School Notes: School of Music
March/April 2019

Longtime faculty cellist dies at 100

Legendary cellist Aldo Parisot ’48Mus, who taught at YSM for 60 years before retiring in June 2018, passed away in December at age 100. “The presence of Aldo Parisot in the School of Music has been transformative and transcendent,” YSM dean Robert Blocker said. To Parisot, students were family. “I have a great, great joy in teaching these people,” he said in 2017. “Those are my children. . . . I see in them me, when (I) was young, and I want to see them succeed.” Parisot came to study at Yale in 1946 and joined the School of Music faculty in 1958. (Read the Yale Alumni Magazine feature on Parisot in the March/April issue.)

Yale Opera stages Eugene Onegin at Shubert Theatre

In February, Yale Opera presented a new production of Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky’s earnest treatment of Pushkin’s beloved verse novel, at New Haven’s historic Shubert Theatre. The new production was led by acclaimed stage director Paul Curran and featured the Yale Philharmonia conducted by Perry So. 

Recent faculty appointments

In December, faculty pianist Boris Berman was named the Sylvia and Leonard Marx Professor in the Practice of Piano. Since joining the YSM faculty in 1984, Berman “has established a piano program at Yale that is among the finest in our discipline,” YSM dean Robert Blocker said, explaining also that “Sylvia and Leonard Marx, along with their daughter, Nancy Better, are cherished patrons of the School of Music and Yale.” 

Blocker also announced the appointment of Boris Slutsky as visiting professor of piano for the 2019–20 academic year.