Acclaimed American novelist Walter Mosley's visit to campus Wednesday, April 18 has been postponed due to illness.
His appearance will be rescheduled for a later date.
Mosley was scheduled to meet with English department faculty and students and members of the Sorum Book Club before presenting a public lecture, "Bearing Witness," in the Nott Memorial.
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New buildings highlight bright future
Two wonderful new facilities came on line during the winter term at Union. One of these is the new Taylor Music Center, located in the renovated North Colonnade and celebrated in this issue. The other is the new Center for Bioengineering and Computational Biology in the newly renovated Butterfield Hall, which will be featured in an upcoming magazine. Walking through both spaces, one is reminded of what is so special about Union. Both represent state-of-the-art facilities. Taylor is an “All-Steinway” facility, a designation that tells the world that we are committed to the highest standards and serious about what we do here. Bioengineering bristles with sophisticated equipment, saying much the same thing about the work being done there. Both buildings provide the space necessary for close interaction between faculty and students, the cornerstone of a Union education.
The opening of these two important academic facilities once again reminds us of the genius of Union’s simultaneous commitment to the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences, and engineering. To tour these two facilities is to know the range of intellectual inquiry that takes place at Union. It is hard to imagine a prospective student leaving Union after seeing these new facilities without feeling excited and buoyed by the possibilities for discovery at this College.
While Union didn’t have a professor of music until 1926, during the administration of President Charles Alexander Richmond, the College graduated alumni who made enormous musical contributions. I am reminded of this every time I leave the President’s House and walk past Payne Gate, named after John Howard Payne, Class of 1812, author of “Home Sweet Home.” The portrait of George Washington Doane, Class of 1818, adorns one of the walls in the President’s House, reminding me of the enormous contributions of this noted hymnologist. The musical offerings of other Union alumni are well known to the world: Daniel Butterfield’s (Class of 1849) “Taps” and Edmund Hamilton Sears’ (Class of 1834) “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” are just two examples that immediately come to mind. At the same time the College produced these graduates, it produced others who were building great bridges, digging great tunnels, constructing great cities, and even starting new academic fields of study. What an amazing range of endeavors, what amazing graduates, and what an amazing college.
We can all be proud of this past and we should be as excited about what is happening at Union today. Like the prospective student who tours the new Taylor Music Center or the Bioengineering Center, we should be even more excited about the possibilities of our future. It’s a pretty simple equation: great facilities + world class faculty + talented students = exciting future. I, for one, am excited to be part of it all and can’t wait to see our next chapter unfold.
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Professor Hilary Tann works in frozen music. Tann is a composer and former Music Department chair who has long advocated for a new music building at Union College. A $4 million renovation of the North Colonnade largely completed in January delivered to Tann and her colleagues a facility to match their highest hopes—the Taylor Music Center.
“They say that architecture is frozen music, right? And so here I am, I’m living in frozen music,” Tann said while sitting in her new office. “I have argued for more faculty and more space and more this and more that for many, many years. At this moment, I do not want to argue anymore. I want to say, ‘Everyone must know how grateful we are.’ It’s thank you time.”
Music has been part of the fabric at Union since 1854, when the Glee Club was formed, but did not gain status as an academic discipline until the late 1960s. Since then the department, while attracting many students and offering a high-quality instruction, has been housed in the basement of Memorial Chapel, the Humanities Building and renovated science labs in the Arts Building.
So for many, the Taylor Music Center symbolizes the quality, importance and lasting impact of music education at Union—from today’s Choir to the former Glee Club to Jazz Ensemble to classes in composition, music history, performance and world music—all of it providing students with a window to the musical arts, foreign cultures and their own souls.
Ask professors like Tann, or student Heidi Ching ’10, or Robert Bernhardt ’73, conductor of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, or Glee Club alumnus Jim Mastracco ’79, or former Music Department Chair Hugh Allen Wilson.
“What it does, to my mind, is to give a sense that the College values what music has to offer,” Tann said. “Music has been part of the add-on to the College. Now the College is saying, ‘We are complete. There is another side to being a student.’
