Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Band Building - Band Master's Association [PAGE 12]

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II. OWKN RKED was born in Odessa, Missouri, and studied at the University of Missouri, Louisiana State University, and Eastman School of Music. A Louisiana he earned two degrees in music and one in French, and at Eastman the Ph.D. in composition. Among his teachers were Illinois Professors Scotl Ooldthwaite (then at Missouri) and Burrill Phillips (then at Eastman). H< has also studied privately with Roy Harris. Since 1939 he has taught a Michigan State University, where he is Chairman of Theory and Composition, and since last November Acting Head of the Music Department. Ii 1948-49 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent six months it Mexico, composing and studying folk music. From this period came his re markable Mexican Folk Song Symphony for band, "La Fiesta Mexicana." He has more than twenty-five published compositions for band, orchestra, stage, and chamber and choral groups, and is author of three texts in music theory,

RUSSELL HOWLAND came to the University of Illinois in 1927 from Kirks* ville, Missouri, and received the bachelor's and master's degrees in music He was solo clarinetist of the Concert Band, and became an accomplished player also on all the other woodwind instruments and several of the brasses. Later he studied clarinet with Gustave Langenus, and was a professional player with the Theatre Orchestra, New York, and on the coast to coast Orpheum Circuit. He has written and published several compositions for instrumental ensembles and band, and is in wide demand as an instrument clinician and guest conductor. His teaching experience includes positions in high schools in Madison, Wisconsin, and Ft. Collins, Colorado, the National Music Camp, and the Universities of Michigan, Southern California, and Iowa. He is presently Associate Professor of Music at Fresno State College.

ROY HARRIS was born in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, on February 12, 1898. He studied with Arthur Farwell and Modcste Altschuler in California, and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He has held the Guggenheim, Pasadena, Carnegie, El Pomar, and Mellon fellowships and grants, and has received commissions from more than thirty symphony orchestras and other organizations. He has written 118 works, including seven symphonies, five concertos, three string quartets, three cantatas, a mass, an Easter motet, sonatas, quintets, sextets, and much choral and other music for educational ensembles. He is the recipient of three honorary degrees of Doctor of Music, and last year was elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of statehood. In three polls he has received the highest vote for an American composer. Tributes from other composers, conductors, and critics indicate his impact on American music, such as these: "Harris writes music of a real sweep and breadth, with power and emotional depth such as only a generously built country could produce." — Aaron Copland. "The dynamic sweep and power of his music certainly suggests America's unlimited potentialities. It is vast, limitless, and filled with the elemental mysteries of darkness, where in fluid harmonies gigantic forms move and merge in shadowy and portcntious solemnity. With magnificent grandeur nnd relentless drive he has voiced our aspirations." — Herbert Elwcll. "I think that nobody has captured In music the essence of American life — its vitality, its greatness, its strength so well as Roy Harris. I feel the genius of his art — which is great because it so colorfully portrays the life of our people*"*— Serge Kousseviuky.

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