Ben Crawford

The School of Theatre Arts continues to have an outstanding record of success as measured by employment in acting jobs. Ben Crawford, a 2005 alum of the Musical Theatre program, has within 10 months of graduation received his equity card, a card showing proof of membership in the Actors' Equity Association, which is an organization of stage actors. Membership into the Association requires a majority vote of the executive committee present at an Actors’ Equity Association committee meeting. Ben has been in four equity shows and has now been cast as the factory foreman and understudy for the part of Valjean in the Broadway production of Les Miserables.

Symposium Program Cover

In February the Art History Graduate Student Association put on its 18th Annual Graduate Student Symposium entitled “Memorializing Conflict: A look at the Creation and Social Impact of Memorials to War, Conflict, or Catastrophe.” The symposium was presented in conjunction with an exhibition “Memorializing Conflict” that took place at the Lionel Rombach Gallery and featured the work of eight artists in various media. Of the 20 proposals submitted only four were chosen, one from ASU, UCLA, UC Davis, and Cuny. The multi-disciplinary character of the symposium, with papers from history, architecture and literature, led to a lively discussion, led by our own MA student Erin Riley.

H. Michael Croner

H. Michael Croner, a BFA Acting Senior in the School of Theatre Arts was selected to be the first Jack Wagner Showcase Award winner. Alumnus Jack Wagner, who is know for his role as Dominick “Nick” Marone on "The Bold and the Beautiful", provides an opportunity for a graduating senior to appear in a small, one-time role on the CBS soap opera. Michael was selected based on his performance at the annual Showcase of Talent, a unique program that provides junior and senior acting and musical theatre students an opportunity to audition and interview with industry professionals. He says he is very excited and can’t wait to get started.

Ryan McIntosh

Ryan McIntosh, the recipient of the “Helen Gross Memorial Award” and a graduating senior in the Photography department, in the School of Art, has already established himself as an artist who is capable of living entirely from income generated by the sell of his fine art photography. The Helen Gross Memorial Award goes to a student who demonstrates outstanding academic achievement and potential in Curating and Gallery Management. Ryan was an intern to the Gross Gallery and was in charge of designing and installing all shows. To his credit he has already held several exhibitions of his work. One in particular was entitled “Iceland” a series of 20 photographs created from a two-month photographic journey to the island. He has been a Medici Award Scholar, a recipient of the UA School of Art Grant, and a William Murray Photography Scholarship.

Jeff Haskell and the UA Jazz Ensemble

Jeffrey Haskell, Professor of Jazz Studies in the School of Music, was honored at the Tucson Pima Arts Lumies Awards. He received the Life Time Achievement Award for sustained excellence and innovation in the field of music. The Lumies were created to honor local luminaries in our community. Professor Haskell has been arranging, conducting, and playing popular music and jazz for five decades. He is the area coordinator for Jazz Studies and director of The Recording Studio at the University. His impact has been felt at the local, national, and international levels. He has worked with artists such as Buck Owens and Linda Rondstadt and led Dixieland Jazz bands and the Tucson Boys’ Chorus.

Scrap Art Performance (Left) Gary Cook (Right)

Professor Cook, Professor Emeritus in The School of Music and founder and Director of Percussion Studies Program, taught a pretty unique “Instrument Design” course spring semester with colleagues from Engineering, Jeff Goldberg – Associate Dean of Engineering and Architecture, Dale Clifford – Assistant Professor of Architecture. In the course teams of students from music, engineering and architecture worked together to design and build percussion instruments from industrial scrap and other discarded materials. They wrote and performed music on the “Zarp”, a harp-like chordophone instrument, the “Extinguished Oasis”, a set of pitch manipulated tuned fire extinguishers dipped in water, the “Fire Escape”, a set of tuned tanks and fire extinguishers, and the “Happy Accident Perpetual Poolside”, a gender-type idiophone and membranophone fashioned out of a stainless steel pool filter and an oxygen tank. The students examined the properties of musical sound and attributes of music and merged the aesthetics of musical instruments with principles of engineering to create the instruments.

Scott Ellegood's work titled

Scott Ellegood, from the School of Art, has received one of eleven Artist Project Grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts for his project “Being Perceived: Embroidered Portraiture.” He is the only Old Pueblo artist to win one of these grants. The embroidered portraits that he produces with digitally manipulated images are created on linen, which read as abstract close up and photorealistic from a distance. His embroidered portraits have been in two significant fiber shows, “Fiberart International” in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and “Materials: Hard and Soft” in Denton, Texas. In both instances he received jurors awards. Ellegood’s work was the focus of a featured article in “Fiberarts Magazine” in 2006.

Dr. John Brobeck delivered papers at the South-Central Renaissance Conference entitled “A missing Portrait and Mathieu Gascongne’s Canonic Motet Ista est speciosa: New Evidence for a Reinterpretation of the Origins of Pepys MS 1760” in San Antoinio and another paper entitled “Antoine de Févin and the Origins of the Parisian Motet” at the University of Wales, Bangor, Wales, UK.

Dr. Pia Cuneo was a keynote speaker at a the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel Germany. She presented a paper in conjunction with an exhibition on “Life in Motion: Cultures of the Body in the Early Modern Period. In addition her most recent publication “(Un)Stable Identities: Hipplogy and the Professionalization of Scholarship and Horsemanship in Early Modern German,” is appearing in Representations of Animals in Early Modern Europe, ed Karl A. E. Enenkel et al. Leiden: Brill.