The East Carolina University School of Music welcomed Christopher Ulffers as director beginning January 2, 2014.
Ulffers replaces Christopher Buddo, who was named Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication in June 2013. The School of Music is one of the four schools that comprise the college.
Ulffers came to the School of Music in 1992 and has served continuously since, both as associate director and professor of bassoon. Ulffers’ duties as associate director included undergraduate admissions and scholarship administration, the assignment of faculty loads, course scheduling and assets management for the Fletcher Music Center.
“I am thrilled that Chris will be leading our school,” said Buddo. “His years of service as associate director have prepared him well to take on the challenges of directing the School of Music—he has worked with all levels of university administration and is uniquely qualified to advocate for our outstanding school, and he possesses the vision to carry the school to new levels of excellence.
“Thank you to Scott Carter for his strong and dedicated leadership during the interim period. His service as interim director kept the School of Music functioning at the highest level and has positioned us well for moving forward.”
In addition to teaching bassoon, Ulffers taught a variety of courses in music history, music literature and music appreciation prior to his administrative appointment. In 1997 he was the recipient of the Robert and Lina Mays Award for Teaching Excellence awarded by the ECU Alumni Association.
“It is with great humility and honor that I become the next director of the School of Music,” said Ulffers. “ECU has been and will continue to be a beacon of musical excellence in the region, and I am well aware of the tradition we have to uphold.”
Ulffers has been published in The Opera Journal and he presented papers at the ECU Conference on Renaissance Studies and the Conference on Renaissance Studies at Universitá degli Studi di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy.
He has participated in the Aspen Music Festival, was a bassoonist and staff librarian with the National Repertory Orchestra for five summers and was on the artist/faculty of the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, NC. He is currently the principal bassoonist of the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle and has appeared several times as concerto soloist. He has also appeared as concerto soloist with the ECU’s wind ensemble, symphony orchestra and chamber singers. Ulffers’ appearance with the Chamber Singers at the 2009 New Music@ECU Festival featured the American premiere of the Bassoon Concerto by Norwegian composer Egil Hovland. This performance led to the first commercial recording release of this work in 2010 on the Gothic recording label, distributed by Naxos. He was contrabassoonist with the Virginia Symphony and Virginia Opera from 1993-2003, appearing with the orchestra at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall and on several recordings. He is frequently called upon as an extra musician by orchestras throughout the region and he performs regularly with the North Carolina Symphony in educational, pops and classical series concerts.
Ulffers received a Bachelor of Music from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 1989 and continued his studies as a graduate student at Indiana University where he received a Master of Music degree in 1991.
He resides in Greenville with his wife Beth and their three children.
Tones
East Carolina University School of Music Alumni and Friends newsletter
Spring 2014
Ulffers named School of Music Director
www.ecu.edu/music
www.ecu.edu/music
Christopher UlffersEast Carolina’s music program is as old as the university itself. I am proud to be a part of the great tradition of music at ECU and I am excited for what the future holds. I have been a part of the musical experience of every graduate of the last 20 years and hope to be part of that experience for every graduate for the foreseeable future.
The coming months are going to see some remarkable events at our School. The Four Season’s Chamber Music Festival will have three residencies and outreach concerts in New Bern and Raleigh. In early March, the Opera Theater will produce Mozart’s final great opera seria Idomeneo. The New Music Festival will bring the contemporary sounds of our students, faculty and guest artists to the forefront for a week in late March. In April, our jazz faculty will host a week of concerts during our annual Jazz Festival. Of course this will all be interwoven among the usual offerings of our orchestra, bands and choirs and numerous student and guest recitals.
I encourage you to visit our website to view our calendar of events. While you’re there I hope you will take a look at some of our student and faculty performances available on our YouTube channel. There is some fantastic music making in those videos and we are adding to them throughout the year. Most of all I hope you will share your favorites with your students and friends.
Especially if you haven’t been back in awhile, I encourage you to come back to ECU to see and hear the excellent musicianship of our faculty and students. And when you come by, please make a point to come and visit with me.
Please enjoy this issue of Tones and we look forward to you soon
Tones
From the Director
Christopher Ulffers
Director, School of Music
Longtime School of Music faculty member Barry Michael Shank, 81, died Saturday, January 11, 2014, in Vidant inpatient hospice. Shank joined the School of Music in 1962, teaching music theory, trumpet and conducting, retiring in 1995. For more than five years he was the director of music for ECU’s Summer Theatre, and for more than 20 years he hosted Barry Shank’s Wind Machine in Greenville’s Sunday in the Park and played in Greenville’s Emerald City Big Band.
Shank played with a variety of headliners, including Judy Garland, Captain Kangaroo and Liberace.
Faculty Emeriti Scholarship Challenge!
