News From the Hartt Dean's Office
March 12, 2008

On the Town, March 12-14

The Hartt School Theatre Division will present On the Town, in Lincoln Theater on the campus of the University of Hartford from Wednesday, March 12 through Friday, March 14, 2008.

All performances are 7:30 p.m.  Tickets are $20, with discounts for senior citizens, students and groups.  For more information, contact the University Box Office at 860.768.4228 or 800.274.8587.  Tickets may be purchased online at www.hartford.edu/hartt.

On the Town, with music by Leonard Bernstein and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, follows three American sailors on a 24-hour shore leave in New York City during war-time 1944.  Each of the three sailors becomes enamored of a particular woman, and of the City itself, in this fun production.  Based on the 1944 ballet Fancy Free the popular 1949 musical has produced several classic songs, among them: New York, New York; Lonely Town; I Can Cook Too and Some Other Time.

Hartt’s production of On the Town is directed by Michael John McGann. The music director is Michael Morris and choreographer is Ralph Perkins.  McGann has previously directed productions of The Music Man, Falsettos, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Tennessee Williams’ Small Craft Warnings at Hartt.  His 35 year career includes acting and directing credits on Broadway, off-Broadway, TV, radio and films.

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Miami String Quartet Student Competition Concert, March 27

On Thursday, March 27, The Hartt School will present the annual Miami String Quartet Student Competition Concert, featuring five extremely talented Hartt students performing with Hartt’s resident quartet. The exceptional students who won the competition are flutist Noriyo Fukui, oboist Charles Huang, pianist Soyeon Kim, violinist Samuel Martin and cellist Esther Rogers. The program includes works by Mozart, Beethoven and Arensky.  The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. and will be held in Millard Auditorium on the University of Hartford campus at 200 Bloomfield Avenue in West Hartford, CT. Tickets for the concert are $30-36, with discounts available for seniors, students and groups.  Contact the University of Hartford Box Office at (860) 768-4228 or purchase tickets online at www.hartford.edu/hartt.

These five Hartt students will have the incomparable experience of performing for an audience side-by-side with a professional quartet.  The Student Competition Concert is a unique opportunity for Hartt’s student musicians – one that is unparalleled among similar music conservatory programs.  The winners were selected by the Miami String Quartet members from more than twenty applicants to the competition via two audition rounds.  At the preliminary audition, the student musicians performed a movement of a standard concerto or other substantial solo composition.  Ten students from this first round then moved on to a final audition, at which they performed a complete work with the members of the Quartet. 

The five exemplary students come from around the globe and across the U.S.  Noriyo Fukui is a second year master’s flute student from Japan, and studies with Janet Arms. Charles Huang, from Arlington Heights, Illinois, is a doctoral candidate and studies oboe with Humbert Lucarelli.  Soyeon Kim studies piano with David Westfall, and is a second year master’s student from South Korea.  Samuel Martin, from Duluth, Minnesota, is a first year student of the graduate professional diploma and studies with Anton Miller.  Cellist Esther Rogers, from Rochester, New York, is an undergraduate senior who studies with Terry King. 

Prior to the concert, there will be a dinner and an interview with a member of the Miami String Quartet. The dinner will be held at 6:00 p.m. in the 1877 Club in University of Hartford’s Harry Jack Grey Center. Dinner tickets are $39.  Following the concert, there will be a free reception in honor of the student performers.

The Miami String Quartet:  Praised by The New York Times as having “everything one wants in a quartet: a rich, precisely balanced sound, a broad coloristic palette, real unity of interpretive purpose and seemingly unflagging energy,” the Miami String Quartet is known throughout the nation for their diversity in programming and their poise in performance. The Miami String Quartet has appeared extensively throughout the United States and Europe, including performances in Boston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and San Francisco.   International highlights include appearances in Bern, Cologne, Istanbul, Montreal, Hong Kong, Taipei, Paris, and Amsterdam.  The Miami String Quartet is comprised of violinists Ivan Chan and Cathy Meng Robinson, violist Yu Jin, and cellist Keith Robinson. 

To learn more about the Miami String Quartet, visit www.miamistringquartet.com

Purchase tickets online

Hartt Symphony Orchestra, March 28

The Hartt School will present a concert by the Hartt Symphony Orchestra on Friday, March 28, at 7:30 p.m. in Lincoln Theater on the University of Hartford’s West Hartford campus.  Admission is $20 for the general public with discounts available for senior citizens, students and groups.  Contact the University of Hartford Box Office at (860) 768-4228 for tickets or purchase tickets online at www.hartford.edu/hartt.

