NY music college grooves up its faculty
mainMannes is moving next month from the Upper West Side to join New School in Greenwich Village. The aim is less Brahms, more contemporary.
To that end, the college has gone out hiring, among others:
Composers Lowell Liebermann, Missy Mazzoli (pictured) and David Little, violinist Miranda Cuckson, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, pianist Jeremy Denk, Met concertmaster David Chan, Wall Street Journal theatre critic Terry Teachout and New York Philharmonic principal violist Cynthia Phelps.
It’s a whole new school.
Photo: Marylene Mey
Dean Richard Kessler is creating a unique character for Mannes. It will fill a new and important function that will distinguish it from Julliard and the Manhattan School of Music. Excellent leadership in a difficult undertaking.
It’s interesting that Mannes was always a different school, particularly due to the whole Schenker obsession they had. In a way it appears that Kessler and his colleagues are continuing the notion of Mannes being different, but creating that difference through something very much distanced from the past 60 or so years. It must not be easy, for the Mannes stalwarts are a very close knit and stubborn group. There may not be many of them, since its such a relatively small school, but they’re pretty convinced of their system. It will be interesting to see how all the new faculty change things. I also heard they made a terrific hire in theory…Lynn Rogers, who is an excellent scholar on Stravinsky.
What will hapoen to the Mannes building on W. 84th’Street?
Hope Teachout is only for jazz and contemporary. When he wrote for Commentary, not at all in Samuel Lippman’s excellent footsteps, he couldn’t find anything special about Rubenstein’s or Tebaldi’s sound. However his knowledge of jazz and contemporary work is quite interestjng and comprehensive.
I believe that Teachout has been running a sort of music journalism course, 101-style. I don’t believe he is going to teach this year though and I hear they are working to bring another music journalist on board. Teachout was definitely teaching at Mannes.
Must enter a revision to my shot-from-the-hip comment about Mr. Teachout. With a special fondness for Mannes, of which the pre-college served my son very well-he has gone on to conservatory and graduate work in composition with superb preparation-I reflexively expressed some distress re a long ago criticism of my favorites. Having subsequently perused a fraction of this particular critic’s (and creato’s) !work online I would take much to heart “De Gustibus non Disputamdum. The well-done and varied career of Mr. Teachout should serve as a fine complement to the college, and an appropriate stimulus for innovative thinking.
I want to know what do I have to do to come to this college I always had passion for music since I was little girl.