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State Supreme Court Justice, Retired Journalist/Research Director to Receive Honorary Degrees at Lawrence University’s 158th Commencement

APPLETON, WIS. — Two Lawrence University graduates will be recognized for their professional achievements and civic contributions by their alma mater with honorary degrees Sunday, June 10, at the college’s 158th commencement. Graduation exercises begin at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Hall green.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler of Milwaukee will be awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters and former journalist and research center director Margaret Carroll of Appleton will be awarded an honorary doctorate of education.

In addition, Lawrence will confer 316 bachelor of arts and/or music degrees to 305 seniors from 37 states and 18 foreign countries. That is the highest number of degrees awarded by Lawrence since 1976 (322).

A baccalaureate service featuring David Cook, professor of physics and Philetus E. Sawyer Professor of Science, will be held Saturday, June 9 at 11 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The baccalaureate service and commencement ceremony are free and open to the public.

Both honorary degree recipients, along with President Jill Beck, Lawrence Board of Trustees Chair William O. Hochkammer and student representative Micha Jackson, a senior from Brighton, Ontario, will address the graduates during commencement.

Since earning a bachelor’s degree in government from Lawrence in 1973, Butler has earned several notable “firsts” during a 30-year career dedicated to public service.

He is the first African-American in state history to serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He also holds the distinction of being the first attorney from the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court.

Gov. Jim Doyle appointed Butler to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in August, 2004 to fill the position vacated by Justice Diane Sykes, who left for the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. After 13 years with the State Public Defender’s Office, Butler began his judicial career as a Milwaukee Municipal Court judge in 1992. He was appointed a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge in 2002.

His work as a jurist has been recognized with numerous awards, among them the 2006 Humanitarian of the Year by the American Federation of Teachers, Local 212, the 2005 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Foot Soldiers’ Award and the Outstanding Citizen’s Award from the Wisconsin Council of Deliberations, Prince Hall Masons.

A former adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School, Butler is a member of the faculty at the National Judicial College in Reno, Nev., which provides continuing education for judges around the nation. He also serves as a member of the bench at the Moot Court Competition at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.

Outside the courtroom Butler has been actively engaged with a host of state and national organizations, serving as a member of the board of directors for the NAACP, Legal Action of Wisconsin and the Criminal Law Section of the State Bar. He also has worked with the Criminal Justice Reforms Task Force and the Urban Initiative Task Force on Public Education.

A native of Chicago, Butler earned his law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1977.

Carroll, a 1961 Lawrence graduate who, like Butler, earned a bachelor’s degree in government, enjoyed a 35-year career in journalism and research center administration.

In 1972, Carroll helped establish the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC) in Washington, D.C., which provided impartial research and analysis of business and public policy issues that affect decision making by institutional investors and major corporations. Carroll spent 23 years with IRRC, including 20 as its executive director, before she retired in 1996. IRRC provided research and analysis as well as proxy voting services to more than 500 institutional investors, corporations, law firms, foundations, colleges and other organizations.

Shortly after she graduated from Lawrence, Carroll began her journalism career at the Congressional Quarterly, a Washington, D.C.-based weekly journal that covers Congress and the federal government, working her way up from researcher to associate editor. She had worked as an intern at CQ for two summers while a student at Lawrence.

Amid the civil unrest that was sweeping the country in the late 1960s, Carroll joined the staff at the National Urban Coalition in 1968 as director of publications, overseeing the production of substantive reports and a newsletter directed at local urban coalitions. The following year, she and several former colleagues from Congressional Quarterly joined forces to establish National Journal, a weekly publication that focuses primarily on key actions and personnel in federal departments and agencies. She served as the publication’s congressional editor and later associate editor.

Before helping found the IRRC, Carroll spent two years in the early 1970s as an independent editorial consultant with a diverse client portfolio. She edited and wrote much of a book on “Women in Policing” and edited a widely circulated guide to the 1972 elections. She also served as acting director of communications for the National Urban Coalition. After she retired from IRRC, she also edited a variety of publications.

A long-time member of the Lawrence Board of Trustees, Carroll served as a trustee for all but two years from 1974 to 2006, including two years (1993-95) as the chair of the board. She was elected trustee emerita of the college last fall. In addition, she served the college as a member of the Presidential Search Committee that found Jill Beck, president of the Founders Club, an admissions volunteer, a career consultant and a class agent. She now represents Lawrence on Appleton’s College Avenue Design Committee.

