Sonneck Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXIII, no. 2 (Summer 1997)
Members in the News
N. Lee Orr, School of Music Georgia State University in Atlanta has been promoted
to full professor this year. His work has been in nineteenth-century American art music.
Last May Emory University Press, The Scolars Press, published his "Alfredo Barili and the
Rise of Classical Music in Atlanta." He is now working on a study of the life and works of
organist/composer, Dudley Buck.
Ron Pen has been formally appointed Director of the John Jacob Niles
Center for American Music at the University of Kentucky. The Center, which recently
acquired the Glenn C. Wilcox Collection, will provide a resource for scholarship in the
area of American music, particularly focusing on the southeastern region.
David and Ginger Hildebrand played a private concert this February for Al
and Tipper Gore and their guests, the Prime Minister of Russia, Victor Chernomyrden,
and his wife. The foursome sat attentively in the dining room at Mount Vernon
and enjoyed colonial music on period instruments. The Vice President had requested
musicological background on the period so that he could "brief" the guests during the
pre-concert tour of the house. Hearty handshakes and photos followed.
Nancy Newman has received a fellowship from the American Antiquarian
Society to work in the AAS Library in Worcester, Mass. Ms. Newman's project is
"Good Music for a Free People: Germania Musical Society in the United States: 1848-1854."
Olivia Mattis is reviving interest in the early electronic instrument,
the theremin. She has organized the first Theremin Summer Institute and Festival in
Portland, Maine. Twenty-five theremin students will come from all over North America to
study the instrument with two virtuoso players, Lydia Kavina and Eric Ross. Concerts (on
June 20 and 21) will include works by Percy Grainger, Bohuslav Martinu, Elliott
Schwartz, and others.
Sonneck Society member Wallace McKenzie, who will be retiring this year,
was honored in a symposium at Louisiana State University April 25-26, 1997. Richard
Crawford provided the keynote speech on "Writing the History of American Music." Three
separate sessions covering McKenzie's Research interests (20th century topics, American
music, and Sacred Harp) included papers by former students and colleagues. On Friday
night a concert of featured early music and pieces by McKenzie, including the world
premiere of his First Psalm by the LSU Schola Cantorum, Sara Lynn Baird, director.
The Symposium concluded with a Sacred Harp Sing organized by members of the Louisiana
Sacred Harp Singing convention.
Phyllis Danner, archivist for the Sousa Archives for Band Research at UIUC, will present
lectures about the life, times, and music of John Philip Sousa, the men (and women!) of the
world-famous Sousa Band, and Sousa's Illinois connection at a weeklong Elderhostel session
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) during the third week in July 1997.
Area musicians will present a Sousa-style band concert and recitals of Sousa's chamber
works in conjunction with the event.
Ralph P. Locke, professor of musicology, Eastman School of Music, received the
ASCAP-Deems Award for Excellence in Writing about Music in December 1996. A more
extended version of the material in his article, "Paradoxes of the Woman Patron in
America" (Musical Quarterly 78/4 (Fall 1994), 789-825), is forthcoming
in the book Cultivating Music in America: Woman Patrons and Archivists since
1860 (University of California Press coedited by Cyrilla Barr.
Karin Pendle served as general editor for a special issue of Contemporary
Music Review (16/1-2) concerning American Women Composers. This special issue,
encompassing information on a wide range of topics as well as several individual composers,
contained articles by Pendle and another Sonneck member, Leslie Lassetter.
Phi Mu Alpha presented its "Man of Music" award to Leonard Slatkin, director of the
National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. and honorary Sonneck Society member. This honor
is given at each National Assembly to one Sinfonian who, through significant musical activity,
has distinguished himself, furthering the cause of music in America and brought honor to
Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.
William Osborne is embarking on book-length overview of the music of Ohio. A
product of Osborne's research was his October 1996 concert featuring organ works by Ohio
composers James Hotchkiss Rogers, Carl Hugo Grimm, Eunice Lea Kettering, Edwin Arthur Kraft,
Joseph Waddell Clokey, and Ralph Eli Clewell.
Updated 9/22/97