Dmitry Rachmanov Serves on Juries for International Piano Competitions

Dmitry Rachmanov, associate professor of piano and the chair of the keyboard area, served on the jury the XV Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition, held June 17 - July 1, in Salt Lake City, Utah. In its 34th year, the prestigious quadrennial Bachauer Competition featured 40 pianists ages 19-32 who competed for more than $75,000 in prizes. Competitors performed in two recital rounds for an international jury of 10 distinguished artists with six finalists performing concertos with the Utah Symphony. Earlier in June Dr. Rachmanov was on the jury of the Russian Music International Piano Competition in San Jose, CA. The annual competition featured over 100 pianists from two dozen countries. In May Rachmanov toured Turkey, presenting recitals in Malatya and Istanbul. In July he attended a master course by the Irish pianist John O'Conor at the Adamant Music School in Vermont, and performed at the International Clarinet Association Conference held at University of Texas at Austin.

For more information about the competitions, click on the links below:

http://www.russianmusiccompetition.com/

http://www.bachauer.com/comp_spec.php?id=4

Dr. John Roscigno to Guest Conduct

Dr. John Roscigno, Director of Orchestral Studies at California State University Northridge will be guest conductor and clinician for a number of important statewide festivals and performance this summer. Dr. Roscigno will conduct the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic at the Music Teacher's Association of California Convention at the Los Angeles Marriot Hotel on July 3rd for the organizations live piano concerto competition. In addition, the orchestra will perform Samuel Adler's rarely heard 2nd Piano Concerto, a work that was premiered at the same convention in 1997. Dr. Roscigno will conduct the orchestra again in Camarillo and in Thousand Oaks in early August. Dr. Roscigno will also be guest conductor at the Cazadero Music Festival in Berkeley, California later in the summer and will be a coach and conductor on the faculty of the Gold Coast Chamber Festival in August. Dr. Roscigno has been Professor of Music at Northridge since 2002.

Professor Diane Roscetti’s Music Entrepreneurship class was invited to participate in an international blog challenge, debating the topic of whether musicians are truly vital to society.  The challenge came from Dr. David Cutler, Director of Music Entrepreneurship at Duquesne in Pittsburgh, PA. The class discussed the topic at length, and elected two class peers to do the writing, Amy Izushima (percussion performance major) and Alicia Ramirez (music therapy major).  The title the class gave to their entry was “The Future and Role of Music in Modern Society” and it can be viewed, along with other entries and topics, at www.savvymusician.com/blog.

Jason Stoll, a senior piano performance student of Dmitry Rachmanov, has been accepted to the graduate programs of Indiana University at Bloomington, New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School with several merit scholarship offers. Jason came to CSUN as a freshman in 2005 and he first studied with John Roscigno for two years before joining Dr. Rachmanov's studio in 2007. He has been a recipient of several CSUN scholarships, and in 2009 he won the school's yearly concerto competition, performing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the CSUN Symphony Orchestra under the baton of John Roscigno in December. Jason will be attending the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado this summer.

Professor Ron Borczon given the Professional Practice Award

Professor Ron Borczon, Chair of the Music Therapy program and Director of the CSUN Music Therapy Wellness Clinic, was given the prestigious honor of the Professional Practice Award at the Regional Conference of the Western Region Association of Music Therapy.  The Professional Practice Award was given in recognition of his 25 years of directing the CSUN Music Therapy program; his numerous publications including his two text books on music therapy; and his continued work as a clinician in the community.

BUFFET CRAMPON USA ANNOUNCES JULIA HEINEN AS BUFFET CRAMPON CLARINET ARTIST

Buffet Crampon USA, North American distributor of Buffet Crampon woodwinds, is pleased to announce Julia Heinen has been named a Buffet Crampon Clarinet Artist. Julia plays on the Tosca B-flat and A clarinets and the RC Prestige E-flat clarinet.

As a soloist, Julia Heinen has performed hundreds of recitals throughout the United States and had the distinct pleasure of premiering several works written specifically for her. In February of 2003, she performed a recital including several new works at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and recently finished a compact disc recording including several of these pieces which was released in the Fall of 2007 by Centaur Records.