A native of New York City, Carroll has lived in Appleton since 2002.

Lawrence University Recognizes Green Lake, Germantown Teachers as “Outstanding Educators”

APPLETON, WIS. — Dana Neuenfeldt, an English teacher in the Green Lake School District, and Keith Musolff, a physical science teacher at Kennedy Middle School in Germantown will be recognized Sunday, June 10 with Lawrence University’s Outstanding Teaching in Wisconsin Award during the college’s 158th commencement. Both will receive a certificate, a citation and a monetary award.

Lawrence has honored Wisconsin teachers for education excellence annually since 1985. Recipients, nominated by Lawrence seniors, are selected on their abilities to communicate effectively, create a sense of excitement in the classroom, motivate their students to pursue academic excellence while showing a genuine concern for them in, as well as outside, the classroom.

A native of Ripon, Neuenfeldt has taught English courses in grades 8-12 in Green Lake since 1995. Her classes have encompassed the breadth of the department curriculum, including American, British, world and science fiction literature, poetry, creative writing and advanced composition. She spent the first seven years of her career working with the Green Lake forensics team, including five (1997-2002) as its head coach. She currently serves as a member of the National Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

“Mrs. Neuenfeldt expected the best work out of every student that walked through her door,” Lawrence senior Katie Smith, a 2003 Green Lake graduate, wrote in her nomination letter. “She genuinely cared for each and every one of us. She was always willing to bend her schedule to match yours, whether you needed to make up a test before or after school, or needed help writing a paper during her one free period during the day. She truly wanted everyone to succeed in whatever their chosen path and if she could help in some way, she did.”

Four times between 2002 and 2006, Neuenfeld was one of two Green Lake district teachers presented the Trailways Conference Significant Educator Award. Chosen by the school’s top two graduating seniors, the award honors two teachers who made a significant difference in the life of the students.

A 1990 graduate of Ripon High School, Neuenfeldt earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Ripon College and a master’s degree in professional development in education from UW-La Crosse.

Musolff, who retired at the end of the 2006-07 school year, had taught in the Germantown School District since 1972, including the last 20 years at Kennedy Middle School. During his career, Musolff taught third and fifth grades, reading and literature for grades 6-8, 6th-grade social studies as well as his current subject, physical science. From 1999-2003, he served as the coordinator of Kennedy Middle School’s Gifted and Talented program.

Actively engaged outside of the classroom, Musolff directed the school’s annual musical production all 20 years he taught there, served as coach of the Odyssey of the Mind: Destination Imagination program from 1990-2002, spent five years as the advisor to the Mathcounts team and directed Camp Invention, a national science and math camp for 2-6 graders for Germantown, Cedarburg and Grafton students from 2000-04.

He also served as the advisor to Germantown Builder’s Club, a middle school version of the Kiwanis service organization. During his five-year tenure with the club, he helped students in grades 6-8 organize community projects that raised more than $145,000 for the American Cancer Society.

In addition to being a student of Musolff’s, Lawrence senior Eric Armour spent a year working with him as a teacher’s aide in the Gifted and Talented Program, developing deep respect for Musolff’s work with high-risk children.

“It was not a one-size-fits-all method with Keith,” Armour wrote in nominating his former teacher for the award. “He took each student individually and determined the best course of instruction. Whether that meant an accelerated curriculum or more depth in a specific field depended entirely on the individual student. Keith was truly an example of how individualized learning can be effectively applied even as early as middle school.”

A member of the National, Wisconsin and Germantown Education Associations, Musolff earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from UW-Milwaukee and a master’s degree as a reading specialist from Cardinal Stritch University.

Lawrence University Salutes Professors Taylor, Doeringer for 68 Years of Teaching Service

APPLETON, WIS. — Armed with a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in classics after graduating with honors from Lawrence University in 1963, Dan Taylor had his career sights focused on a large university to pursue his research interests.

“I had no specific aspirations to return to Lawrence,” Taylor recalled.

But eleven years later, Taylor found himself back on the campus of his alma mater, teaching Latin and Greek in the same Main Hall classroom in which he himself had studied.

Taylor, Hiram A. Jones Professor of Classics, and Franklin Doeringer, Nathan M. Pusey Professor of East Asian Studies and professor of history, with 68 years of combined teaching service between them, will be recognized with professor emeritus status Sunday, June 10 as retiring faculty at Lawrence’s 158th commencement. They each will be awarded honorary master of arts degrees, ad eundem, as part of the graduation ceremonies that begin at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Hall green. Doeringer, who recently moved to Massachusetts, will be honored in absentia.

