World-class musicians appointed to Jacobs School of Music faculty
August 2011
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music recently announced several faculty appointments with professional experiences that include collaborations with musicians Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Diana Krall, John Mellencamp and Diana Ross, children's book author Maurice Sendak and opera greats Renée Fleming and Placido Domingo, among many other high-profile artists.
Kevin Murphy, Department of Voice, professor of practice (voice)
Prior to joining the New York City Opera administrative staff, Murphy was appointed by Gerard Mortier as the directeur des etudes musicales at the Opéra National de Paris.
In 1992, he was the first pianist invited by maestro James Levine to participate in the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and he continued as an assistant conductor from 1993 through June 2006. He has played continuo harpsichord with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in productions of Così fan tutte, La Cenerentola, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, La Clemenza di Tito and Idomeneo and traveled with the company on tour in Japan.
In addition to his on- and off-stage partnership with Heidi Grant Murphy, he has collaborated in concert and recital with many of today's leading artists, including Michelle DeYoung, Bejun Mehta, Gary Lakes, Nathan Gunn, Olaf Bär, Bryn Terfel, Marcelo Alvarez, Placido Domingo, Frederica von Stade, Renée Fleming, Paul Groves and Cecilia Bartoli.
Murphy is also respected for his work in master class and as a private coach and has performed in chamber music collaborations with the Zukerman Chamber Players as well as members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and New York Philharmonic.
He has appeared on "The Today Show" with soprano Renée Fleming, "Good Morning America" with soprano Cecilia Bartoli and "The Tonight Show" with tenor Gary Lakes. He has been musical assistant and played continuo harpsichord for the Seiji Ozawa Opera Project in Japan, at the Tanglewood Music Festival and Verbier for James Levine and worked with Esa-Pekka Salonnen at La Jolla's SummerFest.
Additional festival appearances have included Music @ Menlo, Bellingham Festival of Music and Vin et Musique in Burgundy. Murphy has been in residence with the Canadian Opera Company and the Vocal Arts Program at The Juilliard School. He is a regular adjudicator for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and has a working relationship with the Merola Opera Program at the San Francisco Opera.
A native of Syracuse, N.Y., Murphy received his Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and Master of Music in Piano Accompaniment from the Curtis Institute.
Heidi Grant Murphy, Department of Voice, adjunct professor of practice (voice)
Heidi Grant Murphy is a native of Bellingham, Wash. She began vocal studies while attending Western Washington and continued her studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Her graduate studies were interrupted when she was named a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and engaged by maestro James Levine to participate in the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She was a member of that opera house for more than 20 years. Murphy has appeared with most of the world's finest opera companies and symphony orchestras and has a close working relationship with many of the world's most esteemed conductors.
Murphy's latest recording, Lullabies & Nightsongs, based on the children's book illustrated by Maurice Sendak, was released in September 2009 (Koch International). With maestro Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic, she appears on a live recording of Mahler IV and a separate recording of Augusta Read Thomas's Gathering Paradise on New World.
Additional recordings include Roberto Sierra's Missa Latina with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra on Naxos, an XM Satellite Radio compilation of Sondheim classics and six additional recordings for Koch records. For the Deutsche Grammophon label, she has recorded Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri with the Staatskapelle Dresden as well as Idomeneo (Ilia) and Le Nozze di Figaro (Barbarina), both conducted by James Levine. Additional recording projects include Vincent Youmans's Through the Years for PS Classics, two recital discs for Arabesque and the Grammy-nominated Sweeney Todd (Johanna) for the New York Philharmonic's private label.
She has been a featured guest on NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," A&E's "Breakfast with the Arts" and BBC Radio 3.
Wolfgang Brendel, professor of practice (voice)
Wolfgang Brendel grew up in Wiesbaden, Germany, where he took singing lessons with Rolff Sartorius during his time at the conservatory. In 1971, he debuted at the Pfalztheater in Kaiserslautern as Guglielmo in Così fan tutte.
His artistic home for the greater part of his career was the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, where, in 1977, he became the youngest Kammersänger in the company's history. Taking up the mantle of Josef Metternich, who had retired in 1971, Brendel established his primacy as the star Munich baritone of his era across a range of roles, from Mozart (Guglielmo and Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte and the title role in Don Giovanni) to Verdi (Germont in La traviata, Posain Don Carlo, Renato in Un ballo in maschera, Carlo in La forza del destino and di Luna in Il trovatore) and beyond. In 1973, he received critical acclaim as Pelléas in a new production by Jean-Pierre Ponelle of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.
