The halls of the Westbrook Music Building are once again busy and our faculty, staff, students and alumni are all doing amazing things! Read about them here:
Emily Freeman
Sophomore Music Education Major Emily Freeman had the opportunity to record a song she wrote with a Kansas City Kia employee over last summer. "We were notified in August that we won the Kia Music Video competition and would have the opportunity to go to Las Vegas to perform the song for Kia Corporate employees at their annual convention. Kia flew me out to Las Vegas on September 20, and we were able to rehearse for around an hour, and then performed the following morning. There were probably around 400 people in attendance, and they recorded a "music video" to put on their website to promote the opening of the new plant in Mexico."
Nathaniel Sullivan
UNL Glenn Korff School of Music alumnus Nathaniel Sullivan will be starring as the affable bird catcher Papageno in the Bard College Conservatory of Music’s opera production, a double bill of a condensed reimagining of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Oliver Knussen’s Higglety Pigglety Pop! This innovative double bill will be produced in the acclaimed Sosnoff Theater at Bard College’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (designed by internationally renowned architect Frank Gehry) on March 4th at 7:00 PM and March 6th at 2:00 PM. Bard College is located in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York.
At UNL’s Glenn Korff School of Music, Sullivan studied with Alisa Belflower, who fostered in him a love for opera, art song, and musical theatre. Sullivan was the recipient of the Donald Walter Miller Scholarship, the Presser Foundation Scholarship, and the first-ever Don & Carole Burt Scholarship for Vocal Excellence. He was also awarded two recognitions from the Nebraska District Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, as well as the Orpheus Vocal Competition’s 2014 Bizet Award. In the summer of 2013, he received a Hixson-Lied International Study Grant, enabling him to attend the opera intensive summer program at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. Upon graduating from UNL in 2014, Sullivan was subsequently awarded first place in the college musical theatre men’s division of the inaugural National NATS Student Competition in Boston. He has since been accepted into the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where he is currently pursuing his master’s of music degree in vocal arts and has recently performed as the baritone soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass. For more information on Sullivan and his upcoming engagements, please visit www.nathanielsullivanbaritone.com.
Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum
Composer and Chamber Music Institute (2008) Alum Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum won a Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Classical.
"Ask Your Mama," Leslie Ann Jones, John Kilgore, Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, and Justin Merrill, engineers; Patricia Sullivan, mastering engineer (George Manahan and San Francisco Ballet Orchestra)
Here is a link to more information about the Album: http://www.askyourmama.com/album/
Brian Jeffers & Carey Brant
Brian Jeffers (student of Jamie Reimer, ’14) and Carey Brant (student of Kevin Hanrahan, ’13) are double cast as Nemorino in Arizona State University’s production of L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love) that runs February 25-27 at 7:30pm and February 28 at 2pm in the Evelyn Smith Music Theatre.
Michael Reichman
Michael Reichman was recently appointmented as General Manager of the York (PA) Symphony Orchestra.
An accomplished flutist and conductor, Reichman holds a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and a master’s degree in music with a focus on conducting from the New England Conservatory in Boston.
Donna Harler
A member of the Texas Tenors, John Hagen, who was a UNL Master of Music student of Professor of Voice Donna Harler, gave a special thank you to Harler during the group's sold-out performance Thursday night at the Lied Center for Performing Arts.
Hagen taught voice at Wartburg College and Northern Iowa University. He has sung many Verdi Requiems and Beethoven 9th symphony performances nationally. He received rave reviews for his performance of a Mascagni opera at Lincoln Center in his New York debut. He was a Metropolitan Opera Regional Finalist and has won numerous awards in NATS competitions.
http://thetexastenors.com/john-hagen/
Jeffrey McCray
Associate Professor of Bassoon Jeffrey McCray received a commendation for Achievement in Musical Direction from The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival for the production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee that was presented this past fall with the Johnny Carson School of Theatre & Film.
John W. Richmond
Listen to a half-hour interview by Dale Johnson of KFOR AM radio in Lincoln, NE with Dr. John W. Richmond, Professor & Director of UNL’s Glenn Korff School of Music as they explore the question, “Does Music Make You Smarter?” Beginning with the notions of IQ and standardized testing, Dr. Richmond chronicles the evolution of thought from the notion of “intelligence” to the more recent theories of “intelligences,” and explains why this research has been so influential in the field of music teaching and learning
Chiara String Quartet
The Chiara String Quartet, Hixson-Lied Artists-in-Residence at the Glenn Korff School of Music, will be performing this weekend at the Chamber Music America National Conference in New York City, at a rewards dinner honoring Ken Fischer (Chiara String Quartet-member Rebecca Fischer’s uncle and the longtime director of the University Music Society in Ann Arbor, Michigan--a presenter that was awarded a 2014 National Medal of Arts by President Obama). Ken Fischer is being presented with the Richard J. Bogolmony Service Award, C.M.A.’s highest honor. The Chiara String Quartet is to be featured as performers, alone and in collaboration with cellist Norman Fischer (brother of Ken and father of Rebecca), and violist James Dunham (formerly of the Cleveland Quartet and UNL Glenn Korff School of Music Associate Professor of Viola Clark Potter’s former viola teacher).
Sarah Cosano
DMA student Sarah Cosano will present a lecture at the North American Saxophone Alliance conference: An Approach to Jazz for the Classical Performer.