IWU Faculty to Perform at 50th Anniversary March on Washington Concert
Dr. Phoenix Park-Kim will have the honor of performing at the Los Angeles AT&T Center Theatre/Auditorium on Sunday, August 18, alongside other renowned performers.
The AT&T Center Theatre is host to the 50th Anniversary Concert celebrating the 1963 March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech.
Read more about this event and Dr. Park-Kim...
FULL CIRCLE - IWU's international opera tenor heads home for a special production
After a career spanning nearly two decades, multiple countries and numerous roles, opera professional and IWU professor Isai Jess Muñoz will take a trip this summer back to where it all began: he’s going home.
“It’s interesting because this will be my first time ever singing with the Orlando Philharmonic. It’s my debut with them,” said Muñoz, an Orlando native, of his upcoming role in the Philharmonic’s production of Madama Butterfly. “Though I’ve sung all over the world, my schedule never permitted me to appear in a staged production of an opera back home.”
Read more...
Hosted Master Class with Opera Star, Cherry Duke
Friday, February 8, The division of music at Indiana Wesleyan University hosted a master class with New York City Opera Star, Cherry Duke.
Hailed by the press as a “radiant and confident” performer, American mezzo-soprano Cherry Duke “is a singer who communicates both the music and the text impeccably.” Her “striking voice-acting and stage movement” is especially evident in her performances of leading roles such as Carmen, Nerone in The Coronation of Poppea, Jo March in Adamo’s Little Women and Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia. Additionally, she has sung the title roles in Hansel and Gretel and Der Rosenkavalier as well as principal mezzo-soprano roles in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Le nozze di Figaro, Madama Butterfly, Die Zauberflöte, Falstaff, Rigoletto, The Mikado, La Traviata, L’enfant et les sortilèges and The Love for Three Oranges, to name a few. Cherry has performed many roles with New York City Opera and traveled with them to Japan for Little Women and Madama Butterfly. Miss Duke is frequently involved in cross-over and brand-new works. As a soloist in several seasons of New York City Opera’s VOX concerts, she has sung a variety of styles, and at Bard’s SummerScape Festival and Joe’s Pub she was featured in Carl Hancock Rux and Diedre Murray’s “cabaret opera,” The Blackamoor Angel.
As an orchestral concert soloist, Cherry Duke has performed at major venues such as Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York City. Miss Duke has been a featured soloist in Falla’s El Amor Brujo, Bach’s B-Minor Mass, St. John’s Passion and Weihnachts-Oratorium, Beethoven’s Mass in C and Choral Fantasy, Duruflé’s Requiem, several Haydn masses, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Vesperes Solennes, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Vaughan-Williams’ Magnificat, Saint-Saëns’ Christmas Oratorio and of course, Händel’s Messiah, as well as orchestral “Pops” concerts.
In 2012, Cherry Duke joined the voice faculty of Bay View Music Festival. Our master class featured 5 of our own students. Ms Duke worked with our singers on vocal technique and performance practice concerns, and also took time to share on her life as a working artist.
Williams to teach on modeling business teams after a jazz quintet
On Thursday May 2nd Professor Todd Williams will participate in a special collaborative event hosted by Jazz@Lincoln Center and Fordham University in New York City. Professor Williams is one of a team of 5 music experts who will teach on how to model business teams after a jazz quintet.
Fordham University has been extensively awarded for their cutting edge school of business. Part of what Fordham offers in their program is new teaching on the building of autonomous flexible teams in the corporate world. In this instance Todd and the team give a live performance for students and faculty, conduct a short training for the students, and then set them free to create a high-pressure deliverable within the 3-hour workshop. To date business schools from multiple countries around the world have sent students to participate in the program!
Williams to appear at Tuxedo Park School Annual Benefit
Professor Todd Williams will make an appearance live on Sat. April 20 at New York’s renowned Tuxedo Park School Annual Benefit. Each year the institution celebrates a musical theme to fit the occasion. This year Todd has been invited as performing artist in the early New Orleans jazz style. Herein he will perform clarinet and saxophone à la Sidney Bechet and Johnny Dodds, two of the early jazz icons. During his undergraduate years Todd studied clarinet with Professor Bill Osseck at the Eastman School of music and later became a fan of the New Orleans street parade style during his tenure with the Wynton Marsalis Septet.
Tuxedo Park School was founded in 1900, fourteen years after Pierre Lorillard opened his famous park in the Ramapo Hills, 38 miles northwest of New York City. In its early years, the school provided education for the students from Tuxedo Park and coordinated the curriculum with the New York independent schools that some students attended during the winter.
After many years as a proprietary school, Headmaster Anthony Barber led the school into the modern era by obtaining the Charter from New York State and establishing the school as a not-for-profit educational institution.
IWU Alum Makes Appearance on The Tonight Show
IWU Alum, Quinton Gibson (’91) will be taking the stage with Darius Rucker on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Gibson is the lead guitarist for Rucker (Hootie and the Blowfish) and has been on tour for almost two years. The Tonight Show will be the latest stop for the tour which includes an impressive lineup of other popular venues like The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS This Morning, and The View.
Gibson graduated in 1991 from Indiana Wesleyan University with majors in both Applied Music and History.
AERA Annual Meeting to Feature IWU Music Professor's Research
Dr. Phoenix Park-Kim's research paper, "Beyond Pushy Parents: Understanding Asian Students’ Motivation to Learn Classical Music in Early Years," was recently accepted for presentation at the 2013 AERA Annual Meeting. Submissions for the annual meeting are reviewed by a highly qualified panel comprised by the Music Education Special Interest Group. This year alone, AERA received over 13,000 submissions.
The research paper will be featured among other scholarly work in a Poster Session titled, "Music Education Poster Session."
IWU Students Place in NATS Competition
Join us in congratulating these students:
High School
Mickey Simpkins, 3rd Place Category 1b
Alyssa Kissel, 1st Place Category 1c
College
Dominique Clements, 1st Place Freshman College Women
Brittany Starkweather, 2nd Place Freshman College Women
Collin Stephens, 3rd Place Freshman College Men
Caylie Yoder, 3st Place Sophomore College Women (Category 4-1)
Brittany Wells, 3st Place Sophomore College Women(Category 4-3)
Abbigail Schubkegel, 2ndst Place Sophomore College Women(Category 4-3)
Kris Stephens, 1st Place Mature Singers
Zachary Arneson, Honorable Mention Senior Men
Craig “Denny” King, 2nd Place Senior Men
Bailey Laws, 3rd Place Musical Theatre 1st and 2nd Year College Students
Leslie Barrow, 1st Place Musical Theatre Advance Division
IWU Chorale Opens Colts Home Game
Indiana Wesleyan has been blessed with an outstanding Music program, accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music. Sunday October 12, the Chorale had the privilege of singing the National Anthem at the Indianapolis Colts game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Watch the video on YouTube.
IWU Chorale Performs at Value Voters Summit 2012
On September 15, 2012 the University Chorale had the wonderful opportunity to sing at a black tie event for 800 people, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, Regency Ballroom in our nation’s capital. The event was the Faith Family and Freedom Gala Dinner honoring the vision and leadership of Morton, C. Blackwell for the Values Voters Summit 2012. Morton is president of the Leadership Institute, a non-partisan educational foundation he founded in 1979. The LI provides training for conservatives of all ages in how to succeed in politics, government and the media. They have student chapters at leading Universities all across the country, which to date has trained 110,000 conservative activist, students and leaders. The Chorale was well received and was honored with three standing ovations.
View the performance of the Chorale at Voters Value Summit 2012 in Washington DC. The performance begins about 5 minutes into the video and is about 20 minutes in length.