Music in the News

George Houle, Professor of Music emeritus, died in Palo Alto on January. 7, 2017. The Stanford Department of Music will present a memorial concert with the participation of Houle's colleagues, friends, and family in Memorial Church on Saturday, April 1, at 7:30 p.m. A reception will follow in Braun Music Center’s Braun Rehearsal Hall.

Update: Palo Alto Online has recently published a memorial for George Houle that includes information about a scholarship fund in his name in support of Stanford music students.

Writer Kat Eschner discusses a project that brought Stanford's CCRMA and the early music choral group Cappella Romana together in Bing Concert Hall to work in a virtual acoustic space based on the characteristics of Istanbul's former church and mosque, Hagia Sophia.

Robin Wander at Stanford Arts recently wrote about the latest of the annual visits to Avalon on Catalina Island made by members of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra (SSO) with their conductor Anna Wittstruck.

Last year's book by Stanford scholars Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold, The James Bond Songs: Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism — a survey of five decades of music created for the James Bond film series — recently appeared in cultural critic Greil Marcus's long-running column, "

The massive carillons at Stanford (high atop Hoover Tower) and UC Berkeley each have a story all their own — find out more this week when "Bay Area Revelations — Cal & Stanford: A Tale of Two Towers" airs on NBC Bay Area (Ch.

Andrew Myers of Stanford News recently highlighted the Engineers in the Arts Scholarship that provides partial music lesson funding for declared engineering students. Both Stanford Engineering and the Friends of Music at Stanford fund this scholarship. Persis Drell, the current Dean of Stanford Engineering, is a cellist herself; she is one of what turns out to be quite a few engineers who have found a place for music in their lives.

Stanford Report recently featured a video by Kurt Hickman highlighting University Organist Robert Huw Morgan, with his comments on two of the organs in Memorial Church and musical samples played on those organs that demonstrate their tonal characters.

The Stanford New Ensemble was featured in a recent Stanford Report article by Robin Wander, who discusses the Ensemble's adventurous programming with director Joo-Mee Lee, as well as the not-so-typical venues being used for their performances — their Fall concert took place in the casual Oak Lounge at Tresidder Union.

Rufus Olivier — principal bassoon for the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, member of the Stanford Woodwind Quintet, and Department of Music Lecturer (bassoon) — shared his Nutcracker war stories in the San Francisco Chronicle's recent feature by Allan Ulrich that highlighted a number of SF Ballet Orchestra members, all with many years of service in the pit for The Nutcracker. Says Olivier about The Nutcracker's composer, Tchaikovsky