There is a deep appreciation of something that is not words, that is not numbers.” The Taylor Music Center, which will be dedicated on May 5, is contained behind the original façade of the North Colonnade, part of Joseph-Jaques Ramée’s original campus design. The building’s wood-lined-heart is Emerson Auditorium, a 100-seat hall equipped with teaching space and state-of-the-art recording technology that will be used by the College’s Choir, Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble. Surrounding Emerson Auditorium on two floors are practice rooms, high-tech classrooms and faculty offices.
And as the renovation neared completion in December, President Stephen C. Ainlay agreed to spend roughly $250,000 on 13 new pianos, including a $55,000 Steinway concert piano purchased in early January at the piano maker’s warehouse near New York City. The piano was purchased with a gift from brothers Lawrence Pedowitz ’69 and David Pedowitz ’79. The concert grand will remain in Emerson Auditorium and smaller upright pianos will be located in faculty offices and student practice rooms.
“Personally, I use the piano every day. Music is a language and the piano is a natural vehicle for me to communicate things about the style, phrasing, structure, and the overall content of a particular work. I cannot imagine teaching without one,” said Dianne McMullen, a professor of music and College organist. “Union College students are fortunate to have the opportunity to play upon these instruments every day.”
Today there are about 15 music majors at Union and the department has seen an influx of non-majors seeking classes ranging from introduction to music theory to classes based on the Indonesian gamelan. [See story] The classes are prime examples of Union’s interdisciplinary approach to liberal arts education, something that alumni like Bernhardt say is indispensable. “I think for most great liberal arts colleges like Union, the borders are disappearing and the interaction between the disciplines is becoming even more pronounced,” Bernhardt said. “I think we become more complete people through the understanding of music. We understand how things relate.”
For students like Heidi Ching ’10, who is enrolled in the Leadership in Medicine Program involving Union College and Albany Medical College, the Taylor Music Center is a respite from science course work. Ching, who is from Toronto, is a member of the Choir and has been playing the piano since she was 5.
“When I play I can see and feel results. I feel I have accomplished something,” Ching said. “It takes discipline and determination. Because of the practice you put in, you achieve greater results. And I think you can apply that to everything that you do.”
A formal music division was formed in the late 1950s, about 30 years after Elmer Tidmarsh, the College’s first music director, began teaching a single music course. The faculty offices were first housed in the basement of Memorial Chapel, then briefly in the Humanities Building and later in the Arts Building, according to Wilson. Wilson, who was choral group leader and professor at Union from 1962 to 1996, chuckled when recalling the department’s moves “around the horseshoe.” In 1991 the College formed a Performing Arts Department, which included music and theatre. In 2005 an independent Music Department was formed.
In a passage in the College encyclopedia, Wilson’s predecessor, Edgar Curtis, discusses the move from the Humanities Building to the Arts Building: “While space was cramped, it was a giant step forward for disciplines that, in [then-President] Harold Martin’s words, had depended on the broom closet. (If others thought this was a figure of speech, the chairman knew it for a fact.)”
Wilson, as always, lives about 60 miles north of campus in Bolton Landing, N.Y. He has a stack of letters from alumni who fondly recall music class or their years in Glee Club. Both Bernhardt and Mastracco, who now sings in the Washington Men’s Camerata choral group, cite Wilson as a major inspiration. The group in nation’s capital is dedicated to preserving and promoting the legacy of men’s choral music, which was an integral part of College life from the 1930s through the 1970s.
“I’m still in touch with a lot of them. I have a pile of letters here from kids saying what an influence Glee Club and music classes have had on their life. They learned a lot more about life in Glee Club,” Wilson said.
The first chairman of the Arts Department was Edgar Curtis, who studied music under Sir Donald Tovey at the University of Edinburgh and was working as conductor of the Albany Symphony Orchestra before joining Union in 1956. The department’s faculty and course offerings slowly grew during the 1970s and 1980s. Tann was hired in the early 1980s and served as chairwoman of the music faculty from 1991 to 2003. Today Tim Olsen, who leads Jazz Ensemble and teaches largely in Emerson Auditorium, is chairman of the Music Department.
