Conservatory Faculty News: Summer 2017
Professor of Piano Elizabeth (Watkins) Caluda, D.M.A., has retired after serving for 39 years on the faculty at Shenandoah Conservatory. In her letter to Dean Michael Stepniak, Ed.D., informing him of her retirement, Dr. Caluda said, “I am grateful to Shenandoah for having given me the opportunity to fulfill my professional goals of developing and teaching in a university class piano program as well as teaching applied piano to many undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degree students.”
Professor of Percussion Earl Yowell, M.M., was a featured timpani artist and clinician for the Percussive Arts Society’s Virginia/DC Chapter Day of Percussion on March 25 at Virginia Tech’s Moss Arts Center. More than 200 students, professionals and teachers gathered to celebrate percussion.
Director and Associate Professor of Performing Arts Leadership and Management (PALM) David Edelman, M.F.A., attended the Association for Arts Administration Educators International Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, in May, participating in a panel presentation on cultural leadership in an age of anxiety with colleagues from the United Kingdom and Serbia. June 5 through June 11, Edelman led a group of 11 graduate students from the PALM program to Athens, Greece, for the first Summer Arts Leadership Institute. He was recently published in “Grassroots Leadership and the Arts for Social Change” with a chapter titled, “Acting Up and Fighting Back: How New York’s Artistic Community Responded to AIDS.” Edelman was also awarded an innovation grant from Shenandoah Conservatory to spend time this summer researching the development of a distance-learning curriculum for the PALM program. And, he is also working this summer on two research papers: one on narcissism and leadership training and the other on emerging international networks in arts management research/education.
Associate Professor of Music History and Literature Laurie McManus, Ph.D., presented a paper at the 5th Biennial North American Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, in Nashville, Tennessee, on the campus of Vanderbilt University from June 7 through June 9. The paper is, “Where Present and Past Meet: Teaching Romantic Performativity and Reception.”
Auxiliary Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music History Alanna Ropchock, Ph.D., is on a research fellowship this summer at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. She has a forthcoming article in the prestigious Early Music Journal.
Director of Graduate Music Therapy Studies and Associate Professor of Music Therapy Anthony Meadows, Ph.D., had an article co-authored with Katherine Wimpenny from the United Kingdom accepted for publication in the Journal of Music Therapy. The article is titled, “Core Themes in Music Therapy Clinical Improvisation: An Arts-informed Qualitative Research Synthesis.” This article also included a video re-presentation of the synthesis data (this first of its kind in the music therapy field) and two Shenandoah Conservatory graduate music therapy students, Iliana Fernandez ’17 and Nick Mariani ’17, both of whom were integral to the video. The students worked from a theme Dr. Meadows and Wimpenny developed, constructed the video and edited the final version. According to Meadows, “In my field, this is an advancement of research methodology—the first to include video as a data analysis and presentation tool as part of a research synthesis.”
“The video represents the data in two ways,” Meadows said. “1) it includes the written themes and quotes from the study in the actual video (you see these as text) and also uses the visual image of water to represent the improvisational process, with music from the original qualitative studies in the video. Thus, the video re-presents the written data analysis in an artistic form.”
Meadows will also present at the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) Leadership Academy. This one-day program will be held at the national AMTA conference in St. Louis, Missouri, in November. Also, Meadows was invited to write a chapter for the second volume of “Guided Imagery and Music: The Bonny Method and Beyond.” The chapter will focus on Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) and cancer care. Barcelona Publishers is working to update the first edition of the book originally published in 2002, now 15 years ago, with the goal that the book will be the primer for GIM training.
Director of the Janette Ogg Voice Research Center and Associate Professor of Voice (Baritone) David Meyer, D.M., presented three scientific research papers in collaboration with some of his students and sang at the Voices of Summer Gala with pianist Richard Raub in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at The Voice Foundation‘s 46th annual symposium that focused on care of the professional voice from May 31 through June 4. Additionally, he attended meetings of The Voice Foundation’s Advisory Board, the Journal of Voice Editorial Board, the Voice Labs Representatives, the New Investigators Forum and with Plural Publishing as a consulting editor.