The performance, under the baton of Orchestra director Christopher Zimmerman, includes Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slave and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”).  Guest violinist Katie Lansdale will join the Symphony for Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major.  The Hartt Symphony Orchestra is comprised of more than 80 student musicians from Hartt’s undergraduate and graduate degree programs, providing Hartt’s orchestral instrumentalists with exceptional performance experiences, including more than eight concerts a year and performances with the school’s dance, music theatre, and opera departments.

Katie Lansdale, Assistant Professor of Violin at The Hartt School, has performed solo and chamber music from childhood appearances at the White House to her present international career as a member of the Lions Gate Trio, Hartt's trio-in-residence.  She has studied with Josef Gingold, Felix Galimir, Ronda Cole, Donald Weilerstein and Mitchell Stern, and has received degrees at Yale University, the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Manhattan School of Music.  She has been coached intensively by members of the Juilliard, Tokyo and Guarneri Quartets, and has CD’s released on Centaur and Triton labels.

Lauded for her wide interests and repertoire, Lansdale has a particular passion for solo Bach, often performing the complete works in concert.  She won the Schlosspreis for her performance of solo Bach at Salzburg Mozarteum, was the grand prize winner at both the Yellow Springs and Fischoff National Chamber Music competitions, and won awards for both Outstanding Violinist and Outstanding Participant at Tanglewood’s Fellowship Program.  Since her debut with the Baltimore Symphony at age 14, her wide array of appearances has ranged from performances with Yo Yo Ma in Avery Fisher Hall to international festivals in Finland, Germany and France.  A founding member of the Locrian Ensemble, she regularly presented new solo and chamber works on the Locrian series in New York until 2004.  As a champion of new music, she has collaborated with a number of leading composers internationally, as a member of both the Lions Gate Trio and as a member of the Locrian Ensemble.

In 2001-2002, Lansdale initiated a school outreach program called “Music for 1,000 Children”.  She challenged her studio to play for 1,000 children, promising to play for another 1,000 herself.  Her studio then joined with the Hartt student chapter of ASTA (American String Teachers' Association) to challenge other groups in North America to play for 1,000 school children. Responses were highly enthusiastic, and in the end, musical performances were brought to 13,000 children from Quebec to Texas.

The Daily Telegraph of London wrote of Christopher Zimmerman’s professional debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, “Contact with the orchestra seemed immediate, the result a reading in which the playing responded keenly to gestures which themselves were expressive both of the symphony’s fiery vigor and of its finer nuances.  Christopher Zimmerman revealed a sharp interpretative profile and control of orchestral timbre…a most auspicious London debut.”  Critics have continued to sing Zimmerman’s praises in the U.S.; as Bangor Symphony Music Director, Robert Newall wrote of him: “a crisp baton technique, sure cues and strong body language - all mercifully without mannerisms or artifice -  he drew shimmering pianissimi or volcanic utterances from the orchestra in all the works”;  as a guest in Cleveland with the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, Donald Rosenberg of the Cleveland Plain Dealer described his performance as “some of the finest conducting at Severance (Hall) in recent years.”
           
Zimmerman graduated from Yale with a B.A. in Music, and received his Master’s from the University of Michigan.  Zimmerman’s professional debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was followed by engagements with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He has also conducted the Prague Symphony, the Slovak Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Edmonton Symphony, the Hartford Symphony, the El Paso Symphony, the Ohio Chamber Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra among many other orchestras.  In opera he has worked as the assistant conductor for Carmen at the Nimes Festival and as assistant conductor for Salome at the Mexico City Opera where he was immediately reinvited to conduct a production of Gianni Schicchi. In 1989 he co-founded and became Music Director of the City of London Chamber Orchestra.

In 1993 Zimmerman became Music Director of the Cincinnati Concert Orchestra, making his U.S. operatic debut conducting Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah.  Since then he has accumulated a broad operatic repertoire, from Handel’s Julius Caesar through Verdi, Puccini and Strauss to Bright Sheng’s Song of Majnun, the first and last winning the National Opera Association’s First Prize. In 1999 Zimmerman was a featured conductor in the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Conductors’ Preview with the Utah Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Zimmerman was appointed to succeed Werner Torkanowsky as Music Director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra in 1994 and in 1999 was appointed Music Director of the Hartt Symphony and Primrose Fuller Professor of Orchestral Studies at The Hartt School.  In 2001 Mr. Zimmerman left his position in Bangor to take up the Music Directorship of the Symphony of Southeast Texas.
 