“The main thing is that now we have a dedicated space where we can plan things and make things happen. I am booking concerts and events now [for Emerson Auditorium],” Olsen said. The performance hall may evoke envy among the College’s former choral singers. The Glee Club, comprised of men until the early 1980s, was one of the top choral groups among northeastern colleges in 1970s, according to Wilson. The club boosted Union’s profile as music school on trips to schools like Harvard University and top-rated women’s colleges in the Northeast, Wilson said. The Glee Club, which merged with the Women’s Glee Club in the early 1980s to form the Choir, also carried off tours of nations ranging from Venezuela to Greece. In 2001 Professor McMullen led a group of chamber singers on a concert tour of England, performing at prestigious venues like Ely Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral.
“For many of us, Union was singing,” Mastracco said. “I vividly remember walking by the North Colonnade and hearing “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need” by Virgil Thompson. It is so American and this thing was coming out of the windows over the Arthur statue.”
In the Taylor Music Center, such melodies may not stream over the statue of former President Chester A. Arthur, they may stream out of a Mac computer. And that melody might be composed by a student. There are eight work stations in the Music Technology Studio where students can write music using a computer-connected keyboard and headphones. When students in Tann’s Introduction to Composition class are in playing and using headphones, they appear to be playing music that has no sound. Tann compares the sound to rain striking snow.
“It’s a hands-on learning experience. They hear what they are writing immediately.” Tann said. “They are completing assignments at twice the normal pace.”
When selecting a Steinway & Sons piano, it is best to consult two music professors and an electrical engineering professor who is also a concert pianist.
That’s exactly what the College arranged for on Jan. 11 at the Steinway factory in Long Island City, N.Y. Two music professors, Tim Olsen and Victor Klimash, joined Professor Palmyra E. Catravas and donor Lawrence Pedowitz ’68 to choose a piano in the factory’s selection room.
“We wanted one that had an even tone from the low to the high notes,” Olsen said. “It was kind of like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, we wanted one that was just right.”
Steinway & Sons have been hand crafting top-quality pianos since 1853. The Steinway line, which includes Boston pianos and Essex pianos, are regarded as the gold standard in the music world. The College expects to earn a prestigious designation as an All-Steinway School after the pianos have been delivered and set up. Other All-Steinway Schools include the Yale School of Music and Oberlin College.
Olsen and Catravas played alternating jazz and classical pieces on five pianos in the selection room, said Sally Webster, who works in the College Relations Department. The team was seeking a piano with good tone and action, which is the resistance provided by the keys. They narrowed five Steinway B painos down to two and later selected one, which was the last one played. The Steinway B is a grand piano meant for a room like Emerson Hall and is used in professional recordings.
“Palma played all this great classical and 20th century music and the last piece she played was by a South American composer. It had this dynamic variety and just played loud and soft and high and low. That just sold us on it,” Olsen said.
The new piano was delivered to the stage in Emerson Hall on Jan. 17.
Two fall courses taught by a visiting Fulbright Scholar became a doorway to indonesian music and culture for roughly 28 Union College students.
Kotekan is an Indonesian word for the interlocking melody produced by the instruments of a gamelan. That concept can also be an educational gateway to another culture. The gamelan is played by an ensemble of musicians and is made up of several xylophones, large gongs, metallophones, drums, flutes, stringed instruments and cymbals.
In 2005 Union College bought a gamelan and last fall, with help from visiting Fulbright Scholar I Nyoman (Komang) Astita, offered a workshop and separate class dealing with the gamelan and the Indonesian island of Bali.
The gamelan courses were part a growing set of world music classes aimed at introducing students to foreign cultures through music. A course called Introduction to World Music delves into music from Africa, South Asia and Europe. That course can be followed up with upper-level offerings like the one led by Astita.
“We believe that when you learn something seriously and respect what you learn that you are gonna get some kind of a power to perform or express your thinking,” Astita said. “We have a kind of interlocking part called a kotekan. It is a melody being played by two musicians. They become one. [Students] feel it. They learn how to work with other people and how to respond correctly.”
Astita, who is 54 but looks 34, discussed his term at Union College in an interview in early December in the former music classrooms. Astita was set to perform a Cornell University and Bard College before returning to Bali in late December.
