Mark Ferrell, musical director of KU Opera, will conduct Gilbert &
Sullivan's HMS Pinafore at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City November 6, 8,
11, 14-15. Several KU voice students as well as KU Lyric Opera
apprentices are in the production.
Paul Laird, professor of musicology, has a review of "Devotional Music
in the Iberian World, 1450-1800: The Villancico and Related Genres,"
edited by Tess Knighton and Alvaro Torrente (Ashgate, 2007), in the May
2009 issue of "Music & Letters," Vol. 90, No. 2. Additionally, a
Broadway dictionary Laird wrote with a friend entitled "The Historical
Dictionary of the Broadway Musical," was just released in paperback
under a new title: William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, "The A to Z of
the Broadway Musical." Lanham, Toronto, and Plymouth, UK: The Scarecrow
Press, 2009.
Laird also has two recent publications. His chapter "Catholic church
music in Italy, and the Spanish and Portuguese Empires" appeared in "The
Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music," edited by Simon P. Keefe
(Cambridge University Press, 2009). In addition, with KU musicology
alumnus William A. Everett (Ph.D., 1991), Laird co-edited "The American
Musical Theatre in 1957," which appeared as Volume 3.1 in "Studies in
Musical Theatre," a British journal. This is a series of articles based
on papers delivered at "Musical Theatre in 1957," a symposium that took
place at the KU in November 2007. Laird also wrote the introduction to
the collection of essays. Also represented in the collection are KU
faculty members Roberta Freund Schwartz (musicology) and John Staniunas
(theatre and film), KU musicology student William Harvill, and KU
musicology alumni William A. Everett, Anthony Bushard, and Jennifer
Oates.
Dr. Michael Davidson, Assistant Professor of Trombone, served on the faculty of the 2009 Asian Trombone Seminar, held July 15-23 at Shih-Chien University, Taipei, Taiwan. Students from 3 continents and 5 countries attended the festival. Davidson's duties included conducting a trombone choir, teaching private lessons, coaching trombone ensembles, and performing a solo recital.
Five professors have been selected to receive the W.T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence:; Jack Winerock, piano, in 2003; Paul Laird, musicology, in 2002; John Stephens, voice, in 2001; Walter Clark, musicology, in 2000; and James Higdon, organ, 1997.