Auxiliary Adjunct Associate Professor of Voice and Co-Founder of the Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM) Vocal Pedagogy Institute Edrie Means Weekly, ’84, M.M., attended and performed at The Voice Foundation‘s 46th Annual Symposium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 31 through June 4. The theme of the conference focused on the care of the professional voice. She sang, “How Long Has This Been Going On?” at the award gala and dedicated it to awardee and Broadway legend Tommy Tune, with whom she has performed in the past. Weekly also presented a workshop session titled, “Country Singing for Musical Theatre 101” in June at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and presented two research papers – “Retraining Voice Users with a Diagnosed Vocal Pathology” and “Do Amateurs and Professionals Seek the Same Vocal Health Advice?: Survey of 1195 Voice Users.”
Since June of last year, Coordinator of Music Theory and Associate Professor of Music Keith Salley, Ph.D., has published three articles in the College Music Symposium, Journal of Jazz Studies and Music Theory Online. He has also served as guest editor for the journals Engaging Students and The Journal of Jazz Studies, presented at the American Musicological Society/Society for Music Theory joint conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, and gave the keynote talk at the “Sound, Color, Shape” interdisciplinary symposium at the University of South Dakota. Salley has a forthcoming chapter in the book, “Over and Over: Exploring Repetition in Popular Music” (Bloomsbury Press) and is beginning work on an invited chapter for a book on the evolution of jazz harmony (Oxford University Press).
Director of Composition and Coordinator of New Music Jonathan Newman, M.M., traveled to the Barbican Centre in London, England, on July 7 for the premiere of a new choral work for the BBC Singers. He was also in Austria for a week in July to serve as a guest artist with the Mid-Europe World Youth Wind Orchestra Project in Schladming, Austria. In October, Newman traveled to New York City for the world premiere of his re-imagined “MASS,” with the Choir of Trinity Wall Street.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Production and Recording Technology Dan Shores ’99, B.M., presented at the 142nd Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in Berlin, Germany, from May 20 through May 23.
This summer, Director and Associate Professor of Music Production and Recording Technology Golder O’Neill, M.M.E.,worked on installing a new network recording system called RedNet that will connect three of Shenandoah’s buildings and performance areas to record recitals and performances from remote locations.
Professor of Choral Conducting and Choral Music Karen Keating ’02, D.M.A., served as the music director for Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre’s (SSMT) sold-out run of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”
Distinguished Artist-in-Residence, Chair of Keyboard Division and Professor of Piano John O’Conor, Mus. D. is performing and teaching around the world during the summer season. From May 16 through May 27, he presented four recitals in Ireland. From there, he traveled to Sweden from May 18 through May 20 to present a recital and masterclass at Karlstad University. From May 29 through June 9, he traveled to Vienna, Austria, to serve as a jury member at the International Beethoven Piano Competition. He then traveled to Shenzhen, China, from June 11 through June 24 to serve as a jury member at the Shenzhen International Piano Concerto Competition. From June 26 through July 2, he hosted a number of masterclasses at the Adamant Summer Piano Festival in Montpelier, Vermont. From July 3 through July 16, he served as a visiting professor at the Showa University of Music in Tokyo, Japan. From July 18 through July 29, he was in Dublin, Ireland, to lead masterclasses for the annual Beethoven Bootcamp at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. From August 14 through August 16, traveled to Galway, Ireland, to present a number of masterclasses.
This summer Professor of Theatre Kirsten Trump, M.F.A., coached dialects for Evan Linder’s “Byhalia, Mississippi.” It is being directed by Marc Masterson, the former artistic director of Actor’s Theater of Louisville, Kentucky.
Adjunct Instructor of Theatre Michael “Jonz” Jones, M.F.A., designed two floats in the New York City Pride Parade. One float was made for Target and the other for Choice Hotels, which is also in the Boston Pride Parade.
