School Notes: School of Music
November/December 2012

Tuba player joins YSM faculty

In 2006, the young tuba player Carol Jantsch was planning to begin her master of music degree at the Yale School of Music. But while still a senior at the University of Michigan, she won the position of principal tuba in the Philadelphia Orchestra, thus becoming the first female tuba player in a major symphony orchestra. This fall she finally arrived at Yale, now as the newest member of the School of Music faculty. She performed at the school’s opening convocation on September 6, bringing down the house with her virtuoso performance of Arban’s “The Carnival of Venice.”

Ellington Fellowship celebrates 40th anniversary

In 1972, the Duke Ellington Fellowship was established at Yale, beginning a series of concerts and residencies by jazz legends and rising artists, both on the Yale campus and in the city’s public schools. Kingman Brewster, then the president of Yale, presented the first Ellington medals to 30 jazz greats, including the Duke himself. Since then, a series of extraordinary jazz concerts has featured such luminaries as Eubie Blake, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Odetta, Joe Williams, Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Sonny Greer, Jo Jones, Max Roach, Ray Brown, Charles Mingus, and Dizzy Gillespie, to name just a few. The program’s founder and director, Willie Ruff, has been a member of the YSM faculty since 1971. The 40th anniversary season of the Ellington Fellowship opened this fall with concerts by the Mingus Big Band and the Lou Donaldson Quartet.

Piano students perform in China

Seven piano students travel to Shanghai and Xiamen this November to perform piano sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev. The performances follow the publication of a new performance edition of the sonatas, edited by faculty member Boris Berman and released by Shanghai Music Publishing House in 2011. The students—Melody Quah ’13ArtA, Euntaek Kim ’13ArtA, Larry Weng ’14MusAM, Esther Park ’13MusAM, Scott MacIsaac ’14CMus, and Henry Kramer ’13ArtA—will join with two students from the Shanghai Conservatory to play all nine of Prokofiev’s sonatas. There will be two concerts in Shanghai, on November 20 and 21, and two in Xiamen, on November 23 and 24.