Student News

Ken Cazan, director of the University of Toronto's fall 1999 opera school production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, swept soprano Carla Huhtanen (Opera Diploma) off to Venice early this year to fill a gap in his next engagement: Gershwin's Lady Be Good at Teatro La Fenice.

This past year violinist Lynn Kuo (M.Mus) placed second in both the CFMTA String Competition and the National Music Festival and won the 1999 Atlantic Young Artist Competition. Her prize was an Atlantic provinces concert tour, from which one recital was broadcast nationally on CBC's Take Five.

Marino Lupishko (Ph.D. Theory) saw her article "A pupil of Webern in the U.S.S.R.: F. M. Herschkowitz's writings" published in the March edition of ex tempore (IX/1), an international refereed journal in contemporary music theory and analysis.

In January Brian McMillan (M.A. Musicology) recorded J. S. Bach's six motets with the Tafelmusik choir and orchestra (to be released this fall on CBC Records). The live concert from the Glenn Gould Studio was broadcast nationally on CBC2, as was a 1999 concert of Handel's Israel in Egypt, in which he appeared as baritone soloist.

As chair of the "Jazz at Oscar's" subcommittee of the Hart House Music Committee, Guy Obrecht (M. A. Theory) has wielded his executive power to bring even Friday night entertainment in line with current music discourse. Along with programming acts that don't conform to the sax quartet "song par song par solo par song" tautology, he has banned "mood-setting" posters of glossy jazz pillars (Miles Davis awash in blue; Dizzy in black and white, a contorted face of Coltrane, angular and colourful) to avoid condoning implicitly the idea that you are here, they are there, and this is what is being done - obfuscating, in the process, all that is happening on both sides of the performance equation. His latest composition, for soprano and tape, plays with these same clichés, finding tone in both the sonic phenomena of the voice and recorded sounds, and pitting it in counterpoint to the meaning of the text. Due for premiere this spring, the piece will feature Barbara Hannigan and prerecorded sound that spans the sonic gamut from Indianesque tabla rag tones to the aggressive aerobics instructor stereotype.

Benita Wolters (Ph.D. Musicology) can be heard on the recently released album Clear by Vancouver's twelve-voice chamber choir Musica Intima. The choir's self-titled first album was nominated for a Juno in 1998, and this new album, which includes Finzi's setting of seven poems by Robert Bridges, was recently reviewed favourably on CBC's Sound Advice.

Four students from the University of Toronto will present papers at the American Musicological Society Chapter Meeting in Ithaca, April 8-9, 2000. Drew Stephen will speak about "Death, the Hunt, and Brahms's Horn Trio, Op. 40," Linda Arsenault will speak on "Xenakis's Inner Game Strategy: Pitch Placement in Measures 52 to 59 of Pithoprakta," Sandy Thorburn will deliver "Visions Fleeing: Melodic Quotation as Recognizable Signifiers in the Works of Brian Cherney," and Alexander Carpenter will deliver his paper "The Woman as Other: Schoenberg, Lacan, and Erwartung."

The American Suzuki Journal published Pandora Bryce's article "Stage presence and communication: An interview with tenor Mark DuBois," in its Summer 1999 issue. Her article entitled "Learning Styles and Rapport" was published in the Spring 2000 issue of Ability Development, the journal of the British Suzuki Institute. In April she will present "Memorizing music: Strategies for teachers" at Roots and Wings: the teachers' conference of the Suzuki Association of the Americas in Cincinnati. In addition to recitals and masterclasses in North America, Europe and Asia, Pandora has recently been appointed Teacher Trainer and Examiner in the European Suzuki Association. In October, 1999, Pandora was the "magic" flute in the World Premiere of Susan Hammond's Classical Kids stage production, Mozart's Magic Fantasy.

For several graduate students at the University of Toronto, the year 2000 began on a picket line. Negotiations between the University of Toronto and CUPE 3902, the union branch overseeing teaching assistants and part-time instructors, came to an impasse before the Christmas break, prompting the student strike action. Issues centred on pay and benefit disparity with other GTA universities, and high tuition demands on the (generally) underwaged and overworked student body. Campus-wide, classes were disrupted or cancelled, but the University maintained a hard line until such illustrious alumni as Margaret Atwood decried its approach to national media. This external support echoed the opinions of various university groups, including faculty and undergraduates, who helped bolster the TAs' position during the four week strike. This groundswell could not, however, completely sway the administration, and the new agreement was, at best, a compromise. Though salaries rose by an immediate 2.75% (to be followed by another 2% in September), wage parity with York and McMaster was not achieved; and only dental benefits were increased.