Taylor, who spent six years teaching at the University of Illinois before being recruited back to Lawrence, discovered bigger isn’t always better.

“That was not for me,” Taylor said of his time at UI. “When an opportunity arose to return to Lawrence, I jumped at it. I learned being at a small college is preferable to being at a large university because you’re so much more a part of the entire community. You really get to know your students. Plus, I still was able to do the kind of scholarship here that I wanted to at a large institution.”

Taylor’s scholarship specialty, classical linguistics, has helped him establish a reputation as the world’s leading scholar on Marcus Terentius Varro, ancient Rome’s foremost authority on Roman language science who came to be regarded as “the most learned of all the Romans.”

A linguist as well as a classicist, Taylor takes a scientific approach to the study of language. He has written two books on Varro, including “Varro De Lingua Latina X: A New Critical Text and English Translation with Prolegomena,” that culminated nearly 20 years of research on Varro’s once-lost seminal manuscript. He also edited the book “The History of Linguistics in the Classical Period,” which has become one of the most frequently cited texts in the field of classical linguistics, and co-wrote the pamphlet “Foreign Languages at the Middle Level.”

One of Lawrence’s most honored scholars, Taylor is the only faculty member in Lawrence history ever awarded two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, both of which sent him to Florence, Italy for a year. In 2002, he returned to Italy a third time on a Fulbright Fellowship as the first Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Linguistics at the University of Trieste.

He received Lawrence’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1998 and was the recipient of both the American Philological Association’s National Award for Excellence in Teaching the Classics (1983) and the Wisconsin Association of Foreign Language Teachers’ Distinguished Foreign Language Educator of the Year Award (1990).

In April, after serving as guest speaker at the annual “A Day with the Romans” event for 400 high school students at the University of Wisconsin, Taylor was surprised with a special plaque of commendation from Gov. Doyle by the Wisconsin Latin Teachers Association. Doyle’s commendation cited Taylor’s 33 years of “tireless dedication to the classics and linguistics” and for inspiring “countless students to pursue careers in the classics and many diverse professions with their classics background.”

“I’ve been fortunate enough to be honored for teaching at an institution that puts a premium on good teaching, but I also was able to produce a fair amount of reputable scholarship in my field,” said Taylor, who will leave Appleton for the ski slopes of Colorado later this summer. “I’ve thrived in this atmosphere. I’d like to think I’ve been good for Lawrence and Lawrence certainly has been good to me.”

A specialist in Chinese intellectual history and East Asian history, Doeringer arrived on the Lawrence campus from New York City in 1972 and found a much different Appleton than the one he recently left.

“There wasn’t a lot of interest in Asia at that time,” said Doeringer. “But the influx of the Vietnamese and Laotians in the early 1980s and later the Hmongs, many of whom became a permanent fixture in the community, helped change that.”

Doeringer himself helped pave the way for a heightened community awareness of Asian affairs. Always a historian at heart, his appetite for East Asia was whetted as a graduate student at Columbia University. He brought his hunger for all things Chinese with him when he joined the Lawrence faculty.

At a time when the history curriculum focused almost exclusively on U.S. and European perspectives, Doeringer began introducing courses on China and East Asia that helped create a new emphasis on world and comparative history that hadn’t previously existed.

“It was a big change at the time. It broadened the department and provided more of a global perspective,” said Doeringer, the author of two books, “The Peoples of East Asia” and the two-volume textbook “Discovering the Global Past.”

He also was instrumental in creating a new department that focused specifically on East Asia, serving as the first chair of the East Asian Languages and Cultures department when it was established in 1989. Working with colleagues in China, Doeringer arranged for professors from Heilongjiang University to spend a year at Lawrence teaching in the fledgling department.

“Heilongjiang University was carefully selected, in part because its winters were colder than Appleton’s,” Doeringer said with a chuckle.

Over the next dozen years, Doeringer helped raise close to $5 million for the department, which was renamed East Asian Studies in 2004, through six major grants awarded to Lawrence, including a $1.5 million grant in 2001 from the Freeman Foundation that provided scores of first-hand study and travel opportunities for students and faculty in China and Japan.

“Those grants helped pave the way and make the department a viable option,” said Doeringer.

