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FLC Music Department welcomes three new faces

Recital on Sunday will showcase talent

Fort Lewis College’s Music Department, which has long carried on a practice of performing in the community in public events, will continue that tradition with its annual Faculty Collage Recital Sunday in Roshong Recital Hall.

The recital will offer the community a chance to see another side of college professors as they don their performance hats, and will provide an opportunity to support a good cause – the event is part of the Alexander Murray recital series, which raises money for the college’s general scholarship fund.

And this year, the annual event will also double as an introduction to the Music Department’s three new faculty members: Brent Williams, upper strings; John O’Neal, percussion and jazz band; and Dori Smith, voice and theory. The new instructors replaced Nathan Lambert, Jonathan Latta and Veronica Turner, respectively.

Music Department chairman Marc Reed said that while it is always sad to say goodbye to faculty, FLC scored big with these new instructors.

“It’s obviously a void, but we’re really confident and happy about the people we hired,” Reed said. “We had some fantastic candidates, and all three rose to the top and were obvious choices. It’s really important to find somebody here who is a great fit, and I think we’ve really done that.”

Look for the new instructors at Sunday’s performance. In the meantime, here’s an introduction:

Brent Williams

The music department’s new assistant professor of violin and viola is a long-time chamber musician and accomplished performer who is coming from Valdosta State University in Georgia, where he lectured on violin and world music.

Williams started playing the violin at age 5, but music was one of many pastimes he enjoyed growing up, and he originally went to college to study engineering. It wasn’t until he attended a music festival in North Carolina as a sophomore that he was struck with his life’s calling.

“As cheesy as it sounds, the festival completely changed my life,” Williams said. “I was surrounded by amazing musicians for the first time ever. It was really exciting. When I got back that summer, there was no stopping me.”

Williams switched course, earning a bachelor’s degree in music, followed by a master’s in music performance and a doctorate. For Williams, who had grown up on college campuses by virtue of his English professor mother, becoming a professor was a natural direction.

At FLC, he will be teaching violin and viola instruction, plus orchestration and strings. He has also been appointed the concertmaster of the San Juan Symphony Orchestra.

“My goals are generally pretty simple in that I try to fill up as much as possible all the space I have with my students,” Williams said. “I really try to saturate my students with information whenever possible.”

John O’Neal

FLC’s new visiting instructor of music is teaching applied percussion, jazz ensemble, jazz blues rock and leading the athletic pep band.

O’Neal grew up as the son of a college band director, so the world of musical academia is familiar to him.

“I’ve been around music since the day I was born actually,” he said. “Sitting in band rooms, rehearsals and stuff, was my childhood.”

He started playing the clarinet seriously in fifth grade, and switched to percussion in seventh grade, playing jazz through high school before pursuing music in college. He attended the University of Kansas and then earned his master’s at Florida State University.

It was in college where he discovered a love of classical music and began to perform with symphony orchestras. After he earned his master’s, he originally pursued a career as a freelance musician. He performed throughout the U.S. and studied with a percussionist from the Cleveland orchestra. But something didn’t feel right.

“Being away from academia, I missed it,” he said. “I missed the environment. I decided that I really wanted to get a job teaching.”

O’Neal is currently a candidate for the doctor of musical arts degree at the University of North Texas. His goal as a teacher, he said, is to “expose all the students to good music and work on their skills as musicians but also prepare them for the real world, no matter what they do.”

He feels lucky to have landed in Durango, he said.

“Every morning I wake up and look up at the mountains and am kind of in awe,” O’Neal said. His only complaint: “It did take me awhile to catch my breath.”

Dori Smith

FLC’s new instructor of voice and theory is a multilingual soprano who believes passionately in the power of a liberal arts education.

Smith discovered her ability to sing opera as a little girl after she inherited her grandfather’s opera records.

“I played them nonstop,” she said. “Even though I didn’t have experience or opera training, my voice just worked with it.”

She studied music at Colby College, where a study abroad program offered her an experience to immerse herself in the language, food and culture of Milan. She went on to work as an intern at the Lyric Opera of Chicago before earning her master’s of music at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Smith is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona finishing her dissertation, and has received numerous accolades for her performances.

Her education at Colby sparked an enduring interest in world music traditions and cultures as well as a love of teaching, she said.

“I had really good teachers at Colby who inspired me to be a consummate performer, to be a scholar and to be a teacher,” she said. “I love singing and performing, but it really is one of my absolute delights in life to teach others.”

Smith said that so far, her experience at FLC has been fantastic.

“I feel so fortunate honestly to do what I do everyday,” Smith said. “The students at Fort Lewis College are creative, motivated, inquisitive and intelligent. It’s a nice challenge.”

kklingsporn@durangoherald.com

If you go

The FLC Music Department’s Faculty Collage Scholarship Recital will take place at 3 p.m. Sunday at Roshong Recital Hall, 1000 Rim Drive. Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for children.



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