The College’s gamelan is called “Gita Semara,” which is a Sanskrit phrase meaning “song of love,” and was acquired by Assistant Professor Jennifer Matsue, an expert in ethnomusicology. Matsue studied in Japan as part of her graduate work and recently spent a term teaching at Japan’s Kansai Gaidai University.
“You can’t study world music without understanding political systems and religious systems,” Matsue said. “Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s all encompassing. It reflects the cultures that produce it.”
Last fall about 14 Union College students joined Astita in a class called The Music and Culture of Bali and separate group of roughly 14 completed a workshop called The Asian Percussion Workshop. Astita is a world-renowned composer and expert in all instruments of the gamelan and led a student performance on Oct. 30, 2006 at the Nott Memorial.
“We started just by learning a bit about Bali and its culture. After a day or so, we started jumping right on the instruments. We just sat down wherever we wanted,” said Tom Perry ’09.
Perry has been playing the piano for 15 years and has some drumming experience. He is working toward a double major in physics and music and completed the gamelan workshop.
“If you wanted to get technical, each instrument has a wave length and sound vibration, but it’s more applicable in terms of giving you a broader mindset and helping you think of things in a different way. It’s more an exercise in creativity,” Perry said.
Kotekan includes two parts of the gamelan melody, called nyangsih and polos, which are thought of as male and female parts of the music. The nyangsih notes are played on the off beat and the polos parts are played with the beat.
“The way they teach and learn music is really completely different than how we do it in Western music. There is nothing that is written down. It is all based on memory,” said Derek Mayer ’07, a student in the culture class who frequently played with the workshop students. “It showed me that there is a whole different way of learning.”
Bali is an island of about 3 million people located just south of the equator in the Republic of Indonesia. The largest city, Denpasar, is home to about 370,000, and is also the city where Astita lives.
The Oct. 30 show at the Nott featured a dance and music performance. Astita’s brother, I Ketut Gede Asnawa, a professor at the University of Illinois—Urbana, and Asnawa’s daughter, Ayu Putu Niastarika, joined in the dance and music performance.
Both Mayer and Perry performed on Oct. 30 with Astita, whom they called “Pak,” an honorific term used in Bali. Mayer is an economics major who plays in a rock band called First on Mars, which is based in his hometown of Philadelphia. He played a flute-like instrument in the gamelan ensemble.
The Union College gamelan will be kept in a new world music room in the Taylor Music Center, said Tim Olsen, chair of the music department. Students who complete courses on East Asian studies will use the gamelan and a taeko ensemble—Japanese drums—as part of their coursework.
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Two fall courses taught by a visiting Fulbright Scholar became a doorway to indonesian music and culture for roughly 28 Union College students.
Kotekan is an Indonesian word for the interlocking melody produced by the instruments of a gamelan. That concept can also be an educational gateway to another culture. The gamelan is played by an ensemble of musicians and is made up of several xylophones, large gongs, metallophones, drums, flutes, stringed instruments and cymbals.
In 2005 Union College bought a gamelan and last fall, with help from visiting Fulbright Scholar I Nyoman (Komang) Astita, offered a workshop and separate class dealing with the gamelan and the Indonesian island of Bali.
The gamelan courses were part a growing set of world music classes aimed at introducing students to foreign cultures through music. A course called Introduction to World Music delves into music from Africa, South Asia and Europe. That course can be followed up with upper-level offerings like the one led by Astita.
“We believe that when you learn something seriously and respect what you learn that you are gonna get some kind of a power to perform or express your thinking,” Astita said. “We have a kind of interlocking part called a kotekan. It is a melody being played by two musicians. They become one. [Students] feel it. They learn how to work with other people and how to respond correctly.”
Astita, who is 54 but looks 34, discussed his term at Union College in an interview in early December in the former music classrooms. Astita was set to perform a Cornell University and Bard College before returning to Bali in late December.
The College’s gamelan is called “Gita Semara,” which is a Sanskrit phrase meaning “song of love,” and was acquired by Assistant Professor Jennifer Matsue, an expert in ethnomusicology. Matsue studied in Japan as part of her graduate work and recently spent a term teaching at Japan’s Kansai Gaidai University.