China’s front door remained locked to most of the world during much of his early teaching career, but when it finally opened in the early 1980s Doeringer led a three-week long trip there for Lawrence alumni in 1983. Under the auspices of the Freeman Grant, he has since made at least a dozen more visits to China and Japan, leading both students and faculty colleagues on journeys of inquiry. Doeringer is hoping to make at least one more trip to the Far East. He is investigating a Fulbright opportunity in Hong Kong to serve as an advisor on general education to Chinese universities.

One of only seven faculty members in Lawrence history to be awarded both the college’s Young Teacher Award (1976) and its Award for Excellence in Teaching (1999), Doeringer admits to feeling a bit like Lawrence’s graduating seniors as he embarks on a new phase in his own life.

“I’m still trying to get the daily rhythm here,” said Doeringer, as he settles into the historically rich environs of Gloucester, Mass. “It’s going to take me a year to get my bearings and figure this all out.”

Lawrence University’s Feyertag Selected for Elite Summer Academy in Germany

APPLETON, WIS. — Aspiring student composer Paul Feyertag will have a unique opportunity to hone his craft this summer as a participant in the Akademie Schloss Solitude’s master class for young composers in Stuttgart, Germany.

The Lawrence University senior from New Berlin was one of 16 composers from around the world selected for the biannual program. Established in 2003, this year’s summer academy will be held August 3-19.

During his two-week residency, Feyertag will work individually with an academy faculty that features some of the most prominent composers of contemporary music, meet other visiting composers to discuss their work and participate in daily presentations in which each composer will introduce and discusses his or her work with the entire group.

Headlining the list of faculty with whom Feyertag will work is Chaya Czernowin, one of the most successful and influential composers of today’s new music scene. A permanent composition instructor at the summer program, Czernowin teaches composition at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

Barely beating the program’s application deadline, Feyertag submitted three compositions he had written in the past year. The pieces ranged in length from 90 seconds to 15 minutes. Several weeks later he found out he was among the select few who had been extended an invititation to attend the academy. His participation in the program will be supported by a scholarship from President Jill Beck.

The internationally acclaimed Ensemble SurPlus will be in residence during the second half of the summer academy and will perform two public concerts of the participants’ compositions. Feyertag has already submitted a work entitled “Hammerspace (shh)” for Ensemble SurPlus to perform as part of the academy’s concert series. Written earlier this spring, the six-minute piece is based on a poem written by 2006 Lawrence graduate Melanie Farley.

“Ensemble SurPlus specializes in contemporary repertoire, so I tried to take advantage of their talents,” said Feyertag, a music theory-composition major, of the work he wrote for the group to perform.

Feyertag, who hopes to pursue a career as a professional composer after he graduates in 2008, wrote his first composition at the age of 14 — a jazz lead sheet — but says it wasn’t until his sophomore year at Lawrence that he truly got serious about composing as a craft. He’s looking forward to spending part of his summer working with the academy’s talented faculty and interacting with composers from around the world who are also at the beginning stages of their careers.

“To have a chance to go to another country and be immersed in something like this is going to be a wonderful opportunity,” said Feyertag.

Founded in 1990, the Akademie Schloss Solitude combines scientific and artistic exchange in a retreat-like setting. It places particular value on providing “quality” of time that is better than participants would otherwise experience in their daily lives. It offers fellowships in architecture, visual arts, performing arts, design, literature, music/sound and video/film/new media.

Hitting the Right Note: Lawrence University Percussionist Selected for Elite International Orchestra

APPLETON, WIS. — As graduation presents go, Mike Truesdell might be hard pressed to find a better one.

While on a study abroad program last fall in Amsterdam, Truesdell attended a concert performed by the world-renowned Ensemble Intercontemporain, regarded by many as the world’s premiere contemporary classical ensemble. He left the concert hall awe-struck.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘I want to do that,'” Truesdell recalled.

As fate would have it, this summer he will have an opportunity to do so.

The Lawrence University senior from Verona will return to Europe later this summer as a percussionist with the prestigious Lucerne Festival Academy, in Lucerne, Switzerland. Founded in 2004, the festival academy, an elite “training orchestra” for aspiring professional musicians under the age of 28, is an offshoot of the internationally acclaimed Lucerne Festival.