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Steve Vutsinas (BM, 1989) of Grassfield High School in Chesapeake, Va., was one of 10 music teachers from 10 cities across eight states selected as finalists for the first annual Music Educator Award presented by The Recording Academy and GRAMMY Foundation. Although Vutsinas didn’t win the Grammy, he will receive a $1,000 honorarium with a matching grant to his school.The East Carolina University School of Music Chamber Singers won an overall silver medal and silver and bronze section medals in the 2013 Tolosa Choral Contest international voice competition in Spain on October 29 through November 5, 2013.
The ECU Chamber Singers were the only choral group from the United States invited to the competition, which included participants from Germany, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Indonesia, Russia, Spain and Sweden.
In addition to the overall second, the chamber singers placed second in the folklore section of the competition and third in the polyphony section.
“We are all so very proud of the students—it is truly a life-changing experience,” said Andrew Crane, chamber singers director. “The goal was simply to perform to the best of our ability, and we accomplished that goal in every respect.”
The chamber singers took a decidedly twenty-first century, social-media route to the competition. They had posted several concert performance videos on YouTube in spring of 2012, and soon after Crane noticed that Javier Busto, a prominent Spanish choral composer, “commented” on one of the videos.
In November of 2012 Crane received an email from Busto— Busto is on the jury of the Tolosa Choral Contest—and he invited the chamber singers to participate in the 2013 contest. No more than one American choir is invited to participate annually.
“Apparently, he had listened to our performances on YouTube, and shared them with his fellow jury members,” Crane said. “They all agreed that they were of a high enough quality to grant us this invitation.”
The Tolosa competition is unique among choral competitions in that the organizers pay for all the choirs’ lodging, food and transportation at the contest location.
Andrew Scanlon, ECU’s Instructor of Organ and Sacred music, has released a new compact disc recording, “Solemn and Celebratory,” on the Raven label. The CD, recorded on The Perkins and Wells Memorial Organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, features a wide variety of organ literature designed to showcase the versatility of the Fisk pipe organ. The School of Music’s Travis Garrison was the recording engineer. The C.B. Fisk organ is the primary teaching and performing instrument for ECU’s organ and sacred music students.
The CD is available at Amazon.com or RavenCD.com.
Assistant Professor of Violin Hye-Jin Kim has released a debut CD with pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute on the Concert Artists Guild label entitled “From the Homeland.” Kim takes an emotional and personal journey through four works, exploring Sibelius’ thought that “Music begins where the possibilities of language end.” The album includes violin sonatas by Debussy and Janacek and rarely heard works by Sibelius and Smetana. The CD can be downloaded at www.cdbaby.com/cd/hyejinkim.
Associate Professor of Music Education Dr. Greg Hurley is pictured at right conducting a rehearsal with Thai students in Bangkok last summer. For the past four summers Hurley has worked with American Voices, an organization dedicated to promoting cultural diplomacy through the arts. In this capacity, Hurley has conducted orchestras, coached ensembles and provided private lessons for students in Thailand, Malaysia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
At ECU, Hurley teaches courses in instrumental (strings) and general music education at the undergraduate and graduate levels and supervises student teachers.
Photo: Hannah Tomlinson/HannahTstudios.com
School of Music NewsEast Carolina University
School of Music
A. J. Fletcher Music Center
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Greenville, NC 27858-4353
www.ecu.edu/music
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Select Events
February 6: Piano Master Class
featuring Steve Coxe
February 6: The Air Force Heritage of
America Band Woodwind Quintet
February 9: Keiko Sekino, piano
February 12: Percussion Players
February 15: Symphony Orchestra
February 16: Joanne Bath, violin and
Charles Bath, piano
February 16: Chamber Singers
February 18: Faculty Chamber Music
Concert, “L’Histoire du Soldat”
February 19: Elliot Frank, guitar
February 20: Symphonic Band and
Concert Band
February 21: Dr. Andy Harnsberger,
percussion
February 23: Douglas Monroe, clarinet
February 23: Men’s Chorus and Women’s
Chorus
February 24: Jazz at the Villedge
March 3, 4: Mozart’s Idomeneo,
Opera Theater
March 5: Music on a WIM
March 19-23: NewMusic@ECU Festival
March 26: Four Seasons Family Night
March 27: Yukiko Sekino, piano
March 28: Jazz Faculty Concert
March 29: Gary Schocker, flute
April 2: Music on a WIM
April 2: Percussion Extravaganza
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See www.ecu.edu/music for the entire spring calendar
April 3: Wind Ensemble/Chamber
Winds
April 6: Next Generation Concert III
April 8: Premiere Performances
January 23: Voice Recital,
‘Ein Liederabend
January 25: Friends Scholarship Gala
January 27: The Coastal Winds Quintet
January 30: Percussion Ensemble
January 31: All District Bands Concert
February 2: Four Seasons Next
Generation Concert II
February 2: Octubafest
February 3: Jami Rhodes, voice; Eric
Stellrecht, piano