“You can’t study world music without understanding political systems and religious systems,” Matsue said. “Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s all encompassing. It reflects the cultures that produce it.”
Last fall about 14 Union College students joined Astita in a class called The Music and Culture of Bali and separate group of roughly 14 completed a workshop called The Asian Percussion Workshop. Astita is a world-renowned composer and expert in all instruments of the gamelan and led a student performance on Oct. 30, 2006 at the Nott Memorial.
“We started just by learning a bit about Bali and its culture. After a day or so, we started jumping right on the instruments. We just sat down wherever we wanted,” said Tom Perry ’09.
Perry has been playing the piano for 15 years and has some drumming experience. He is working toward a double major in physics and music and completed the gamelan workshop.
“If you wanted to get technical, each instrument has a wave length and sound vibration, but it’s more applicable in terms of giving you a broader mindset and helping you think of things in a different way. It’s more an exercise in creativity,” Perry said.
Kotekan includes two parts of the gamelan melody, called nyangsih and polos, which are thought of as male and female parts of the music. The nyangsih notes are played on the off beat and the polos parts are played with the beat.
“The way they teach and learn music is really completely different than how we do it in Western music. There is nothing that is written down. It is all based on memory,” said Derek Mayer ’07, a student in the culture class who frequently played with the workshop students. “It showed me that there is a whole different way of learning.”
Bali is an island of about 3 million people located just south of the equator in the Republic of Indonesia. The largest city, Denpasar, is home to about 370,000, and is also the city where Astita lives.
The Oct. 30 show at the Nott featured a dance and music performance. Astita’s brother, I Ketut Gede Asnawa, a professor at the University of Illinois—Urbana, and Asnawa’s daughter, Ayu Putu Niastarika, joined in the dance and music performance.
Both Mayer and Perry performed on Oct. 30 with Astita, whom they called “Pak,” an honorific term used in Bali. Mayer is an economics major who plays in a rock band called First on Mars, which is based in his hometown of Philadelphia. He played a flute-like instrument in the gamelan ensemble.
The Union College gamelan will be kept in a new world music room in the Taylor Music Center, said Tim Olsen, chair of the music department. Students who complete courses on East Asian studies will use the gamelan and a taeko ensemble—Japanese drums—as part of their coursework.
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Charles Gati was known as a tough but skilled political science professor for 31 years at Union College. Gati’s new book, about the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, is now in its second printing.
About 300 people lined up outside a bookstore in Budapest late one afternoon last September. They were waiting see Charles Gati, a political science professor who taught at Union College from 1963 to 1994, and author of Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt. The nonfiction book, published in English, Hungarian, Slovak, Polish and Russian, deals with a short-lived revolt against Soviet dictatorship in Hungary. It was issued in September in the United States by the Stanford University Press. The book has enjoyed what Gati called unexpected success in Eastern Europe and the United States and was reviewed by nearly 100 publications around the world, including favorable reviews in The New York Times Book Review in October and Foreign Affairs magazine.
“One book store wanted me to sign books and it was a rather large bookstore in Budapest. I got there at quarter of five and there were 300 people waiting to get my book inscribed. We left at about 9 o’clock. I spoke to everyone,” Gati said during a recent phone interview from his home in Washington, D.C.
Gati said readers in Hungary liked the book because it avoided “grand illusions” and “false claims” about the revolt. On Oct. 23, 1956 a group of young Hungarians ignited an uprising aimed at toppling the Soviet communist system. In the book, Gati paints the revolutionaries as brave but somewhat unrealistic in their expectations and the United States as hypocritical, offering hope but no help.
The revolt was quelled by the Soviets after troops moved in and arrested thousands and executed hundreds of others. Gati’s book is based on declassified documents from Hungarian, Russian, and American archives, including the CIA’s operative files declassified at Gati’s request under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The book also draws on transcripts from Radio Free Europe broadcasts as well as Gati’s experiences as a 22-year-old reporter for a prominent Budapest weekly newspaper. The book offers insights into efforts to democratize foreign nations, according to the publisher. Gati fled Hungary in 1956 and went on to earn a doctoral degree from Indiana University and start his teaching career at Union College in 1963. After leaving the College in 1994, Gati first worked as a senior advisor on European affairs at the U.S. State Department. Currently, he teaches at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
At a book party staged in October in New York City, Gati was greeted by former students William Munno ’70 and Abbott L. Stillman ’69. Stillman counts Gati as one of the top influences in his life and was eager to read Failed Illusions.
