oliveira, David Shifrin, Evelyn Glennie and John Browning among others. She has also been commissioned by such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago, St. Louis, National, Houston Symphonies and the Los Angeles and Orpheus Chamber Orchestras.

She has been Asher Edelman Professor at Bard College since 1972 and will join the new Bard Conservatory program in the fall.

Cellist Janos Starker

The Hungarian-born cellist has had a distinguished career as a soloist, orchestra principal, recording artist, and teacher. Arriving in the United States in 1948, he served as principal cellist in the Dallas, Metropolitan Opera and Chicago Symphonies, the latter two positions under conductor Fritz Reiner. A decade later, he resumed his soloist’s career and joined the faculty of Indiana University School of Music where he was named Distinguished Professor of Music in 1962.

As a performer, he has given the world premieres of concertos by numerous composers including Antal Doráti, Bernard Heiden, Alan Hovhaness, Jean Martinon, Miklós Rózsa, Robert Starer, Chou Wen-chung and—his IU colleague and fellow NEC honoree David Baker. As a recording artist, his discography numbers more than 165 works on various international labels. His releases on BMG’s RCA Victor Red Seal label have included the cello version of the Bartók Viola Concerto, the Dvořák Cello Concerto and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote. He has documented his interpretation of the Bach Cello Suites five different times, the last of which—on RCA—won the 1997 Grammy Award.

As an advocate for performing and teaching excellence, Starker created two yearly scholarships at IU to honor his former teachers. He also created the Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center Foundation, which honors important cellists through yearly awards and provides scholarships for students. Both NEC’s Laurence Lesser, President Emeritus and current holder of the Walter W. Naumburg Chair in Music, and Paul Katz, who heads NEC’s Professional String Quartet Training Program, have been named “Chevalier du Violoncelle” by the Janzer Foundation.

Starker, who retired from public performance in 2005, will celebrate his 82nd birthday this summer. He maintains his daily classes at IU, and gives frequent master classes and lectures throughout the world. Among his many students are NEC Provost Robert Dodson.

“Noir” Pianist Ran Blake

Winner of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant and two Guggenheim Fellowships in Music Composition, “Noir” pianist Ran Blake has been a member of the New England Conservatory faculty since 1968 and served as Chair of the Contemporary Improvisation/Third Stream Department from 1973-2005. He has recorded more than 30 albums since his 1962 ground-breaking RCA disc with vocalist Jeanne Lee, The Newest Sound Around. His latest, All That is Tied (Tompkins Square CD), his first solo disc in 20 years, has received euphoric praise from reviewers. In The Wire, Brian Morton commented: “…even if All That is Tied had landed on the desk anonymously, without herald and with no expectation based on past form, you would know you were in the presence of something magical and important.”

Born in Springfield, MA on April 20, 1935, Blake began nourishing his musical sensibility from an early age. At 12, he first saw Robert Siodmak’s Spiral Staircase, and was forever hooked on Film Noir. That dark ethos has permeated his pianistic stylings throughout his career, along with other important influences such as American blues and gospel music, 20th Century classical composers like Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Ives; and jazz masters like Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington.

One of Blakes’ earliest boosters was Gunther Schuller, who brought him to NEC shortly after becoming President. Schuller coined the term “Third Stream” to denote the fusion of classical and jazz idioms and Blake, as head of that department, went even further. As he once wrote, “My idea was to gather a student body of talented and eclectic improvisers each of whom would attempt to forge a unique personal improvisational style from a synthesis of his or her stylistic roots. I soon came to include world musics of all kinds (not only African-American) as potential sources for this personal synthesis process which eventually came to be called ‘Streaming.’”

Blake has teamed up with a wide range of performers including Dominique Eade, Jaki Byard, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Clifford Jordan, Ricky Ford, and Christine Correa. His musical inspirations continue to come from a wide and diverse universe, including world music, the 12-tone serial composers, and performers like Mahalia Jackson. It is said he can improvise as easily on a 12-tone row as a standard tune. Many of his recordings and concerts are tributes to a particular artist, such as Monk, Vaughn, Horace Silver, Ellington, and Gershwin. His concentration on these venerables also finds expression in his annual summer school seminars at NEC, which are often focused on an individual performer or composer. )This summer, for example, the class will center on the great 20th Century Russian symphonist Dmitri Shostakovich.) But no matter who is the subject of his homage, Blake’s personal voice comes through with unmistakable character.

Jazz Composer-Cellist-Educator David Baker

Named an NEA Jazz Master in 2000 and winner of a 2004 Emmy for the music of PBS’s For Gold and Glory, the protean David N. Baker, Jr. is the Distinguished Professor of Music, Chairman of the Jazz Department, and adjunct professor in the African-American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Indiana University. A virtuoso performer on several instruments (he studied with J.J. Johnson, Janos Starker and NEC’s George Russell), he is a prolific composer who has written music not only for film scores but also for symphonic band, symphony orchestra and soloists, chamber ensemble, and chorus. What’s more, he is Artistic Director and Conductor of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, and leads that ensemble in concerts in Washington D.C. and on tour throughout the United States and the world.

With bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education from IU, Baker also has an impeccable pedigree as a performer, having played in the bands of Lionel Hampton, Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Quincy Jones, and NEC’s own George Russell. After an accident to his jaw forced him to abandon the trombone, he switched to the cello in 1962 and began concentrating on composition. He has written works for Janos Starker, the Beaux Arts Trio, Josef Gingold, Ruggerio Ricci, Harvey Phillips, the New York Philharmonic, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Fisk Jubilee Singers, Louisville Symphony, Audubon String Quartet and others. His more than 2000 compositions range from jazz, sonatas and concertos to film scores.

A 1973 Pulitzer Prize nominee, Baker has been honored three times by Downbeat Magazine with the New Star Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Jazz Education Hall of Fame Award. A past President of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) and National Jazz Service Organization, he has written over 400 articles and 70 books on jazz improvisation, composition and arranging, jazz pedagogy, and other topics. In 2001, Mr. Baker was honored as an Indiana Living Legend.

ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY

Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.

The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.

NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.

NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top,” a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.