Early on, conductor Carlos Kleiber selected Brendel to sing Germont and conducted him in other roles, including Falke in Die Fledermaus. Brendel's roles in these early years included Silvio in Pagliacci. He began his Wagner career with Wolfram von Eschenbach in Tannhäuser. Over time, he took on heavier Wagner roles (Amfortas in Parsifal, Holländer in Der fliegende Holländer), eventually singing Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and adding Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde to his repertoire in 2005.
Additional Verdi roles included Ford in Falstaff, Miller in Luisa Miller and the title roles in Simon Boccanegra, Nabucco and Macbeth. He performed the title role in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin frequently but became perhaps most closely associated with a series of baritone roles in Richard Strauss operas, including Mandryka in Arabella and Barak in Die Frau ohne Schatten.
His roles by Puccini include Marcello in La bohème, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Rance in La fanciulla del West and Scarpia in Tosca.
Brendel has performed on all the major opera stages in Germany and throughout Europe, in Tokyo and in the United States. Since his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1975, at age 27, as Count Almaviva, he sang 91 performances there through 2007 in roles by Mozart (Papageno), Verdi (Germont, Miller), Wagner (Amfortas), Puccini (Sharpless), J. Strauss (Dr. Falke and Eisenstein) and R. Strauss (Mandryka, Barak, Count in Capriccio, Music Master, Altair).
In 1997, he was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany).
Mark Hood, Department of Recording Arts, assistant professor of recording arts
Audio engineer and media producer Mark Hood has served as an adjunct lecturer and visiting assistant professor at Jacobs since 2005.
Hood's body of creative output includes more than 500 LP, CD and DVD releases in all genres. He has recorded and mixed the soundtracks for numerous feature, documentary and art films, television series and radio and television specials, as well as jingles and music for advertising for scores of national clients and campaigns.
Hood has collaborated with a wide variety of artists and ensembles, including Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Bob Mintzer, Diana Ross, John Scofield, John Mellencamp, Miss America (several), David Sanborn, Sandi Patty, Stephen Schwartz, Rodney Dangerfield, Richie Havens, George Benson, Odetta, the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras, the Washington Pops, the Washington Bach Consort, Canadian Brass, Dallas Brass and many others.
In work for the theater, Hood is the sound designer for the musicals Blast (2001 Tony and Emmy Awards), Shockwave, Cyberjam and Music in Xtreme in their London West End and New York Broadway productions, as well as their ongoing international and U.S. national touring versions.
Hood is managing partner of Echo Park Recording Studios, a commercial audio production facility in Bloomington. Designed and built by Hood and his partner, Mike Wanchic, in 1993, Echo Park has been home to productions by The Fray, Ben Folds, Howie Day, Son Volt, Vedera, Juliana Hatfield, Bob and Tom, Mysteries of Life and many other artists. The studio has also been the venue for Hood's numerous collaborations with many current and former Jacobs faculty members.
Hood's primary research interest centers around the eduction and preservation of audio content originally captured on legacy analog formats such as wax cylinders, lacquer discs, magnetic wire and tape recordings, videotape and optical film.
From 2008 to 2011, he served as research associate and chief engineer of the Sound Directions Project at the IU Archives of Traditional Music in its efforts to digitize and preserve its collection of over 90,000 historic recordings in deteriorating and obsolete formats. He currently serves on the IU Bloomington Media Preservation Task Force in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research.
Hood is a member of the Education and Training Committee of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and the Audio Engineering Society.
Douglas McKinnie, Department of Recording Arts, assistant professor of recording arts
Douglas McKinnie comes to the Jacobs School of Music from Middle Tennessee State University, where he has been an assistant professor in the Recording Industry Department since 2006.
McKinnie holds a Ph.D. from the University of Surrey (U.K.), where his research at the Institute of Sound Recording focused on the influence of spatial envelopment and localization accuracy on the perceived sound quality of surround-sound playback systems.
McKinnie received his master of music degree in sound recording from McGill University, where he engaged in research on techniques for low-bit-rate audio critical listening tests. While at McGill, he assisted in the selection of critical listening materials for the Electronic Industries Association/National Radio Standards Committee, which were used to assess the sound quality of HD radio. This research was carried out at Canada's Communications Research Centre in Ottawa.
He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Case Western Reserve University.
Since 1994, McKinnie has been the director of live sound operations at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he has worked with artists as diverse as James Taylor, Diana Krall, The Boston Pops, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and Train. He also was the audio engineer for the Cleveland Institute of Music and a staff engineer at Cleveland's Commercial Recording Studios.
His recording credits include compact discs for Telarc and McGill Records, radio production and demonstration recordings for the BBC, as well as countless other radio broadcasts and independent releases.
