Campus Stories - Department of Music
Stanford Philharmonia conductor orchestrates a set of challenges
Each of the four works to be performed in Stanford Philharmonia’s first concert of the academic year presents a challenge of one sort or another, which is all part of Anna Wittstruck’s plan. Wittstruck, the acting assistant professor and interim music director and conductor of orchestral studies in the Department of Music, conducts Stanford Philharmonia,…
Stanford launches its first free online course in classical music appreciation
A new, free Stanford Online class that explores the early evolution of the string quartet and features classical music and commentary is now open for enrollment. Designed to be of interest both to musicians and those with no prior knowledge of the form, Defining the String Quartet: Haydn explores the origins of the string quartet…
Stanford Symphony Orchestra’s crowning jewel concerts
May 21 and 22, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra presents a program of late romantic music by two Jewish composers: Gustav Mahler and Ernest Bloch. While both wrote music for spectacular orchestral forces with complex colors and textures, Mahler and Bloch chose divergent paths to express Jewish identity in art and life. Mahler, an assimilated artist…
Welcome to the California Jazz Hall of Fame, Fred Berry
In February, Fredrick Berry, lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Music, was inducted into the California Alliance for Jazz’s Hall of Fame. Berry was one of three individuals chosen by the alliance’s board, which recognizes the best jazz educators and players in California. “I am both grateful and humbled to be considered a member of this…
Stanford organist draws lofty sounds from Memorial Church’s thousands of pipes
Under the skillful hands – and feet – of university organist Robert Huw Morgan, Stanford’s Memorial Church fills with remarkable music from the Fisk-Nanney organ, a Baroque-type instrument that is one of five organs in the church.
A decidedly Stanford take on Leonard Bernstein
The Department of Music and the student-run troupe Stanford Savoyards are combining forces to present a LEONARD BERNSTEIN double feature in Dinkelspiel Auditorium: the satiric operetta Candide and the opera Trouble in Tahiti. Bernstein’s Candide, drawing inspiration from Voltaire’s novella that blends comedy, tragedy and farce, has been transposed to the Farm, using projections of images drawn from the…
Stanford New Ensemble presents new classical music in new ways to new audiences
Joo-Mee Lee’s vision for the Stanford New Ensemble is as expansive as the “new classical music” genre. Lee, who teaches introductory violin and a course on professional development in music in the Department of Music, said she is taking the Stanford New Ensemble out of the music hall for concerts in untraditional venues around campus….
Stanford scholars spy history of capitalist culture in Bond film songs
In the lead-up to Spectre, the latest film in the decades-long James Bond spy thriller franchise opening this week, much of the recent buzz has centered on another long-running 007 tradition – the title song. Amidst all the speculation about who would sing the new Bond song, Stanford scholars Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold wrote…
Recording produced at Bing Concert Hall makes first step toward Grammy nomination
The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences announced that the recording of Joseph Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass (Nelsonmesse) and Symphony No. 102 performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Stanford Chamber Strings and Stanford Chamber Chorale in Bing Concert Hall has qualified for the first-round ballot in four Grammy categories: Best Choral Performance, Best Chamber Music/Small…
Congratulations 2014-15 graduates!
Go forward and remember the words of your Baccalaureate speaker and civil rights leader Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. who said that the world was calling out for you to realize your talents – not just for your own gain – but also to lift up those in whose shoes, but for the grace of God,…
Emerging String Quartet Program musicians find an audience behind bars and beyond
The silver metal walls of the cavernous industrial gymnasium reflected orange-clad women, staff members and corrections officers who came together to hear the Cecilia String Quartet perform Mendelssohn’s Opus 44, No. 2. Any nervousness the musicians felt going through the security check transformed into energy, encouraged by more than 60 incarcerated women at the San…
Choices!
It’s May at Stanford and that of course means – an exciting smorgasbord of arts activities. Every weekend is packed with an abundance of arts options. Make some difficult choices – or attend them all! Here is just a sampling of what each weekend brings: May 1-3: Musical Happy Hour with Fleet Street and Chanticleer…
Music scholarship and dance performance come together in Stanford scholar’s study of interwar music
Music graduate student Anna Wittstruck is a unique combination of performer and scholar. The orchestral cellist currently conducts the Stanford Wind Ensemble and has conducted the Summer Stanford Symphony Orchestra for the past five years. She has also conducted in the Orchestral Studies program at Stanford. In the midst of all this conducting and performing,…
Stanford students discover an 18th-century music treasure in Green Library
This week, Marie-Louise Catsalis and her music students will present what is likely the first performance in over 300 years of Neapolitan composer Francesco Durante’s Stabat Mater. Last spring, Catsalis and her students discovered an incomplete Latin music manuscript by Durante in Stanford Library’s Special Collections and undertook the challenge of finishing the work, editing…
The Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra from China
The 2015 Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival will showcase the China Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra will be in residency at Stanford University from February 18th to 22nd, 2015. During this period, it will give two symphonic concerts on February 20 and 21 in the Bing Concert Hall, focusing on music by Chinese composers. One of…
For Stanford Symphony Orchestra, The Planets align
For two nights, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra took center stage at Bing Concert Hall to perform The Planets by Gustav Holst. However, this was no ordinary production. An enormous projection screen, featuring images from around the solar system, accompanied the orchestra. The piece is broken into seven movements, with each movement corresponding to a particular…
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