Most recently, Maestro Zimmerman was invited to conduct in Brazil and with two orchestras in the People's Republic of China. This year he also led a series of concerts at the Wintergreen Performing Arts Festival in Virginia as well as returning for the third year to lead the Rose City Conductors' Workshop in Oregon.  Maestro Zimmerman is much sought after as a clinician and director of competitive all-state orchestras in the US.

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FOR YOUR INFORMATION

Excitement is Building for the Mort and Irma Handel Performing Arts Center

New roofing, new windows, double insulated walls, performance flooring and much more are transforming a former Cadillac distributorship into the state-of-the-art Mort and Irma Handel Performing Arts Center.
(UNotes Daily, March 6)
(University of Hartford Informer, Feb. 28)

The Hartt School Welcomes New Public Relations Manager, Sheri Ziccardi

Sheri Ziccardi, The Hartt School’s new Public Relations Manager, has successfully helped publicize several theaters and their productions since 1997, including stints as Publicity Chair for Hingham Civic Music Theater (MA), a Publicist for Reagle Players (MA), and Publicist/Press Representative for The River Rep at the Ivoryton Playhouse (CT).  In addition, she served as Publicity Chair for several conferences, as well as Public Relations Chair then Director of Membership Marketing, for the Eastern Association of Colleges and Employers.  Sheri spent fifteen years in Career Services, focused on working in the areas of communications and performing arts.  Before arriving at Hartt, she was Director of Career Services at Emerson College in Boston, MA.  Previously, she spent several years as Assistant Director of the Office of Career Services at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, was Assistant Director/Internship Coordinator at Providence College (RI), and Director of Career Planning and Placement at Fisher College (MA). 

An avid vocal and musical theater performer with a passion for performing arts, Sheri is thrilled to join The Hartt School, and is excited to help spread the word about our performances and events, as well as our accomplished students, alumni, and faculty.  You can email her at ziccardi@hartford.edu or call 860.768.4466.

ACADEMIC ACCOLADES

Stuart Younse has been named Connecticut Secondary Music Teacher of the Year by the Connecticut Music Educators Association. 

Julius Elias, former dean of the University of Connecticut’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as a former opera teacher at the University of Hartford, died on Feb. 25. He was 82. Elias was known as an opera aficionado. He translated about a dozen opera libretti for Columbia Records and other companies.
(UConn Advance, March 3)

STUDENT & ALUMNI NEWS

Matthew Hoch (MM, 2003) is completing his third year of tenure-track college teaching as Assistant Professor of Voice at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia. He has recently been named Editor-in-Chief of VOICEPrints, the official publication for the New York Singing Teachers Association (NYSTA). He will also begin a three-year term on the NYSTA Board of Directors in June.  He recently authored two articles (on Francis Poulenc and Nellie Melba) for the forthcoming Musicians and Composers of the Twentieth Century, which will be published in 2009 by Salem Press. He has also authored a deck of Knowledge Cards (on the history of country music) which will be issued by Pomegranate Communications in August of 2008. This summer, he will sing his fourth season with the Oregon Bach Festival under the direction of Helmuth Rilling.  Matthew lives happily in Rome, Georgia, with his wife Theresa and one-year-old daughter, Hannah.

Eugene Cantera (BM, 1982), a founder of Carrollton's Dallas School of Music, created with his colleagues an online music education tool.  The innovation is now expanding worldwide.
(Dallas Morning News, March 1)

Sue Terry (BM, 1982) will perform in Jamaica, NY with the York College faculty ensemble on Monday, March 17 at York College.  She will also critique York’s student jazz band.  For more information, email tzlabing@york.cuny.edu or click here. On Friday, March 28, Sue Terry will lead a group featuring Jesse Green, Tony Merino and Bill Goodwin with tunes from movies and commentary by Gil Barretto.  This performance will be held at The Deer Inn in Delaware Water Gap, PA.  For more information on this concert, go to: http://deerheadinn.com/.  Terry’s article “Jazzwomen of Note” was featured in a centerfold article in this month’s issue of Allegro.  Read it online here:

Read the Community Division's Newsletter

Students represent Connecticut in the National High School Honors Orchestra

Violist Michael Kan (student of Melinda Daetsch) and cellist Miguel Cutiongco (student of Terry King) represented Connecticut in the National High School Honors Orchestra.  This select group of 110 students from around the United States performed a concert in late February as part of the American String Teachers Association Convention which was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Students place 2nd & 3rd in the Hartford Symphony Concerto Competition

 Two students were competition winners at the Hartford Symphony Concerto Competition held in Simsbury, CT.  Andrew Grandahl, double bass student of Robert Black, was awarded second prize and Jason Ott, piano student of Tamila Humphreys, won third prize.  The competition took place at Simsbury High School.