DePauw faculty members play at Gobin

Wednesday, August 12, 2009
DePauw School of Music faculty members Barbara Paré, Nicole Brockmann and John Clodfelter will perform the next-to-last concert of the 2009 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.

GREENCASTLE -- DePauw School of Music faculty members Barbara Paré (soprano), Nicole Brockmann (viola) and John Clodfelter (piano) will perform the next-to-last concert of the 2009 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.

Plate offerings collected at the concert will benefit Gobin, the festival's host for its five-year history.

This summer, the festival has presented free concerts performed by professional musicians every Wednesday evening since Memorial Day, supported by donations from community members and local businesses such as Chief's Restaurant.

"We've exceeded this summer's fundraising goal of $4,200," said Eric Edberg, a DePauw music professor and the festival's director. "So we're going to use the plate-offering donations from our last two concerts to give back to the community.

"Money donated tonight will be given to Gobin to support its work, which includes hosting the Summer Enrichment Program and many other outreach activities," he added. "Donations at our final concert next week, a solo piano recital by DePauw professor May Phang, will be donated to the Non-Food Pantry hosted by St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, which distributes paper products, cleaning supplies and personal hygiene items not covered by food stamps to needy families in Putnam County."

Tonight's program includes a set of two songs by Brahms, an aria from Britten's opera Albert Herring, a Fantasie for viola and piano by Hummel, songs by Bridge, Marx, and Strauss, and a set of Irish folk songs arranged for voice, viola, and piano by Alan Smith.

Barbara Paré explained, "John and Nicole and I have wanted to collaborate since we all performed on the Shostakovich Birthday celebration recital at DePauw a few years back. We have come up with a very interesting program, in that most string obbligato parts written for the soprano voice are violin, not viola. I have taught the Brahms songs many times, but not had the occasion to sing them, so this was the perfect opportunity, given the musicianship and sensetivity of both John and Nicole. Nicole introduced us to the songs by Frank Bridge, and we just sort of went from there, looking for repertoire. The program is in English, with the exception of four German songs. I believe that the set of Irish folk songs will especially appeal to the audience."

Brockmann, viola, enjoys a multifaceted career of performance, teaching, and scholarship. She received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MM, AD, and DMA from Yale University.

Her viola teachers include Jesse Levine, Paul Silver, and Isaias Zelkowicz. Dr. Brockmann is a four-time winner of the Yale Chamber Music Competition and has studied chamber music with members of the Tokyo, Vermeer, and Orion String Quartets and with Joan Panetti, Erick Friedman, Syoko Aki, Ransom Wilson, Ronald Roseman, Boris Berman, Gordon Gottlieb, and Nancy Allen.

She has been a member of professional chamber ensembles including the Brooklyn Chamber Players, the Lumina String Quartet, and the West Virginia Piano Quartet, and has performed at venues across the country and abroad, including Merkin Concert Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York City.

In addition to her studio work, Dr. Brockmann is heavily involved in the field of Dalcroze Eurhythmics.

Her specialties in this area are improvisation for chamber ensembles and using Eurhythmics to heighten musicianship in instrumental and vocal master classes.

She is the Immediate Past President of the Dalcroze Society of America and a frequent contributor to the American Dalcroze Journal.

Prior to coming to DePauw, Dr. Brockmann served on the faculties of Yale University and West Virginia University.

Clodfelter originally began music study in piano performance. While a student at DePauw University Clodfelter discovered his love for collaborative piano.

This was further nurtured in his studies at Indiana University. Since 1996, John Clodfelter has worked at DePauw University as a staff accompanist and vocal coach.

In the summer of 2005, he received a grant to study in Vienna, Austria, where he studied with Walter Moore and Carolyne Hague at the Univerität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wein. Mr. Clodfelter's teachers include Karen Taylor, Lorna Grifft, Evelyne Brancart and Hans Graff in piano performance, Rostislav Dubinsky, Leonard Hokanson, Walter Moore and Carolyne Hague in accompanying and coaching.

Paré has extensive solo and operatic experience, having performed with a variety of nationally-known opera companies, including the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, the Cincinnati Opera Summer Festival, the Ensemble Company of Cincinnati Opera, the Des Moines Metro Opera, and Opera Iowa.

Her operatic experience has included roles in staged productions of Cendrillion, Carmen, The Barber of Seville, and The Bartered Bride, and a concert performance of Die Zauberflöte with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

She has also performed as a soloist with the Cincinnati Ballet, and presented numerous recitals at colleges and universities, including the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Northern Kentucky University, and Western State College.

She has recorded Bernard Gilmore's Five Folksongs for Soprano and Band on the Klavier Label, with the Cincinnati Wind Symphony, under the direction of Eugene Corporon.

She is active as an adjudicator and clinician for the Indiana State School Music Association (ISSMA), the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), and the Indiana Music Teachers Association (IMTA).

In addition, she has also been a participant in the Grandin Festival for vocal chamber music, and is a faculty advisor for the DePauw chapter of Mu Phi Epsilon.

She received a Bachelor of Music degree in voice performance from Westminster Choir College and Master of Music degree in voice performance from Florida State University.

Her major teachers have included Patricia Berlin, Barbara Doscher, Yvonne Ciannella, and Lindsay Christiansen. Before joining the faculty at DePauw University, Professor Paré taught at Northern Kentucky University, Florida State University, Western State College, and Simpson College.

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