![]() ![]() CCM is about to celebrate its 150th anniversary. I’ll be forever grateful that I have been able to come full circle, and share the training I received at CCM with another generation of students. It is rare for a university to recognize adjunct contributions, and I salute UC for doing so. I would like to thank UC for recognizing and honoring the work of adjunct faculty. I have no words to express what that meant to me, and the joy I feel, seeing them claim their places on Broadway and other stages, following their dreams. A number of my students surprised me in New York with a champagne brunch on April 2 to celebrate my retirement. ![]() I’ve been truly honored to work with wonderful colleagues, and to have been given the opportunity to teach and mentor my talented and remarkable students. I call it simply “the gift I gave myself.” As an older professional, it means so much to continue to contribute and feel appreciated. These past seven years have been a total joy. In 2009 my husband and I retired to Cincinnati, where I received an unexpected invitation to return to CCM - my alma mater - to teach musical theatre voice as an adjunct professor. ![]() This year marks my 48th year of continuous work - 21 years as a singer/actress, and another 20 years as a college professor and theatre producer. Kimberly Daniel de Acha, Professor of Voice, 2010-2017.Ben Terry Lusk, Professor of Opera/Vocal Coaching, 1999-2017.Patti James, Professor of Dance, 1999-2017. ![]() Piotr Milewski, Professor of Violin, 1995-2017.Sandra Vanlandingham, Theatre Arts, Production and Arts Administration Program Manager, 16.Mary Stucky, Professor of Voice, 1990-2017.Allen Otte, Professor of Percussion and member of Percussion Group Cincinnati, 1977-2017.Lee Fiser, Professor of Violincello and former member of the LaSalle Quartet, 1975-2017.Yvonne Becknell, Performance Management Program Manager, 1969-2016.These members of the CCM family have dedicated themselves to continuing the college’s legacy as a leading training center for the performing and media arts. For another view, try Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops' The Latin Album, which mixes incendiary pieces by Ginastera, Moncayo, Guarneri, and others with the tourista material, thus creating a better balance - and a far better program - than the Kunzel disc.As the academic year comes to a close, we celebrate the careers of nine retiring faculty and staff members who have given nearly 250 years of combined service to UC’s College-Conservatory of Music. But, of course, that's not the premise of this CD - a look at how American commercial pop integrated Latin influences - and all a listener can do is go with it or not. One longs in vain for a taste of the real thing - say, a roaring symphonic showpiece by a Latin classical composer. Guest trumpeter/toreador Doc Severinsen does his best bullfight fanfare in "La Virgen de la Macarena" and fellow Tonight Show veterans Tommy Newsom and John Bambridge help out with some of the arrangements (catch the latter's clever Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" reference in the middle of "El Cumbanchero"). The music conjures images of ladies with baskets of fruit on their heads or loud, affluent, middle-aged American males in shorts and hats with cameras dangling, trying to do the mambo. And you can guess what the tunes are: "Brazil," "Cielito Lindo," "Granada," "Tico Tico," "Carioca," "Besame Mucho," "Mexican Hat Dance," "The Girl From Ipanema," Barry Manilow's infernal "Copacabana," and more. Every twitchy Tropicana cliché in the book from the middle of the 20th century is seemingly invoked in these deliberately kitschy treatments of the usual chestnuts. The execution is there Erich Kunzel & the Cincinnati Pops display an undeniable zest and affection for the material here. This collection of symphonically inflated south-of-the-border pops is an American tourist's idea of Latin music - and there's a place for that it all depends upon the execution and the freshness of the arrangements. ![]()
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