In addition to Dr. Heinen’s solo performances, she is often heard as a chamber musician performing most notably with Trio Chiaroscuro and the Oneota Chamber Players. She is also an accomplished ensemble player having served as principal clarinetist with the American Wind Symphony, a professional wind ensemble which tours the United States and Europe. As an orchestral player, she has served as principal clarinetist with the Santa Clarita, LaCrosse, Dubuque, Valdosta, Greenville, Augusta and Rochester Symphony Orchestras and was featured several times as a concerto soloist with those ensembles. In addition, her orchestral performance also include several concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra and she can frequently be heard locally on the Hour of Power orchestra from the Crystal Cathedral.

Dr. Heinen does frequent clinics and masterclasses in many universities and colleges throughout the United States. Originally from Minnesota, she currently lives in Los Angeles, where she serves as professor of music at California State University, Northridge, teaching clarinet, coaching chamber music and coordinating the musicianship program. She holds a masters degree from the University of Michigan, an artist diploma from Northwestern University and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. Her teachers have included Herbert Blayman, Robert Marcellus, Timothy Paradise and Cloyde Williams.

CSUN Master's of Music student, Robert Norman, has been accepted into an elite vocal program with the Santa Barbara Opera

Opera Santa Barbara's 2010 Young Artists will be in residency from March 28 through May 9, 2010. During their six-week adventure, they will engage in an intensive program of master classes, professional training, and preparations for the chorus of OSB's production of “Macbeth”. In a new program offering this year, they will be present their own production “Ode to Opera: Shakespearean Opera Scenes.” This production will be directed by James Marvel (OSB - Faust, 2005) and will include scenes from Otello, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet and Falstaff. Video installations by S. Katy Tucker will bring exciting visual appeal to this production.

Full of youthful energy and enthusiasm, the Young Artists will be providing a series of community concerts and free events.

ROBERT NORMAN
Sponsored by Louise Gaylord

Voice Type: Tenor

Resides: Canoga Park, CA

Education: Cal State University Northridge Masters Program

Recent Activity: Albert, Albert Herring, Guillot, Manon, (Opera in the Ozarks); Sam Kaplan, Street Scene (CSU Northridge); Tenor soloist in several massed works regionally in the L.A. area including Bach’s Magnificat, Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s St. John Passion, and Haydn’s Missa in Tempore Belli.

Robert Norman is a student of Deanna Murray.

John Swain College/University Educator Award

Lawrence Stoffel, Director of Bands at CSUN, is the 2010 recipient of the California Music Educators Association's "John Swain College/University Educator Award." This annual award is presented to a California music professor to honor excellence in music education at the college/university level. The California Music Educators Association (CMEA) bestows this honor to a college/ university faculty member who is shaping the music education profession in very meaningful ways and makes such an impact not only on their students but on fellow music educators.

Since joining the CSUN faculty in 2004 Dr. Stoffel has been highly visible throughout the state promoting both band music and the quality of music education programs in the public schools. Dr. Stoffel is known for his enthusiasm at rehearsals, concerts, and clinics alike. He has lectured and been published on a wide-range of topics pertinent to the profession - from musical interpretation to band transcriptions, from the use of religious music in the public schools to band in the school curriculum, from copyright law to band discography.

CMEA is a Federated unit of MENC: The National Association for Music Education. Membership is open to all music educators working in public and private schools, colleges and universities in California. The purposes of the association are: to promote access to a sequential music education for all PreK through grade 12 students taught by fully qualified music educators; to support and improve existing music programs; to promote quality pre-service and in-service music teacher preparation programs; and, to create a greater awareness of the value of music education through partnerships with other associations and advocacy among state and local agencies.

Dr. Stoffel is the second CSUN faculty member to receive the "John Swain College/University Educator Award." In 2004 Mary Schliff, coordinator of music education at CSUN, was the recipient.

The Samuel Goldberg and Sons Honors String Quartet is named for the Samuel Goldberg and Sons Foundation in recognition of its generous support of the String Quartet this year. The Foundation has also supported the CSUN Orchestra.

Current Members: Crystal Alforque, first violin; Megan Gilby, second violin; David Ruest, viola; Max Mueller, cello. Guest Artist Bryan Fasola, guitar.

In Recital: Sunday, April 18, 7:30 p.m., Cypress Recital Hall

Works by Dvorak, Mozart, Ellington, Boccherini, Mueller

CSUN Symphony performed at Viewpoint School

On September 30, 2009, the CSUN Symphony performed at Viewpoint School in Calabasas, performing two different concerts: one for the high school and one for the middle school. The concert was effective as an educational concert due to the repertoire we performed. Every section of the orchestra had a moment to be featured. The brass section was introduced in Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. The strings were showcased in Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings. The winds and percussion were featured in Messiaen’s Un Sourire. Within this, the students were exposed to a wide range of nationalities and eras of music.

