Sigma Alpha Iota

distinguished members NATIONAL ARTS ASSOCIATE Dr. Garth Alper Dr. Garth Alper was initiated as a National Arts Associate by the Lafayette Alumnae Chapter in March. Dr. Alper is the Director at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he holds the Ruth Stodghill Girard Professorship. Dr. Alper teaches jazz piano, jazz studies, and music media, and he has articles published on the subjects of jazz, popular music, and postmodernism in music. His article "How the Flexibility of the TwelveBar Blues Has Helped Shape the Jazz Language" was published in The College Music Symposium, and numerous articles and reviews have been published in Popular Music and Society. Dr. Alper guest edited a special issue of Popular Music and Society devoted to jazz and published October 2006. He has presented five papers and chaired five panels at Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association national conferences. His second CD, Inroads, released on the Musicians Showcase Recordings label, has been called "a primer for how cool jazz should be performed" by Walter Pierce of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser. Pierce goes on to say that Inroads "gathers together 10 playful oftenwinking numbers that draw from several jazz traditions while maintaining a consistency characteristic of the best weathered ensembles." Dr. Alper composed all of the pieces on Inroads and has received the Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society for his work as a jazz composer and pianist. He has performed and presented clinics and master classes throughout the United States and England and received numerous grants for himself and the University of Louisiana of Lafayette. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Professional Studies in Arts-Jazz Studies from the State University of New York – Empire State College, his Master's Degree in Jazz Studies from New York University, and his Doctorate of Arts at The University of Northern Colorado. Roger Ames Roger Ames was initiated as a National Arts Associate by the Boston Alumnae Chapter in November. Born in Cooperstown, NY, to a first-grade teacher and a self-taught church organist, Ames learned piano at an early age by watching his older brother practice his lessons, after which he would climb up on the piano bench and play the lessons by ear.  His high-school music teacher, who lived next door to the church, offered him his first choral commission at the age of 16.  Ames attended the Crane School of Music at State University of New York Potsdam, where he majored in voice and music education.  It was there that SAI Honorary Member and Dean of the Crane School Dr. Helen Hosmer nurtured his musicianship, along with peer mentors like Friends of the Arts Rick Bunting and Robert Washburn. Ames graduated cum laude and taught for the next five years, first at Whitesboro High School and then at Somers High School where he developed a choral program. It was there he amassed a high-school chorus of 375 singers and performed a number of choral/ orchestral masterpieces with his students. After receiving a fellowship at American University, he went to Washington, D.C. and — along with his graduate studies, coaching, conducting and teaching composition at the University Preparatory Division — he became Music Director of Street 70 (later Roundhouse Theater), founded the Montgomery County Masterworks Chorus, was named one of the eight "most promising" musicians in Washington, and was director of music and resident composer at Westmoreland Congregational Church.  While there, he founded a recital series at the church and a free after-school music conservatory for the neighborhood children. While in Washington, Ames received a National Endowment for the Arts composer's grant to write Amistad, his first opera.  He taught at the American School in Duesseldorf and the British School in Cologne.  His second opera, Amarantha, was written in Cologne and first workshopped by the O'Neill National Music Theater Institute in Connecticut.  Several song cycles were recorded for German radio broadcasts.  In 1985, he moved back to the U.S. and cofounded the Berkshire Ensemble for Theater Arts in Williamstown, MA.  He went on to be appointed chair of music theater at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford, won several compositional awards, and produced his first commercial musical, Martin Guerre, with librettist Laura Harrington at the Hartford Stage. He became involved with Opera America, assisting in the writing of their first textbook series, "Music! Words! Opera!" and recently completely revised that series via a grant by Met Life.  While co-leading teacher workshops all over the country, he also became artist in residence at New Dramatists in New York. He was then appointed to the faculty at Great Neck North High School as director of vocal music and resident composer – a position he still holds today. It was here that he developed a cross-curricular course for high-school seniors. This course, team-taught and held for three consecutive class periods every day, explores western culture through dramatic literature, from the Greeks to the present, culminating in a fulllength, student-written music theatre piece. His musical output has increased dramatically with commissions from Utah Opera, Central City Opera, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, The Long Island Masterworks Chorus and Orchestra, Boston Lyric Opera, and others including several universities and churches.   He was nominated for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music for the Boston Pro Musica's New England premiere of Requiem For Our Time, a setting of the traditional Latin Mass incorporating the poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winner Anne Sexton.  His one-act opera, En Mis Palabras, was a winner of the Boston Metro Opera's Americana Festival competition, and he has won composition competitions ranging from the International Clarinet Society to The Children's Aid Society in New York.  He has been chosen to workshop several music theater pieces by the O'Neill National Music Theater Institute, has ASSOCIATES continued on page 22 sai-national.org SUMMER 2011 PAN PIPES 21

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