BY JENNY CALLISON
Enquirer Contributor
OXFORD -- Global visions that link music and the coming millennium have won a coveted award for Miami University's music department.
Its proposal, "Music at Miami for the Millennium: Harmonizing Excellence, Hearing Diversity," will receive a $95,000 President's Academic Enrichment Award.
This is the first initiative to be funded from the $6.5 million endowment given to Miami in 1997 by the late Arretha Sheriff.
The announcement was music to the ears of faculty who had brainstormed to create a project to catapult their department into national prominence. The project will examine global musical trends and generate two new pieces of music.
Two internationally known composers will be commissioned to write works that combine western and non-Western elements. Both composers will visit the university before beginning work, and return for a weeklong residency after their works are completed. The new compositions will be premiered by faculty and student musicians in late 1999 or early 2000.
The new compositions will have a major performance in Cincinnati and be featured in on-campus concerts for area schoolchildren. "We believe the compositions will have broad appeal because they will reflect the current eclectic mood in music today," said Dr. Pamela Fox, dean-elect of Miami's School of Fine Arts.
Selected composers may be asked to write pieces that reflect the music department's unique strengths. "For instance, a composition might feature wind ensemble and steel drums, or string quartet and vocal ensemble," she said.
"We want to commission pieces that audiences will enjoy -- not "beep and squeak' music," added Roger Davis, Miami's associate professor of music and himself a composer. "We want to infuse art music with world music in the same way that Peter Gabriel has brought world music into pop."