The most challenging piece listening-wise was the Messiaen. It does not have a melody, nor does it have standard practice Western tonality. The piece was prefaced before it was performed. Un Sourire has a very clear rondo form (ABABA) that was explained to the students. Messiaen was a very religious man and so the A section entails very ethereal almost sacred string music. The B section makes use of birdsong, which Messiaen included in many of his works. With the students understanding this, it made the piece more listenable to them. Students in a Q&A session asked Dr. Roscigno to see the printed score as they couldn’t comprehend how such a piece could be notated with all the complex rhythms and harmonies. It was nice to see that rather than think the piece was boring and uninteresting, they were intrigued by the complexity. They delighted in the uniqueness of it, and that they had never heard anything like it before.

Max Mueller, the cellist in the Goldberg & Sons Honors String Quartet at CSUN approached Dr. Kristin Herkstroeter, chair of the music department at Viewpoint about the quartet coming to Viewpoint to do more music outreach. Hopefully that will manifest itself this semester.A 0 It’s important to keep a good relationship with future generations of aspiring musicians so the love and passion for the art is passed down and continues into the future.

Exceptional Creative Accomplishments Award

Elizabeth Sellers, Associate Professor in Commercial and Media Music Writing, has been awarded the Exceptional Creative Accomplishments Award for 2009 as part of a creative collaboration with Prof. Karen Kearns, Associate Dean of the Mike Curb College of Arts Media and Communication, and Magdy Rizk, Assistant Professor of Art.

Professors Kearn, Rizk and Sellers worked on a documentary, That All May Be One, (http://www.thatallmaybeone.com/) about the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet in St. Louis, Mo.  Kearns spearheaded the project as its writer/director/producer, Sellers wrote and produced the music score and Rizk provided design and graphics.  The score includes performances of Sellers music by a CSUN Music Department ensemble, the Women’s Chorale, under the direction of Dr. Katherine Baker.

The film has been screened at a number of local, national and international festivals.

CSUNotables
Brian Havey: Choosing a Life in the Key of Jazz

Bring a boy up on an orchard, in the company of three siblings, 300 apple trees, a rural cacophony of ducks, geese, chickens, goats, rabbits, and a donkey, and you get…jazz?

The circumstances of Brian Havey’s upbringing don’t exactly mirror the urban influences expected of the average hip young jazz pianist. But Havey, the recipient of Cal State Northridge’s Wolfson Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Scholar of the Class of 2009, is not your average hip young jazz pianist. He has been called “a brilliant, virtuosic piano player with a modern creative outlook.”

Raised near Quail Lake, a 50-minute haul from Lancaster and a good 40 miles from the nearest gas station, Havey was homeschooled with his sisters and brother through high school. “I had all this free time,” he said, “to work on things which happened to involve a lot of discipline.”

Drawing became the first of these “things.” Starting at age six, Havey worked his way up from cartoons to still lifes and portraits. Then it was chess. He read every chess book he could find and rapidly climbed to the top 15 of his age group in national chess competition.

Havey was 14 when his parents separated and his passion for chess waned. His perceptive mother signed him up with a keyboard orchestra at the local park.

“We all had these little Casio keyboards,” Havey said, “and we played the big fat notes in these little music books.” By the second lesson, he had learned all the pieces. With characteristic focus, he read theory books, taught himself to play by ear and to transcribe music. Later, a jazz improvisation class at Antelope Valley College (AVC) was—as the old jazz standard says—the start of something big.

And the end of something precious. It was about then that Havey’s father died. “It was a pretty terrible ordeal for me,” said Havey, but their shared love of music kept him going. Enrolling at AVC, he earned a berth in its big band and began building a reputation in the Lancaster area as a rising young jazz pianist.

“Then I came to CSUN and I heard all these guys in the Jazz ‘A’ Band, and I was thinking, ‘Wow, these guys are so killin’, “ said Havey. He hurled himself into constant practice. “I said, ‘I’ve gotta get better!’ ”

That work ethic produced his perfect 4.0 g.p.a. and sustains a busy schedule of performance and composing. Havey, who also teaches piano, sees a future in teaching and plans to earn his master’s at Cal Arts, on the way to a doctorate in musical arts.

“A lot of what I like about jazz is the intellectual stuff behind it,” he said. “Reading music on a page is one thing, but understanding how music works and being able to manipulate that in the moment is another thing. That’s really cool.”