A Message From the Chair


Dear Friends,

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Dr. Paul Head

It is my great pleasure to welcome you back for the 2007-08 season of musical excellence here in the University of Delaware Department of Music. I hope you will take a few moments to peruse this edition of Dynamics as we continue to celebrate the many wonderful offerings put forth by our talented faculty and students.

We are now enjoying our second season in the Louise and David Roselle Center for the Arts, a beautiful facility that features a proscenium theater, an intimate recital hall, a state of the art rehearsal/performance space, and thirty-two additional practice rooms that have been enthusiastically received by our dedicated music students. Audiences and performers alike have raved about the new facilities that have enriched our musical presentations in such an elegant and aesthetically pleasing way.

Our students and faculty members have accomplished a great deal this past year, reaffirming that the UD Department of Music is undisputedly one of international stature. Just to name a few such accomplishments; our steel drum band toured Israel presenting a series of invited concerts and master classes, essentially introducing this musical genre to that region of the world. Faculty members such as cellist Larry Stomberg, violinist Xiang Gao, and horn player John Smith have been recognized for outstanding performances in Asia and Europe. And the UD Chorale has returned from a successful tour of northern Europe where they were recipients of the First Place Grand Prix Award in the Estonian International Choral Competition.

Back on the home front, we were ecstatic to learn of permanent funding, granted by retiring University President David Roselle, which will allow our graduate string quartet to represent us throughout the northern Delaware community and beyond. Our ongoing collaboration with the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate has provided wonderful performance opportunities for our students while adding a musical dimension to one of Delaware’s finest cultural treasures. And each year, we are experiencing an increasingly large and competitive audition pool that reiterates the fact that the word is out – “The University of Delaware is a great place to study music!”

With well over two hundred music majors, our highly renowned faculty, and our nationally and internationally recognized ensembles comprised of students representing nearly every major on campus, I think you will find the coming season to represent a colorfully varied program of musical brilliance. We look forward to sharing our collective artistry with you in the coming months with a simple word of encouragement to “plan ahead” and order your tickets early. You don’t want to miss out!

Respectfully,

Paul D. Head
Interim Chair – Department of Music