Another New UW Appointment (9/22/11)

I've been appointed Director of Jazz Studies at The University of Washington beginning immediately. I'm succeeding Professor Marc Seales who has held that position for most of the past twenty years. Marc remains a vital member of the faculty and I will do my best to keep the program running smoothly and successfully. I'll continue to be Director of Percussion Studies while serving the jazz program, so my responsibilities have doubled. However, I have the full support of the faculty as well as my percussion students and, for the first time in thirty years at the UW, I have a percussion graduate teaching assistant to help with that program. I'm looking forward to the challenge of managing both programs. I want to thank Professor Seales for making the transition easy and for leaving me in charge of such a viable program.

Busy Summer Projects (7/15/11)

I've been going full tilt this summer with several interesting projects. Besides teaching History of Jazz and History of Rock & Roll at U.W. Tacoma, I've been working on putting those courses and a new course, Close To The Edge: A Survey of Important 20th Century Music Outside The Mainstream onto Keynote slides (Mac version of Powerpoint). After a few false starts with Microsoft Powerpoint, I switched to Keynote with great results. The Mac program is much smoother and easier to program and the presentations in the classroom are brilliant - not me, necessarily - the slides! It is a liberating experience to have overhead notes, audio and video examples in one place and not have to fumble around inserting CD's into one player, DVD's or video cassettes in another while writing a note on an overhead projector.

I've been working on updating my course course manual for the History of Jazz and it will be published by Kendall-Hunt in 2012. In conjunction with that, I have started work on an on-line version of the course for the U.W. which will involve 20-25 short video lectures 5-7 minutes in length. I'll be utilizing some of the Keynote slides mentioned earlier as well as planning textbook reading assignments, preparing outside listening assignments and, of course, exams. This course will join a host of other University-wide on-line courses that will help alleviate some of the lost access to classes being felt by students because of recent state cutbacks in funding.

Finally, I'm trying to finish my next album - a collection of classical violin duets that I arranged for vibraphone and marimba. I've finished recording several pieces by Mozart, Haydn, Telemann and Kromer and I have one more to record by Louis Spohr. Since I don't have a budget, I'm recording both parts - separately - by using Les Paul's trick of overdubbing. If you go to my audio page, I've posted a completed track from the project - check it out. It's working out really well, but finding time to finish the album is proving difficult with everything else going on. I'll post more info about the recording as soon as possible. In the meantime, back to work...

New U.W. Appointment (5/25/11)

I received official notice from the University of Washington Board Of Regents that I've been awarded the Adelaide D. Currie Cole Endowed Professorship in the School of Music for 2011-2014. This Professorship carries a cash award to be used in conjunction with U.W. activities and professional projects related to my work at the School. This award has allowed me to bring back the U.W. Mallet Head Concert Series this fall after a two year hiatus. Renowned drummer/percussionist Alex Acuña will be guest artist in the first Mallet Head concert on November 11th. Two more concerts featuring well-known percussionists will follow in March and May, 2012. For more information on these concerts, go to my calendar page.