During its more than 60-year history, the Lucerne Festival has earned a reputation as one of the world’s exclusive musical venues, attracting guest conductors such as Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan and Paul Sacher as well as orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Musicians are selected from around the world by audition tape. And serving as coaches for this year’s festival academy are members of the same awe-inspiring Ensemble Intercontemporain.

“Elated” best describes Truesdell’s state of mind when he found out he had beaten the odds and was one of 140 musicians worldwide selected for the festival academy, which focuses on the study and performance of groundbreaking compositions from the 20th- and 21st-centuries. One of seven percussionists chosen, Truesdell will spend three, all-expenses-paid weeks in Lucerne, from August 18 to September 6, during which he will study under the tutelage of famed French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez.

Highlighting Truesdell’s stay will be three concert performances in Lucerne in early September followed by an eight-day concert tour that will take him to Essen, Germany and Tokyo, Japan. While in Lucerne, Truesdell will get a crash course in Swiss culture by living with a host family.

“This is such an amazing opportunity. I couldn’t even dream about doing something like this,” said Truesdell, whose specialty is the marimba. “This is going to be a great springboard for things to come musically for me. To work with the renowned conductors and coaches of this festival can only improve me as a musician and as a citizen of the world.”

Professor of Music Dane Richeson, director of percussion studies at Lawrence, isn’t surprised one of the most talented students he’s ever had earned a spot in one of the world’s pre-eminent concert festivals.

“Mike has a rare musical gift for understanding how to make the vast array of percussion instruments, with all the individual techniques they require, communicate true emotion to the listener,” said Richeson, who has taught percussion at Lawrence since 1984. “Sometimes this might only be a simple rhythm on a triangle. Yet, Mike is passionate and determined enough to make something so simple and one dimensional into a language that can sound multi-dimensional.

“Mike’s opportunity to study and perform in Lucerne is a wonderful and well-deserved reward for an exceptional musician,” Richeson added.

It was a friend of Truesdell’s from the Boston Conservatory who accompanied him to that Amsterdam concert and first told him about the Lucerne Festival Academy, encouraging him to audition for it. Inspired by what he had just witnessed on stage, he recorded the festival’s required repertoire last November and December in Amsterdam, crossed his fingers and sent it off.

“It was absolutely the most difficult piece of music I had ever seen in my life,” said Truesdell, who earned first-place honors at the 2006 Wisconsin Public Radio-sponsored Neale-Silva Young Artists competition.

A member of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra (LSO) the past four years, Truesdell received his musical baptism on the violin at the age of four and took up piano in middle school. His percussion evolution continued with a stint with bells, from which he “graduated” to snare drum. He dabbled with marimba throughout high school and now considers keyboard percussion his primary instruments of choice. In addition to playing with the LSO, Truesdell also performs with Vale Todo, an Appleton-based salsa band steeped in traditional Cuban music.

With dreams of pursuing a career in contemporary music and eventually commissioning pieces himself, Truesdell is confident the Lucerne Festival Academy will provide him a “fantastic foot in the door of that world.”

“We only have solo repertoire for percussion from the past 50 years or so, while piano has repertoire from the 17th century,” said Truesdell, whose personal marimba back home takes up half of his bedroom. “I want to support new music as much as I possibly can.”

As he wraps up the final weeks of his life as an undergraduate and awaits his college graduation as a percussion performance major on June 10, Truesdell says he’s looking forward to discovering the impact this festival academy will have on his life.

“I had such an amazing experience my last time in Europe and came back such a different person, that I can only image the potential for change in store for me this time. Working with the caliber of musicians I will be exposed to, it’s anyone’s guess how great this will be.”

Middle and high school students near Truesdell’s hometown will be the immediate beneficiaries of his experiences in Lucerne. When he returns to Wisconsin this fall, Truesdell plans on teaching private music lessons for a year before pursuing graduate school studies.

Grammy-winning Composer/Conductor Maria Schneider Closes Lawrence University Jazz Series

APPLETON, WIS. — Internationally renowned jazz composer and conductor Maria Schneider will be featured in the final concert of the 2006-07 Lawrence University Jazz Series Friday, June 1 at 8 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. Schneider will conduct the award-winning Lawrence University Jazz Ensemble (LUJE) and showcase Lawrence jazz faculty soloist Lee Tomboulian.

Tickets, at $22 and $20 for adults, $19 and $17 for senior citizens and $17 and $15 for students, are available through the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.

