UALR magazine
Fall/Winter 2007 • Vol. 3 No. 2
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Making Music
By Judy Williams
Without the arts we are poor.
What a simple description. They are words from Dr. Victor Ellsworth, chair of UALR’s Department of Music, a man who usually expresses himself with notes. He becomes excited about using words, however, while discussing the music program — a program he says is the best kept secret in Arkansas.
“This is a music department that is growing and growing and is very vital and exciting, with an excellent performing and scholarly faculty,” Ellsworth said. “The department has increased its student enrollment base by 27.9 percent in two years.”
Ellsworth has a unique vantage point. He also directs UALR’s Community Orchestra, an assortment of 45 musicians from the Central Arkansas community whose music blends with UALR faculty, staff, and students. Ranging in age from high school to octogenarians, orchestra members come from all walks of community life — doctors, attorneys, scientists, and retirees.
“Personally, the best day of the week for me is when I rehearse the orchestra on Thursday evenings,” Ellsworth said. “It is a wondrous time because they support and respect each other. The give-and-take and humor of a senior cellist with a gleam in her eyes whittling the conductor down to size has made my 38 years as an educator and 48 years as a professional musician worth it just to be in the same room with this wonderful lady. And she’s just one of many. What a gig!”
The “gig” is at the heart of why musicians spend so much of their time perfecting their skills and performing, and why professors are passionate about teaching. The bonus for UALR music professors is that they teach and perform in the state’s capital city — home to the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Arkansas, Artspree, and Take Five Jazz Series.
Explains Andy Wen, UALR woodwind instructor: “I am excited about coming to work because every day I get to be a musician. While I spend hours intensely practicing every day, it is also my exercise, meditation, stress relief, and work-at-my-craft time. While hard work, it is also very satisfying. And I get to share that with students ever day, teaching them the craft and the joys of accomplishment when they master each aspect of music.”
New to the department, Wen is one of many faculty with international credits. A highlight of his career was the chance to perform the first saxophone recital at the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, at the Chang Chi Shek Memorial. In Arkansas, he looks forward to working with high school woodwind students and band directors.
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Michael Carenbauer, director of UALR’s Guitar Studies program and Jazz Ensemble, has a long list of international experiences — from conducting a symposium at Universidad Regiomontana in Monterrey, Mexico, to teaching master classes at the National Conservatories of Orleans and Bordeaux in France. A progressive musician fluent in a variety of music styles, he has twice presented at the Guitar Foundation of American’s international conventions on UALR’s innovative guitar-centric computer assisted instruction labs.
The payoff for Carenbauer is an impressive list of successful students who have excelled in jazz, classical, and popular music styles. Among his program’s graduates: Beau Bledsoe of Kansas City who has developed an international career in flamenco and tango music; Tony Morris who created the syndicated radio program, “Classical Guitar Alive;” and Tim Reed who fronts a prominent regional rock group, Third Degree.
When Bevan and Kira Keating joined the UALR faculty as voice professors, their goal was to build the Voice Arts program and to create a sense of community for music students. “We wanted to see them become friends and start to invest in each other, not just their education,” Kira said.
The Keatings organize social events like picnics and outings after rehearsals and concerts. “Every term, I have an informal recital at my place, and then the kids stay afterwards for a potluck,” Kira said. “There is hardly an hour during the day when the UALR music lounge is not full of students, sometimes quietly finishing up homework, but most often exuberant and bubbly and discussing their lesson break-through or a recent rehearsal.”
Bevan, with a doctorate in conducting from Ohio State University, directs the UALR Community Chorus, whose 150 members come from the Central Arkansas community and UALR. He has conducted numerous choirs in Canada and the United States including the successful Amabile Tenor/Bass Ensemble in Canada and the Ohio State University Men’s Glee Club. His opera productions have included Amahl and the Night Visitors and Copland’s The Tender Land.
Kira directs the Women’s Triple Trio, an ensemble of traditional and contemporary repertoire for women’s voice. Interested in different media, Kira performs opera and oratorio, musical theatre, and film.
UALR’s 28-member music department faculty has multiple roles as teachers, mentors, performers, and ambassadors of cultural enrichment. Their former students now work in professional careers as school teachers, performers, conductors, music therapists, and composers.
The music program offers full- and part-time students different kinds of opportunities for musical engagement — for beginning students who can’t read music, amateurs who want to increase their skills, or professionals who want to complete study in classical music and jazz, gospel, musical theatre, composing, or electronic MIDI techniques.
Dr. Ellsworth still gets satisfaction from attending student recitals year after year. “I’m privileged to hear many students in their very first recital and then to hear them as they present a graduation recital,” he said. “I can truthfully say I remember ‘X’ the first time he or she played or sang — now listen to them. That’s exciting!”