Olivia DrakeWith a boost from National Endowment for the Arts, Angel Gil-Ordóñez's Washington DC-based orchestra will continue making music for seasons to come. Gil-Ordóñez, music director of the Wesleyan Orchestra, adjunct professor of music, director of private lessons, chamber music and ensembles, learned that his Post-Classical Ensemble received a $50,000 grant from The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The award is made possible through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. "We are still jumping for joy," Gil-Ordóñez says. "It is such an honor, and reassurance that the NEA and the Recovery Act consider that our work must be…
Alvin Lucier, professor of music, Iván Naranjo MA ’09, and Katherine Young MA '08 are mentioned in a July 19 New York Times article titled "Where Bows Tap and the Cello Travels." The Flux Quartet, which performed an American contemporary music program at Bargemusic near the Brooklyn Bridge, performed music that grew from their association from Wesleyan. For several years the quartet has participated in Wesleyan’s graduate seminar for composers, playing new pieces by students. Along with an experimental work by composer Lucier, who has been on the Wesleyan faculty for nearly 40 years, there were recent scores by two…
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Neely Bruce, professor of music, lead 89 trombones, a soprano and an organ in the East Coast premiere of Henry Brant’s “Orbits” in the rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum June 21, as part of both the museum’s Works & Process series and the citywide festival Make Music New York. A New York Times article on the event is online here. Henry Brant is a 1998 Honorary Degree recipient.
Tesla Place, a "thunderous light project" by Pedro Alejandro, associate professor of dance, was performed May 10 and 11 on the Wesleyan campus. The dance, light and sound-based performance began outside Crowell Concert Hall and ended in the Center for the Arts Courtyard. The theme focused on the inventor/scientist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). Tesla Place was created in collaboration with Marcela Oteiza, adjunct assistant professor of theater and faculty fellow; Paul Boylan; Sal Privitera, audio-visual technician; Adam Tinkle; graduate student Rod O'Connor; Dante Brown '09; Brittany Delany '09; Aaron Freedman '10; Spencer Garrod '09; Shayna Keller '09; and Samantha Sherman '09.…
The dance and music departments of Wesleyan hosted the West African Drumming and Dance Spring Concert showcasing the vibrancy of West African cultures through their music and dance forms. In West Africa, dance is life embodied in rhythm and movement. It celebrates and reinforces life and its various cycles. Right from conception to death, people in West Africa are called upon to honor and celebrate the different stages, achievements and successes of life, as well as to mourn and remember bitter experiences and losses, through music and dances. (Photos by Alexandra Portis '09)
Wesleyan jazz musicians have been tooting their own horns to the local community. During spring semester, the 20-member band has performed six times at public elementary, middle and high schools in Middletown. They work under the direction of vibraphonist-composer Jay Hoggard, adjunct associate professor of music. "It's good for the Wesleyan students to get out of their little shell of the universe according to Momma Wesleyan, go a few blocks away and play for young people who may or may not have been exposed to this type of music before," Hoggard says. "We're representing jazz and we’re representing Wesleyan." The…
Twenty-four Wesleyan students will hit a high note in their singing careers April 19, when they perform with one of the preeminent choral groups in Connecticut. The Wesleyan Concert Choir is teaming up with Greater Middletown Chorale, the region's 32 year-old community chorus, and a 22-piece string orchestra of professional instrumentalists drawn from the New Haven Symphony and Yale Symphony Orchestras for a concert to be held at Crowell Concert Hall. "On measure eight, energize it, not with volume but with energy," says director Joseph D'Eugenio, during a March 10 group practice. "And be very anticipatory of the diminuendo (more…)
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Jorge Arevalo Mateus, a Ph.D candidate in ethnomusicology, was featured in the March 5 edition of The Middletown Press in an article titled "Global music, culture student in residence at Wesleyan." Mateus, a music archivist, ethnomusicologist, scholar, musician, composer and audio installation artist, is a Grammy-winning producer for Best Historical Recording. In 2008, Mateus won an award for writing from the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, CD Liner Notes, and he has published many essays, articles and reviews in academic and popular journals, edited volumes, and other publications such as New York Archives Magazine, Ethnomusicology, Journal of Popular Music Studies; and…
Angel Gil-Ordóñez, adjunct professor of music, was named "Artist of the Week" by classical music label Naxos. The former associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Spain, Gil-Ordóñez has conducted symphonic music, opera and ballet throughout Europe, the United States and Latin America. He conducted the music for the newly-released DVD, The City, a classic 1939 documentary film.