The concert program will include LUJE performances of Schneider’s compositions “Hang Gliding” and “Three Romances,” along with two works from her forthcoming CD “Sky Blue,” which is slated for release June 14. Her recent composition “Aires de Lando” will feature Tomboulian as accordion soloist.

A native of Minnesota, Schneider settled in New York City in 1985 after studying at the University of Minnesota, the University of Miami and the Eastman School of Music. She studied composition with jazz giant Bob Brookmeyer and became an assistant to legendary composer/arranger Gil Evans, preparing Evans’ music for the 1987 Gil Evans/Sting tour.

In 1993, she formed the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, which performed weekly at Visiones in Greenwich Village for a stretch of five years. Since then, her orchestra has performed around the world, earning 2005’s “Large Jazz Ensemble of the Year” award from the Jazz Journalists Association.

Her first three recordings — “Evanescence,” “Coming About” and “Allégresse” — all were nominated for Grammy Awards, while “Allégresse” was selected by both Time and Billboard magazines for their list of “Top Ten Recordings of 2000,” which included all genres of music.

Schneider’s “Concert in the Garden” CD, which was released only through her website, won the 2005 Grammy Award for “best jazz recording,” becoming the first CD to earn that honor through Internet-only sales. The CD also was named 2005’s “Jazz Album of the Year” in the DownBeat Magazine Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalist Awards. Both organizations recognized Schneider as “Composer of the Year” and “Arranger of the Year.”

“Watching Maria’s ascent to international jazz recognition has been a personal joy for me,” said Fred Sturm, director of jazz studies and improvisational music at Lawrence, who has been a friend of Schneider’s since the early 1980s and collaborated with her in the creation of “Maria Schneider: Evanescence,” a 1995 Universal Edition text featuring her original scores. He also co-conducted a concert of Schneider works with her in New York in 2001.

“I count Maria among the finest large ensemble composers in jazz history. And she is peerless as a conductor of jazz music,” Sturm added. “Our jazz students, faculty and audience will no doubt be inspired by Maria’s artistry, warmth and sincerity.”

Schneider’s extensive list of commissions includes new works by the Danish Radio Orchestra, Metropole Orchestra, Stuttgart Jazz Orchestra, Orchestre National de Jazz, Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra, Monterey Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center and Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. She also received the Doris Duke award to compose a dance work for the Connecticut-based Pilobolus Dance Theatre and her orchestra at the American Dance Festival and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Tomboulian, who joined the Lawrence jazz faculty in 2005 as assistant professor of jazz improvisation, jazz small group performance and applied jazz piano, has performed with noted jazz artists Airto, Nat Adderly, Doc Cheatham, Larry Coryell, Jack DeJohnette and Bucky Pizzarelli. He is a founding member of the Brazilian and Uruguayan ensemble Circo.

Earlier this month, LUJE was named the recipient of DownBeat magazine’s 2007 “Outstanding Performance Award” in the college big band category of its annual student music awards competition. It was the second time in seven years LUJE had earned the prestigious award and the third time overall. The group was cited for the seven-track CD “Witnesses,” which featured compositions and arrangements written exclusively by Lawrence students.

Two Lawrence University Musicians Earn Top Honors at State Piano Competition

APPLETON, WIS. — Lawrence University musicians Helen Kashap and Daniel Schenk earned first- and second-place honors, respectively, at the annual Wisconsin Music Teachers Association Badger Collegiate Piano Competition held May 19 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Both are students in the piano studio of Associate Professor of Music Anthony Padilla.

Kashap, a freshman double major in piano performance and history from Saskatoon, Canada, played two movements from Beethoven’s “The Tempest Sonata,” Chopin’s “Nocturne,” and “Danzas Agentinas” by Alberto Ginastera. She received a first-place prize of $200 for her winning performance. This summer, Kashap will spend a month studying at the Orford Arts Academy in Montreal. Students are selected for the program by audition.

Schenk, a junior double major in piano performance and biology from Royal Oak, Mich., performed works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, and Scriabin in the competition.

Participants in the WMTA competition, which is open to students attending any college or university in Wisconsin, are required to play a solo recital of between 20 and 30 minutes in length. The program must include at least three selections from one of five historical periods: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic and Contemporary.

Annual Senior Art Major Exhibition Opens May 25 at Wriston Art Center Galleries

APPLETON, WIS. — Eight Lawrence University senior art majors will showcase their work developed while students at Lawrence in the “Senior Art Major Exhibition 2007” in the Leech, Hoffmaster and Kohler galleries of Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center, 613 E. College Ave., Appleton.