“I read it within a week. It’s wonderful. I knew of his efforts against that government in Hungary. But it was an area that he didn’t seem to welcome questions about,” Stillman said of his time with Gati at Union in the mid 1960s.
Stillman was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was an Eliphalet Nott Scholar as an undergraduate at Union College. He went on to be an American Civil Liberties Union Fellow at Columbia Law School and a Mellon Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a master’s degree in city planning.
“I’ll tell you point blank, I was an indifferent student in high school and a lazy bum when I showed up at Union,” Stillman said. “I did pretty well and I think Charles had a lot to do with that.”
Gati returned Stillman’s first freshman-year essay with a note that said, “Come see me.” That exchange was continued six more times until Gati awarded Stillman an ‘A’ and a note saying he expected such top-notch work on future essays.
Stillman is now the managing partner of the The Stillman Group, a real estate and venture capital firm that has developed such projects as Three Lincoln Center in New York City. With Stillman’s help, the College awards the Stillman Prize for Excellence in Teaching each year. The prize was created by David I. Stillman ’72, Abbott Stillman ’69 and Alan Stillman in honor of Abraham Stillman, father and grandfather, and is awarded annually to a faculty member to encourage outstanding teaching.
In 1956 former Union professor Charles Gati was forced to leave his home in Hungary after Soviet troops crushed a revolt. In his new book, Gati recalls the day he left. Below is an excerpt.
Two weeks after Moscow crushed the revolution, I left Hungary, going first to Austria and then in a few weeks to the United States. I became one of some 182,000 refugees from Soviet-dominated Hungary. My parents, though I was their only child, did not discourage me from leaving. They stayed up all night before I left, watching me as I wrote a few notes of farewell to relatives and friends and put a few belongings together for my escape from uncertainty to uncertainty.
Emerging from the kitchen, my mother came around to stuff her freshly baked sweets—the best in the world—into my small backpack. “Look up Uncle Sanyi in New York,” she said. At dawn, when it was time to say goodbye, my father tried to hold back his tears but he could not. “Write often,” he said, his voice quavering with emotion. We embraced. We kissed. As I left, they stood on the small balcony of our Barcsay Street apartment and waved. I walked backwards as long as I could see them, hoping they could also see me for another few seconds. (As I recall this scene some fifty years later, holding back my tears as my father once tried to do, I still see them waving on the balcony, and I always will.)
As the Hungarian Revolt was being brutally crushed by Soviet tanks in 1956, large numbers of Hungarian refugees were making their way to various countries of the West, many of them to the United States. Among them were sizable numbers of university students equipped with a strong desire to continue their studies, but almost totally lacking in the resources necessary to accomplish this aim.
At Indiana University in Bloomington, a young law student and teaching fellow named Joe Board was among the number that responded to their plight. Filled with admiration for a people who had dared to assert their aspirations for freedom against imposed tyranny, Board developed a plan to provide room, board and tuition scholarships for some 20 Hungarian students. Essentially this involved free tuition fees provided by the Indiana University, as well as room, board and spending money provided by a group of fraternities and sororities.
The plan came into operation within a few short weeks. Board took it first to University President Herman B. Wells, and to Joe Franklin, the treasurer. Their immediate and enthusiastic response was quickly complemented by the support of 11 sororities and 11 fraternities. By the time that the next semester opened, there were 22 Hungarian students enrolled in the program.
When asked why he had been moved to provide a helping hand, Board replied, “Why not?” What he did not know at the time was that one of these students, Charles Gati, was to become a highly valued friend and colleague ten years later at Union College; and that Charles would go on to become one of the pre-eminent American scholars in the field of foreign affairs, still active and producing works of insight and scholarship like this widely acclaimed study of the events that brought him to the United States in the first place.
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