January 20, 2005—Gary Bartz, visiting professor of jazz saxophone at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Professor of Conducting Robert Spano, music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra [ASO] and a 1983 graduate of the Conservatory, were among the winners at the Grammy Awards earlier this month.

Bartz shared the award for best contemporary jazz album for his contributions to McCoy Tyner's Illuminations (Telarc). Bartz, who appears on the release with Tyner and fellow winners Terence Blanchard, Christian McBride, and Lewis Nash, also wrote one of the songs on the album, Soulstice. The album was recorded in New York City in November 2003.

Spano won the best choral performance award with Norman MacKenzie, ASO director of choruses, for the orchestra's recording of Hector Berlioz's Requiem, Op. 5--another Telarc release. The album, which was recorded in Atlanta's Symphony Hall at the Woodruff Arts Center, features MacKenzie directing the ASO Chorus with tenor soloist Frank Lopardo.

Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra also won a Grammy for best engineered album for their Telarc recording of Jennifer Higdon's City Scape and Concerto for Orchestra, which was also nominated in three other categories: best classical album, best orchestral performance, and best classical contemporary composition.

John Adams was the winner in those three categories for his self-described "memory space" commemorating the dead of 9/11, On the Transmigration of Souls, performed by the New York Philharmonic. Lorin Maazel conducted the work, which featured the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and the New York Choral Artists.

This is not the first Grammy for Bartz, a member of Oberlin's faculty since 2001. He has also received numerous other awards, including those from Down Beat magazine and Melody Maker. He has more than 35 solo recordings to his credit as well as performances and recordings with hundreds of artists, among them Miles Davis, Shirley Horn, the Max Roach/Abbey Lincoln group, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Lee Morgan, Charles Mingus's workshop, and, of course, McCoy Tyner.

Spano also has to move aside a few Grammy awards to make room on his bookshelf; in 2003 he and the ASO swept the three categories for which they were nominated (best classical album, best choral performance, and best engineered classical album) with their Telarc recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony. Spano is recognized internationally as one of America's outstanding conductors, acclaimed for leading vital, musically distinguished performances as well as for the breadth of repertoire he explores. He has conducted nearly every major North American orchestra and has appeared with orchestras and opera companies throughout Europe and Asia. He has served as director of the Festival of Contemporary Music for 2003 and 2004 at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he has directed the prestigious conducting fellowship program since 1998.

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, and its alumni have gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music world.

Oberlin offers a premier undergraduate jazz studies program, chaired by Professor of African American Music Wendell Logan, that prepares students for careers as professional jazz musicians and for advanced study in jazz. The jazz studies faculty includes composers and performers who, in addition to teaching lessons and coaching ensembles, maintain active performing careers throughout the world.

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