Read the review of Arnaldo Cohen’s latest CD, Franz Liszt: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2; Totentanz, at http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=11130.

Edmund Cord gave trumpet master classes in Bedford and Solihull, England, in May. Former Jacobs School of Music student Brant Tilds invited Professor Cord to work with his students and others in Bedfordshire, as well as coach a brass band and perform with a bass octet in Solihull. The master classes included performances by Cord of the Concertino by Otto Nicolai, the Piece en Forme de Habanera of Ravel, and arias by Puccini.

David Dzubay won 1st prize in the 2007 Indiana State University (ISU) Contemporary Music Festival/ Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra (ICO) Composition Competition. The ICO will perform his award-winning Double Black Diamond at the ISU festival on Nov. 9, 2007.

Brevard Music Center recently announced the creation of the David Effron Principal Conductor's Chair, which was created to honor Maestro Effron's 11-year tenure there and presented to him by its board of trustees on July 21, 2007. Brevard has several endowed chairs, but the principal conductor's chair is the most prestigious. The board established a special $500,000 endowment to fund the chair, and, as artistic adviser designate, Keith Lockhart will be the first to occupy the position, effective Oct. 1.

Violinist and conductor Jaime Laredo has been named artistic adviser at the Fort Wayne Philharmonic for the 2008-09 season. He will consult on programming and hiring of guest artists during the music director search season. In addition to being an interim artistic chief for the Philharmonic, Laredo will perform with or conduct the orchestra for two concerts during the season.

On August 1, at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, Emile Naoumoff performed in a concert playing Faure's second piano quartet with Joshua Bell, Kim Kashkashian, and Johannes Moser. Click here to view the performance. He also taught piano master classes at the academy there.

Jacobs welcomes Dr. Keith Cochran as the new music collection development librarian and associate director of the William and Gayle Cook Music Library. Since 2000, Cochran has been the music librarian at Ball State University. Prior to that, he worked in the Music Library and the Rare Book Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he received his Master of Library Science degree and Ph.D. in Musicology. He has been a contributing editor to Notes, the Journal of the Music Library Association (MLA), and a member of the MLA’s Resource Sharing and Collection Development Committee, as well as an active presenter, reviewer, and author.

Byron Bartosh, trumpet, performed the national anthem at the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, the annual NASCAR race in Indianapolis, on July 29, 2007. There were an estimated 300,000 people in attendance plus national coverage on ESPN. He is a student of Edmund Cord. Click here for the video.

Leighann Daihl, a master’s degree student of Barbara Kallaur (Early Music/historical flutes) and Kathryn Lukas (modern flute) won 3rd Prize in the National Flute Association "Baroque Flute Artist" competition August 9–12 in Albuquere, NM. Semi-finalists came from throughout the United States, as well as Great Britain, Germany, and Switzerland. Daihl was the youngest contestant and the only American to make it into the finals. This competition is held bi-annually.

The American Brass Quintet just released a CD titled Jewels on the Summit Records label that includes composition student Clint Needham’s Brass Quintet No. 1, "Circus." Click here for more information.

Trombonist Alan Page is featured in an ad placed in all IU Campus Bus Service buses. Page, who drives a campus bus part-time, was the only student selected to do training for new bus operators. He has also been giving trombone lessons for several years. Click here to view the ad.

ALUMNI NEWS

Holiday Homecoming with Angela Brown, a one-hour music special, will air during the Christmas season this year on over half of the PBS stations around the country. Each station chooses its own airing dates and times, so keep a look out for it in your area.

Click here (PDF file) to see tenor Lawrence Brownlee’s 2007–08 season schedule.

Kenneth Green, MM ‘07, has been named assistant professor of music at Allen University, Columbia South Carolina. While at IU, Green was a trumpet student of Edmund Cord.

Kinga Skretkowicz, MM’03, PD’06, voice, a student of Patricia Stiles, currently resides in Houston where she has been active as a soloist in opera, oratorio, and recital. In March 2007, Skretkowicz sang the parts of Solveig, Anitra, and Ase in Grieg's Peer Gynt and Juliet in Tchaikovsky-Taneyev's Romeo and Juliet with the Marion Philharmonic, Alexander Platt conducting. In April, she returned to Chicago Opera Theater (COT) as Amor in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, under the baton of Jane Glover. She also took part in the COT annual Gala. In June, she performed the role of Tonya Harding in Abigail Al-Doory's Tonya and Nancy: The Opera, presented at the Opera Vista Houston Contemporary Opera Festival, the company Skretkowicz helped to create. This summer, she began to work as executive director for Ars Lyrica Houston.