Takacs Quartet

Remembrance, resilience + forging our future

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Remembrance, resilience + forging our future Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/27/2022 - 00:00

John Davis

As I write to you from the 2022 Colorado Music Educators Association’s Clinic/Conference in Colorado Springs this week, I’m energized by the College of Music’s critical mission to inspire and equip the teachers, performers, composers, scholars and innovators of tomorrow.

At the same, we’re now in the third year of a global pandemic and the recent Omicron surge, among other factors, resulted in a remote start this semester. While we’re back in person now, the College of Music family also joins our broader community in healing and recovering from the devastation of the Marshall Fire, nearly one month ago. Additionally, many of us were deeply saddened to learn of violist Roger Tapping’s recent passing. In 1995, Tapping had relocated from London, England, to join our Takács Quartet; during his decade with the quartet, their Decca/London recordings—including the complete quartets of Bartók and Beethoven—placed them in Gramophone magazine’s Hall of Fame and won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy and three more Grammy nominations. Especially, he was beloved among his students, collaborators and audiences for his luminous talent and deep sense of humanity.

Yet even as we bear witness to loss and unknowable challenges with compassion and care, I see us rebounding with resilience again and again—undeterred in our shared quest for excellence, dogged in our pursuit to inform and influence what it means to be a successful, fulfilled creative artist in an increasingly diverse and interdisciplinary musical landscape.

Most immediately, here at the annual CMEA gathering of educators, I’m so proud to join friends and colleagues in celebrating and recognizing alumna Carrie Proctor (BME ’19), the most recent recipient of the CMEA Outstanding Young Music Educator Award; and Professor of Music Education James Austin, the latest inductee in the CMEA Hall of Fame. Says Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Margaret Berg, “I can think of no one more deserving of this prestigious award than Jim, given his wide-reaching and impactful professional accomplishments, commitment to excellence and unwavering dedication to the K-12 music teaching and music teacher education professions. Jim’s influence on the K-12 music teacher and music teacher education landscape, both in Colorado and nationally, is truly inspiring.”

Additionally, since the start of the year, I was thrilled to learn that first-year master’s student Kedrick Armstrong (orchestral conducting) landed on The Washington Post’s “composers and performers to watch” list, and that alumna mezzo-soprano Claire McCahan won the 47th National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Artists Awards competition ... to note only a few highlights in a steady stream of impressive achievements among our students, alumni, faculty and staff.

Meanwhile, back on the Boulder campus, newly appointed Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity + Inclusion (DEI) Susan Thomas—who also directs our American Music Research Center and serves as professor of musicology—and Diversity and Outreach Coordinator Alexis McClain, our newest staff member, are deeply dedicated to further ensuring a welcoming culture at the College of Music that increasingly integrates and uplifts DEI across all our programs, performances, presentations and academic curricula.

That’s why I’m energized, despite setbacks—even sadness—along our shared journey. Because what we do at the College of Music is making a difference. Together, we’re creating the soundscape of what matters.

Happy New Year!

Photo: Earlier this week, we snapped this impromptu photo of Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity + Inclusion Susan Thomas (left), Diversity and Outreach Coordinator Alexis McClain and Dean John Davis.

“Even as we bear witness to loss and unknowable challenges with compassion and care, I see us rebounding with resilience again and again—undeterred in our shared quest for excellence, dogged in our pursuit to inform and influence what it means to be a successful, fulfilled creative artist in an increasingly diverse and interdisciplinary musical landscape.”

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“Holding space” for a culture of belonging

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 07:00:00 +0000

“Holding space” for a culture of belonging Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/15/2021 - 00:00

John Davis

I’m especially proud of our progress to ensure an increasingly welcoming spirit within our beautifully expanded Imig Music Building. Achieving Diversity, Equity + Inclusion (DEI) is a deeply thoughtful culture shift sustained over time, yet I’m already wowed by the early enthusiasm of our faculty and staff to incorporate DEI into everything we do—from our academic curricula to our performances, presentations and other programming.

For example, Professor of Flute Christina Jennings now requires a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) piece for all flute auditions and Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano Alexandra Nguyen recently shared that she integrates sight-readings and “quick learn” pieces by women composers of the 18th and 19th centuries in her freshman sightreading class. Nguyen is also directing a dissertation project on Black composer Margaret Bonds and coaching students in works by Amy Beach, Rebecca Clarke, Valerie Coleman, Gabriela Lena Frank, Adolphus Hailstork, Ulysses Kay, Florence Price and others. Stay tuned for information about Chinese-Canadian composer Alexina Louie’s residency in spring 2023, organized by Nguyen and including cross-departmental collaborations that benefit both composition and instrumental faculty and students. (Louie is this year’s recipient of Canada’s Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award.)

At the same time, our choral program recently organized residencies with guest artists Joan Catoni Conlon (the college’s director of choral research emerita) and Cheryl Anderson, director of choirs at Cabrillo State University. In April, our choirs also hosted virtual lectures with Jeffrey Murdock, associate director of choral activities at the University of Arkansas and Craig Robertson, choral director at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia. A virtual summer colloquium organized by Raul Dominguez (DMA Choral Conducting) further featured women and ethnically and racially diverse guest lecturers.

The college’s composition faculty, too, have hosted Vietnamese American composer Viet Cuong and Castle of Our Skins Founder Ashleigh Gordon while working to rebrand our new music series to be more inclusive of genre, aesthetic and style, and to become more engaged with our larger community. As Assistant Professor of Composition Annika Socolofsky puts it, “My number one priority is overhauling syllabi and class structure to make my classroom as inclusive as possible. This includes using compositional examples written by women, trans, gender non-conforming, two spirit, BIPOC, non-European composers and the many intersections of those identities, but it also means reaching outside of the classical genre entirely for musical study and compositional examples relevant to course material. My personal teaching quota is that at least half of the repertoire I teach must be written by composers from underrepresented identities. I have also created my courses in a way that holds space and creates structure for discussions surrounding important, current topics to our field such as cultural appropriation, cause appropriation, historical exclusion and aesthetic bias.”

It’s inspiring to build upon that kind of passion for progress in every program and department—from music education and research to chamber music, opera, jazz and more.

Indeed, as we continue to spotlight the works of underrepresented composers in our student and faculty recitals and ensemble performances—and through culturally responsive academic activities—we’re also thrilled to share their impact and influence more broadly, campus- and community-wide. We hope to see you at the world premiere of composer-in-residence Christopher Theofanidis’ “On the Bridge of the Eternal” this spring and perhaps you’ll join us for the 2022 International Double Reed Society Conference at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, featuring artists and compositions by diverse ethnicities and genders from around the globe. Not to mention, I can’t wait for our Takács Quartet’s recording next year of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Fantasiestücke.” Here’s a preview.

That’s just scratching the surface of what’s underway and what’s to come. Keep in touch for an announcement in January about new dedicated leadership of our DEI efforts, further formalizing and growing this timely, critical work toward developing the universal musician.

Meanwhile, I commend and congratulate our winter graduates, and encourage you to practice self-care and wellness this holiday season. After all, “holding space” includes taking care of each other and ourselves.

See you in 2022!

As 2021 comes to a close and I reflect on my first year as Dean, I’m filled with gratitude for our College of Music family and all we’ve accomplished in a new and evolving hybrid learning environment. I’m especially proud of our progress to ensure an increasingly welcoming spirit within our beautifully expanded Imig Music Building.

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