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November 21, 2024
Former School of Music viola professor Yizhak Schotten died suddenly on September 23, 2024 at age 81. He served on the School of Music faculty from 1979 to the early 1980s and in 1985 accepted a position as professor of music at the University of Michigan, which he held for nearly 40 years. A former member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Israeli-born violist later held principal positions with the Cincinnati and Houston Symphony Orchestras.
Schotten studied at Indiana University and the ... Read more
November 20, 2024
Students, educators, and community members interested in participatory music-making gather at the University of Washington November 21-24 for a Seattle Participatory Arts Network conference. This four-day gathering will focus on participatory practices, especially music and dance, that encourage people of diverse skills and abilities to engage creatively.
Events are at the UW Waterfront Activities Center (3710 Montlake Blvd NE, Seattle, WA 98195) and the Seattle Amistad School (1501 10th Ave E... Read more
October 31, 2024
By Stephanie ManningClevelandclassical.com
The Quince Ensemble doesn’t specialize in instant gratification. The vocal quartet likes “slow music,” as soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett has explained in interviews, and she repeated that sentiment onstage on October 16. “Not slow in tempo, but slow in development.”
That ethos can also form the arc of entire programs, as Quince demonstrated to its audience at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Before the concert in Mixon Hall reached its apex with... Read more
September 26, 2024
September 14, 2024
Marianne Weltmann, former voice instructor at the University of Washington, Western Washington University, and the University of Puget Sound, died on June 2, 2024, at the age of 93. The cause of death was breast cancer.
Marianne was born in Stettin , Germany, on September 9, 1930 to father Erhard Weltman and mother Emilie Wieluner Weltman. As a young child she fled Nazi Germany with her family and immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Ohio.
Her early focus on a career in... Read more
September 14, 2024
Tech expert and musician Jerry Jensen passed away 2024 July 31 in California, where he had lived since 1975, from complications due to kidney failure. He was 74.
Jerry was the middle son of Norman and Laura Jensen, and grew up in the Ravenna Park neighborhood of Seattle. He played French horn in the Seattle Youth Symphony and kept playing throughout his life. His father was a band director at Ballard High School and later a producer/director at a new KCTS television station. His mother was a... Read more
August 27, 2024
In the midst of contemporary classical music releases that tend to bank on a cerebral approach to music, here is an album that requires listening with one’s heart. Exploring the relationship between words and music, and close collaborations with composers, performers, writers and poets, Play / Write unfolds an exquisite world in which beauty and dreams flirt with sorrow. Compositions by Melia Watras (also a superb violist), Frances White and Leilehua Lanzilotti focus on strings and involve... Read more
August 27, 2024
Earlier albums by violist Melia Watras (b. 1969) garnered accolades for the originality of their vision and realization of their creator's audacious sensibility. To create String Masks, for example, she utilized Harry Partch instruments; 26, on the other hand, was deemed by The Strad “a beautiful celebration of 21st century viola music.” The latter as aptly describes Watras's latest collection Play/Write, a splendid addition to her discography that, as its title intimates, explores fusions... Read more
June 18, 2024
School of Music students and alumni report recent academic and artistic appointments, awards and distinctions and new career directions in the beginning weeks of Summer 2024.
School of Music doctoral student Daren Weissfisch (DMA, Orchestral Conducting) was recently announced as the new music director of Seattle’s Lake Union Civic Orchestra. The selection followed a year-long search and a season of auditions. “The orchestra and the audience loved his infectious energy... Read more