NEC to Award Honorary Degrees to Dyer, Regina Resnik, Bruno Monsaingeon, Halim El-Dabh '53 M.M., and Wayne Shorter
New England Conservatory will honor a music critic, Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano, a documentary filmmaker who specializes in musical subjects, a Grammy Award-winning saxophonist/composer, and a pathbreaking Egyptian-American composer, percussionist, educator, and ethnomusicologist at its 136th Commencement Exercises, May 20 at 3 p.m. in NEC's Jordan Hall. Recipients of the honorary doctorates are Richard Dyer, Regina Resnik, Bruno Monsaingeon, Halim El-Dabh '53 M.M., and Wayne Shorter. Dyer will give the commencement address. President Emeritus and Interim CEO Laurence Lesser will confer diplomas and degrees on the Class of 2007.
Preceding the exercises on Saturday night, May 19, New England Conservatory students will be showcased in a Commencement Concert. The performance, also in NEC's Jordan Hall, takes place at 7:30 p.m. Both the Commencement exercises and the concert are free and open to the public.
Biographies of the awardees follow below.
For further information, check the NEC Website at: www.newenglandconservatory.edu/concerts or call the NEC Concert Line at 617-585-1122. NEC's Jordan Hall, Brown Hall, Williams Hall and the Keller Room are located at 30 Gainsborough St., corner of Huntington Ave. St. Botolph Hall is located at 241 St. Botolph St. between Gainsborough and Mass Ave.
Richard Dyer
Richard Dyer served as chief music critic of the Boston Globe from 1973 to 2006. Born in Mineral Wells, Texas, he grew up in Enid, Oklahoma and Hiram, Ohio. He graduated from Hiram College, summa cum laude, in 1963 having majored in English with a minor in French. An opera buff from the age of 10, he was also trained as a pianist, studying with Beatrice Erdely of the Cleveland Institute of Music, and, from 1961--62 with Jacqueline Eymar at the Institute of European Studies in Paris. During that year in France, he attended the final cours d'interpretation of Alfred Cortot at L'ecole normale de musique.
After completing a Master's degree at Harvard University, Dyer taught at the University of Iowa in the English department, returning to Harvard to complete his PhD in 1973. While working on his dissertation on Oliver Goldsmith, he “made an unexpected sidestep into journalism," as he puts it, succeeding outgoing critic Michael Steinberg at the Boston Globe. His surprise entry into the world of classical music criticism came as a result of a dazzling debut article he wrote, published in the New York Times in April 1973, about the artistic decline of soprano Renata Tebaldi. He was immediately enlisted as a regular contributor to the Globe and then took over the permanent position when Steinberg left to join the staff of the Boston Symphony.
During his three decades at the Globe, Dyer twice won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for Distinguished Music Criticism. Along with reviews, features, columns, and news stories about music, he also wrote regularly about books and served as year as a film critic. He was frequently invited to write for other publications including the New Grove Dictionaries of Music, American Music, and Opera, the Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia of Opera, and Encyclopedia Americana. He contributed articles to Britain's Opera Magazine, Opera News, High Fidelity, The Gramophone, Musical America, and The Nation.
Dyer also wrote liner notes for Sony Classical, Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Westminster Classics, New World Records and RCA Victor. He was also asked to write program notes for the Metropolitan Opera, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Opera etc.
Dyer's comprehensive knowledge of piano and operatic literature has made him a valued member of panels and competition juries. He gives regular presentations on historic pianists and singers. He has served on the jury of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and the Cleveland Piano Competition.
He was previously awarded an honorary doctorate from Salem State College.
Regina Resnik
The American-born mezzo soprano has had a distinguished career as a Metropolitan Opera star, a Tony-nominated singing actress in Broadway musicals, a master teacher, a stage director, narrator, and advocate for Jewish music.
Born in New York City in August 1922, Resnik began her musical career at the age of 20, shortly after graduating from Hunter College. Starting out as a soprano, she sang Lady Macbeth under Fritz Busch with the New Opera Company and followed that up with a Fidelio and Micaela under Eric Kleiber in Mexico City. She sang Santuzza with the fledgling New York City Opera and in 1944 won the Metropolitan Auditions of the Air and a contract with the Metropolitan Opera Company. Her debut with the Met came unexpectedly when she substituted on one day's notice for Zinka Milanov as Leonora in Il Trovatore. Over the next decade, she sang 20 heroines: Donna Elvira, Donna Anna, Fidelio, Sieglinde, Gutrune, Chrysothemis, Rosalinda, Eboli, Aida, Alice Ford, Tosca, Butterfly and Musetta.
It was while Resnik was singing Sieglinde in Bayreuth under Clemens Kraus that the conductor suggested her voice was actually a mezzo. Acknowledging that her voice had been steadily darkening, she began a year (1955) of restudy with the baritone Giuseppe Danise during which she made the transition to mezzo. She returned to the Met in 1956 appearing as Marina in Boris Godunov under Dimitri Mitropoulos. She was acclaimed for many of the most prominent mezzo roles including: Carmen, Amneris, Ulrica, the Old Prioress, Mistress Quickly, Klytemnestra, and the Countess in Pique Dame.
