NEC Update Vol. 2, No. 7, December 12, 2005

Grammy nods for NEC musicians

Listen up, chamber music lovers!

Gunther Schuller: living legend

Kids in Harmony nets $35K

NEC jazz musicians at Panama fest

Faculty scholar edits Rossini

NPR picks up "From the Top"

Donald Martino dies

Be a patron of the arts

Grammy nods for NEC musicians

In nominations for the 48th Annual Grammy Awards announced last week, NEC musicians appeared in classical, world music, and four of the five jazz categories, including a nomination for Luciana Souza '94 M.M. for "Best Jazz Vocal Album."

A classical music nomination for "Best Small Ensemble Performance" recognizes Collage New Music, of whose eight core members five are NEC alumni or faculty, including the founder of Collage, NEC brass and percussion chair Frank Epstein.

Read more about NEC's Grammy nominations.

Listen up, chamber music lovers!

photo by Sherwood Wise '01 M.M.

NEC chamber musicians are showcased in a full week of concerts, December 11-16, and in further programming in the new year, January 15-29. One highlight this week is the December 13 concert focusing on Beethoven string quartets--a byproduct of Paul Katz's NEC seminar on this music (in photo).

A new "Live from NEC" audio stream features a Beethoven quartet performance by the Parker String Quartet, which benefited from coachings in Katz's seminar two years ago.

We offer this Beethoven selection, along with many free concerts coming up at NEC in 2006, as a resource to enrich your experience of the music of Beethoven and Schoenberg, two visionary composers who are being explored in James Levine's Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts running from January through March.

Listen to a Beethoven string quartet.

Gunther Schuller: living legend

photo by Miro Vintoniv

Distinguished American composer and former NEC president Gunther Schuller will receive the Library of Congress Living Legend Award on Friday, December 16.

Established in 2000, the Living Legend Award is bestowed on "public figures whose achievements have enriched American culture." Previous recipients with Boston ties have include Stephen Jay Gould and the late Julia Child.

In photo: Schuller works with an NEC student at the November 2005 NEC festival of his music.

Read more about Schuller's award.

Kids in Harmony nets $35K

photo by Miro Vintoniv

Through the generous contributions of New England Conservatory friends, parents, and corporate sponsors, more pre-college students will have access to a musical education at NEC. "Kids in Harmony," the NEC Preparatory School's first annual awards dinner and concert held on December 1, raised $35,000 for student scholarships.

"The event was a terrific success," said Mark Churchill, Dean of Preparatory and Continuing Education. "We brought to the community the message of NEC's commitment to music in the life of every young person. The money raised will allow more students to have the opportunity to experience the power of music, both here at NEC and in our numerous partnerships and collaborations with youth music organizations."

In photo: Cleve Killingsworth, President and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, which helped sponsor the gala, was one of the evening's supporters, along with NEC Overseer Marvin Gilmore '51 and NEC Trustee Jane Manopoli Patterson.

See photos from "Kids in Harmony."

NEC jazz musicians at Panama fest

Pianist Danilo Perez of the NEC jazz and improvisation faculty has announced the third annual Panama Jazz Festival, scheduled for January 19-21. A native of Panama, and the nation's official cultural ambassador, Perez is the festival's founder and artistic director. As in past years, he will bring NEC students and fellow faculty to Panama. This year the NEC musicians will not only perform, but will also provide music workshops for students at the Belle Arts Department of the University of Panama.

Previous editions of the festival have captured the imagination of top jazz writers. Last year, a feature by the Boston Herald's Larry Katz was headlined "Panama, for one weekend, the Hub of jazz universe."

Find out about jazz studies at NEC.

Faculty scholar edits Rossini

The newly published critical edition of Rossini's opera Zelmira (1822) is now in print and "every dot and slur" in the massive three-volume score had to pass under the painstaking, analytical eye of NEC musicologist Helen Greenwald. Co-editor of the project, Greenwald worked for two years on the volumes, just published by University of Chicago Press/Ricordi/Fondazione Rossini as part of a comprehensive Rossini edition.

The draft of Zelmira on which this critical edition is based was road-tested by Roger Norrington in a 1995 performance. But Greenwald went on to consult 34 different sources, including such scholarly adventures as finding 180-year-old pin holes in the opera's Paris manuscript, marking a deletion that had made way for a new superstar aria.

This critical edition is designed for performability by today's musicians, and is a warmup for Greenwald's next challenge: the critical edition of Verdi's Attila. Greenwald teaches NEC's rotating opera survey courses: Mozart, Italian, Wagner.

Explore NEC's faculty, beginning with Helen Greenwald.

NPR picks up "From the Top"

National Public Radio has acquired exclusive national distribution rights for "From the Top," the hit radio showcase for America's best young classical musicians hosted by NEC alumnus, pianist Christopher O'Riley '81 A.D. NPR will begin distribution of the series on January 2 to nearly 250 radio stations across the country, serving an audience of nearly 750,000 weekly listeners.

"From the Top" is produced in association with WGBH Radio Boston and NEC, its home and education partner.

Find out more about NEC partnerships.

Donald Martino dies

Donald Martino, who headed NEC's composition department from 1969 to 1981, died December 8 of a heart attack. He was 74 years old.

Much of Martino's life as a composer unfurled during his time at NEC, including the composition of his chamber work Notturno, for which he received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize. Also while at NEC, Martino composed the Paradiso Choruses, an enormous oratorio inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy that was commissioned by the Paderewski Fund for Lorna Cooke deVaron and the NEC Chorus (in photo, with Martino).

Read more about Donald Martino.

Be a patron of the arts

photo by Andrew Hurlbut

Gifts from modest to magnanimous allow New England Conservatory to present more than 600 free concerts annually to the Boston community. When you give at any level, you're a patron of the arts. Additionally, your tax-deductible donation to the NEC Annual Fund supports student scholarships and all of the educational programs at NEC.

In photo: An NEC supporter chats with a student musician.

Give now online.