June 3, 2004—New faculty appointments at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music for the 2004-2005 academic school year announced recently by Acting Dean of the Conservatory David Stull include a new addition to the vocal studies division, two additions to the composition department, and one in music theory.

Salvatore Champagne, a 1985 graduate of the Conservatory who also holds a master of music degree from the Juilliard School, has been named associate professor of singing. A leading tenor at opera houses throughout Europe, including the Bayerische Staatsoper, Opernhaus Zürich, and Teatro Bellini, Champagne's teachers include Oberlin Professor of Singing Richard Miller and Margaret Harshaw, Ellen Fauyll, and Enrico di Giuseppe. Champagne has also studied at the University of Indiana, the Britten-Pears School, and the Mozarteum. A top prize winner at the Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition and the International Singing Competition at s'Hertogenbosch, he has been a soloist with the Cologne Philharmonic, the London Philharmonia, and other orchestras under such conductors as Leonard Bernstein, James Conlon, and Leonard Slatkin. His recordings appear on EMI and Mark Records.

Ross Feller joins the composition department as assistant professor of composition. Feller recently served as an assistant professor at Georgia College & State University, where he coordinated its music theory and composition programs. A specialist in contemporary saxophone techniques, he has directed and performed with the GC&SU Jazz Combo. He studied composition with Pulitzer Prize-winner Henry Brant, Pulitzer Prize-nominee Morgan Powell, and Salvatore Martirano, winner of the Prix de Rome. Feller's compositions have been finalists in the Gaudeamus Foundation International Composer's Competition (Amsterdam) and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Young Composer's Competition (New York City). His work has been nominated for awards from the Theodore Presser Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has been performed at venues, conferences, and festivals throughout the United States and in Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and Spain. A guest scholar at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland from 1996 to 1997, Feller's research focused on the recent music of Brian Ferneyhough, which he analyzed, transcribed, and indexed from the composer's original sketches and manuscript materials. Feller has contributed numerous book chapters, articles, and reviews to scholarly publications. He holds a doctor of musical arts degree in composition-theory from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His scholarly background also includes studies in ethnomusicology. He received a bachelor of music degree, also in composition-theory, from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago.

Amelia Kaplan, the other appointment in the composition department, will be assistant professor of composition. A visiting assistant professor of composition and theory at the University of Iowa for the past four years, Kaplan's Ph.D. in music composition is from the University of Chicago; she holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Princeton University. A recipient of an ASCAP Young Composers' Grant for Chicago Chanson (1992), she also held a fellowship that year at the prestigious Gaudeamus International New Music Festival. She has held residencies at the McDowell Colony, Ucross, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Kaplan has studied with composition scholars and composers such as Shulamit Ran, Marta Ptaszynska, John Eaton, Ralph Shapey, Franco Donatoni (at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, where she received a diploma of merit), and with Tristan Murail and André Boucourechliev at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau in Fontainebleau, France, where she earned a diploma. Her recent commissions include solo works for German violinist Annette Barbara-Vogel and bassoonist Benjamin Coelho.

Jan Miyake, who has served as visiting instructor of music theory at Oberlin since 2002, has been named assistant professor of music theory. Miyake received bachelor of music and bachelor of arts degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Oberlin College in 1996, received a master of arts degree from the Aaron Copland School of Music (Queens College), and received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, CUNY, in 2004. She has presented papers at annual meetings of the New York City Graduate Students in Music, the Society for Music Theory, and the Music Theory Society of New York State. Trained as a violist--at Oberlin she studied with Jeffrey Irvine and Lynne Ramsey--she is a research assistant to the acclaimed violinist Midori.

New visiting faculty members for the 2004-05 academic year are:

• Karen Bottge, visiting assistant professor of music theory;
• Julie Hedges Brown, visiting assistant professor of musicology;
• Peter Laki, visiting assistant professor of musicology; and
• Wendy Wan-Ki Lee, visiting instructor of music theory.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated within the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. It is renowned internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber.

Primarily an undergraduate conservatory of music, Oberlin provides its 585 students with unparalleled individual attention and training from more than 85 artist-teachers and scholars. Through hundreds of courses in classical and jazz performance, vocal studies, music history and theory, music education, composition and TIMARA (Technology in Music and the Related Arts), Oberlin has prepared many of the music world's notable luminaries for successful careers in all walks of the profession. Oberlin's collaborations with The Cleveland Orchestra support a core element of Oberlin's mission: that professional training and contact with one of the world's great orchestras is seminal to a formal music education.