In 1971-1981, Resnik, who had always brought dramatic flair to her portrayals, added stage direction to her resume. Working with her late husband, the painter and sculptor Arbit Blatas, she directed Carmen in Hamburg, Falstaff in Venice and other cities, Pique Dame in Vancouver and Sydney, Elektra and Salome.
After an operatic singing career that took her to the most important opera houses in the world, Resnik made an extraordinary transition to American musical theatre in 1987, appearing as Mrs. Schneider in Cabaret on Broadway. For that portrayal, she was nominated for a Tony Award. Her performance as Mme. Armfeldt in A Little Night Music at Lincoln Center brought her a Drama Desk nomination in 1991.
Much in demand as a teacher, she has given master classes at the Metropolitan Opera, Salzburg Mozarteum, Canadian Opera, San Francisco Opera, Curtis Institute, and Juilliard School. She is Master Teacher-in-Residence at the Mannes College of Music and director of Vocal Studies at the Eurobottega in Venice and Treviso.
Her concert series, Regina Resnik Presents, which she conceived with her son Michael Philip Davis, has just completed a three-year retrospective of Jewish classical song, with concerts given at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City and televised on CUNY-TV. She has also written, directed, and produced The Historic Ghetto of Venice, an award-winning documentary aired on PBS.
Resnik has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from her alma mater Hunter College. She has served as a trustee of the Hunter Foundation, a member of the jury for the Peabody Awards for Radio and Television, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Board of Advisors of CUNY-TV.
Bruno Monsaingeon
Bruno Monsaingeon is a Paris-based violinist and filmmaker. While still active in the field of performance, he occupies a preeminent position as a documentarian who has recorded the most captivating and idiosyncratic musical artists of his era.
Starting with work for France's ORTF in the early 1970s, Monsaingeon filmed musical performances and personalities for television. Returning over and over again to certain individuals, he accrued unprecedented access that allowed him to reveal the person behind the music in such full-length films as David Oistrakh, Artist of the People?, Yehudi Menuhin, the Violin of the Century, and Richter, the Enigma. His connection to Russia also led to a nonmusical film, Portrait of a Player, on the first great Russian tennis player, Andrei Chesnokov. Most recently, he has returned to one of his favorite subjects with Glenn Gould: Hereafter, in which he has set the task of using Gould himself as narrator while exploring Gould's enduring appeal, 25 years after his death. The scholarship behind Monsaingeon's films has generated companion books, and the films themselves have received numerous awards, including the 1998 FIPA d'or from the International Festival of Audiovisual Programs.
Halim El-Dabh
The music written by composer Halim El-Dabh '53 M.M. has found global inspiration and has been globally embraced for more than 60 years. Born in Cairo in 1921, El-Dabh was lured away from a career as an agricultural engineer by the cosmopolitan range of music available in Egypt in the 1940s, from village drumming to opera to jazz. In 1950, a Fulbright grant brought him to the United States and NEC's Francis Judd Cooke. El-Dabh's range of interests spans electronic music and ethnomusicological research--and not always in the most obvious time and place to be doing either. In 2006, opera lovers entered a working-class Eastern European neighborhood in Cleveland to witness 170 musicians performing the world premiere of Thamos, King of Egypt in the historic Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus. Sacred places are not new to El-Dabh: since 1961, his Sound and Lights of the Pyramids of Giza has played nightly at the site of the Great Pyramid. When El-Dabh's Symphony for 1,000 Drums was premiered in 2006, “drummers joined in to change the rhythm of the planet." The premiere took place in Kent, Ohio, where El-Dabh has taught since 1969, and is currently University Professor Emeritus of Kent State University.
Wayne Shorter
Saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter was a latecomer to music. He picked up the clarinet at age 16, majored in music education at New York University, then played in Army bands after being drafted in 1956. Starting in 1959, he went through two of the great classic “incubator" bands: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis's quintet. At this time he also began to record as a bandleader for Blue Note. He then struck out in a completely new direction in 1970, forming Weather Report with Joe Zawinul and Miroslav Vitous. This definitive fusion band marked Shorter as a key figure bridging jazz traditions and new visions. It explains his eclectic ability to collaborate with Joni Mitchell, Milton Nascimento, and Steely Dan. In contrast to his many fusion projects, Shorter is today the leader of a “traditional" quartet with pianist Danilo Prez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade--what journalist Larry Blumenfeld has called “jazz's finest working band." His nine Grammy awards have recognized the various dimensions of his work, from Weather Report to his 2005 album with the quartet, Beyond the Sound Barrier.
ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.
The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes--thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.
NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC's opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.
NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top," a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