The exhibition, featuring painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography and lamp-worked glass, runs May 25 to August 5. A free exhibition-opening reception with refreshments will be held Friday May 25 from 6 – 8:30 p.m.

The students participating in the show are Blair Allen, Arlington Heights, Ill., Daniel Knowles Butler III, Philadelphia, Pa., Alissa Karnaky, Charleston, S.C., Allison Lara Manasse, Chicago, Ill., Kate Ostler, St. Charles, Ill., Gabrielle Prouty, Mineral Point, Clare Raccuglia, Chicago, Ill., and Chelsea Wagner, Mendota Heights, Minn.

The Wriston Art Center galleries are free and open to the public Tuesday-Friday from 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday from noon – 4 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays. For more information on the exhibition, call 920-832-6621 or visit www.lawrence.edu/news/wriston.

Stephen Kellogg and Sixers, Dropping Daylight Perform at Lawrence University

APPLETON, WIS. — Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers bring their unique blend of classic folk-rock tradition and fun-loving showmanship to Lawrence University Tuesday, May 22 for a performance in Stansbury Theatre. The Minneapolis-based quartet Dropping Daylight will open the concert at 7 p.m.

Tickets, at $3 for Lawrence students, $7 for general admission, are available through the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.

Kellogg, who began as a solo performer before adding his three-member band that, beyond the standard guitars, bass, and drums incorporate kazoos, accordions and even the keytar into their sound, has sold out East Coast venues with a juxtaposition of heartfelt songs delivered with unabashed flair.

The band’s live show features a heavy doze of what Kellogg calls “shenanigans,” acts of goofy band humor that provide a more festive flavor to the performance than is typically found in the more staid environs of the singer/songwriter world. They’ve been known to add full replications of Napoleon Dynamite’s infamous dance or Patrick Swayze’s quasi-risque lift of Jennifer Grey from “Dirty Dancing” into their performances, which usually include a fair number of covers as well.

Frontman Kellogg released the first of his three solo albums in 2002 and has since released three more with the Sixers, including the breakthrough disk “Bulletproof Heart” in 2004 and their 2005 self-titled CD, which has been described as “a rock album that replaces attitude with sincerity.”

Founded originally as Sue Generis in 2001, Dropping Daylight, with its piano tinged sound, has been compared to alternative rock favorites like Ben Folds Five, the Eels and the New Radicals.

Dropping Daylight was part of the 2006 Vans Warped Tour and also has toured with Breaking Benjamin, Monty Are I, and Jason Mraz. Their first full-length disk, “Brace Yourself,” which featured the track “Tell Me,” was released in the spring of 2006.

The concert is sponsored by Lawrence’s Student Organization for University Programming (S.O.U.P.).

I Voted for Kodos, Bomb the Music Industry! Headline Lawrence University’s Skappleton 2007

APPLETON, WIS. — The five original members of Madison’s I Voted for Kodos will play their final concert together Saturday, May 19 as one of the headliners of Skappleton 2007, Lawrence University’s annual salute to ska.

I Voted for Kodos and Bomb the Music Industry! will close a 12-hour “skavaganza” featuring 15 bands on two stages in Lawrence’s Buchanan Kiewit Recreation Center. Doors open at 11 a.m. and music begins at 12 noon. Tickets for Skappleton, at $15 each, can be purchased at the door the day of the event.

Winners of the 2005 purevolume.com Bamboozle on-line voting competition, I Voted for Kodos has earned a national following with its catchy hooks and tight harmonies. The band has completed five national tours and shared the stage with such notables as Fall Out Boy, Reel Big Fish, Bowling For Soup and Mustard Plug. But following Saturday’s concert, the band mates will go their separate ways.

Under the direction of producer and lead songwriter Jeff Rosenstock, Bomb the Music Industry! has counted more than 15 different musicians as band members since its founding. BtMI is known to offer fans a chance to perform on stage if they learn a song and bring their instrument to the show.

Their discography includes four albums and their first CD, “Get Warmer,” will be released on Asian Man Records this summer.

Other bands on the 2007 Skappleton line-up include: Reaching Scarlet, Catch of the Day, Chicken Poodle Soup, Hired Geeks, T.U.G.G., Car Full of Midgets, Offend Your Friends, 4th and Michigan, The Skamikazes, The Invaders, Piper Club, Small Kitchen Appliances and Sajak.