Winter 2006
Keeping Time
Photo by Richard G. Anderson
Noel Zahler
Professor, composition; director, School of Music
Education
D.M.A., composition, Columbia U; M.F.A., composition, Princeton U; B.A., M.A., CUNY–Queens College; Certificato di Perfezionamento, L'Accademia Musicale Chigiana di Siena, Italy
Selected awards
Aaron Copland Foundation Grant for the recording of Agarttha; fellow, Atlantic Center for the Arts; fellow, Associated Kyoto Program; Connecticut Public Television/Connecticut Commission on the Arts Prize for best soundtrack for an experimental video, Gothic Tempest (1988); National Endowment for the Arts Consortium Commission
Family ties
Spouse, Clara, and children, Metisse, 20, and Mathieu, 25.
When he's not making music …
"I'm a big reader. I try to pick out specific authors and read them. I've read all the works of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco. It's like listening to all the works of a composer."
Passions
Wine and food. "Both complement music really well. Like music, meals and wines come from rich ethnic and regional resources. Just as you listen to certain kinds of music for particular reasons, you choose certain foods and wines for equally specific reasons."
It's been an exciting but exhausting time," says Noel Zahler. "There truly aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish all that I want to accomplish."
Zahler, director of CLA's esteemed School of Music, talks like a man in the midst of change. And indeed he is: since his arrival in the summer of 2004, Zahler has initiated sweeping changes—new programs, new partnerships, technological advancements, and curricular reforms—that promise to redefine the school.
Zahler knows that to continue to thrive, the School of Music—which delivers undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degree programs to more than 650 majors and produces more than 700 public concerts each year—must adapt to the shifting needs of today's music students.
Zahler's programmatic innovations include an annual Contemporary Composers Festival, slated for launch in March 2006. The annual festival will feature a different living composer each year and "give our students an insight into the music of some of the greatest composers in the world," Zahler says. In its inaugural year, the festival will feature the work of celebrated American composer Elliot Carter, with master classes, academic seminars, and public performances of Carter's music by School of Music students, faculty, and internationally known guest musicians.
But new programming is only part of the picture. Zahler's most profound new initiatives are partnerships with two of the state's leading cultural institutions: Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO).
Local media called the partnership with the SPCO "groundbreaking" when it was announced in May. Under the arrangement, the U and the SPCO will share a director of orchestral studies who will have both teaching responsibilities in the University's doctoral conducting program and conducting responsibilities at the SPCO. A search is already under way; the new director will begin in fall 2006.
"The position is a dream job," Zahler says. "The director will be able to train students in conducting and as orchestral musicians—and work with a professional orchestra that's one of the most important in this country. We could not attract the kind of person on our own that we'll attract with this collaboration."
Zahler and SPCO president Bruce Coppock began planning the collaboration—one Zahler says is "deeply connected to the philosophies of each organization"—more than a year ago. He says the collaboration takes full advantage of the SPCO's broad, diverse approach to programming.
"They're masters of standard chamber music," Zahler says, "but they also program jazz, new music," and other forms. This multifaceted approach is exactly what Zahler wants to bring to the University. "[The SPCO] understands that to exist in the future they have to diversify their offerings. The School of Music, being the kind of institution it is, also has to be about diversity. We're both cognizant of the fact that we have to maintain high levels of excellence while expanding the repertoire."
A second collaboration—this one with Minnesota Public Radio, one of the largest and most acclaimed organizations of its kind—will feature both educational and outreach components. The partnership will include a new course, "Broadcasting for Classical Musicians," taught by veteran MPR host Sylvester Vicic. Students will learn skills for jobs in classical music radio—such as interviewing, editing, announcing, and programming.
"Both of these collaborations are bridges between the educational mission of the School of Music and working in the real world," Zahler says. Real-world experience is a crucial part of training tomorrow's musicians, he notes. And forging partnerships with music organizations also keeps the school on the leading edge of changes in the profession and in technology.
Technology is central
In performance, composition, and theory alike, technology is driving music in unprecedented ways, both within and beyond the school, notes Zahler.
"Technology has always influenced music, but we've never had stronger technology, never the everyday presence of technology in music," Zahler says. "Musicians can make sounds that have never been heard before, and that's really exciting. Of course, you have to be able to hear the difference between two performances to have any idea what those things might mean. The technology helps us not just to make music but also to understand music in very specific ways."
Zahler is no newcomer to technology. "As a student," he says, "I was fortunate to have teachers who insisted that I be immersed in both traditional studies of music and electronic music," Zahler says. "I have always been fascinated by the orchestral possibilities of both of these areas; the challenge has been to combine them."
In his previous position at Connecticut College, Zahler founded the Ammerman Center, an interdisciplinary research center that explores the connections between the arts and technology. In the 1980s, he joined with faculty colleagues from the math and computer science departments at Connecticut to develop the Artificially Intelligent Computer Performer, the first computer-based musical accompaniment system that could listen to a performer, track his or her place in the score, adjust the tempo of the accompaniment to match the performer, and recognize when the live performer got lost.
Zahler continues his explorations of artificial intelligence technologies and their application to music. That integrative approach has become his signature, distinguishing his original compositions as well as his work as a scholar and educational innovator.
In the vanguard
Though second-nature to Zahler, technology innovations are unusual in music, a field that some see as effete or academically lightweight. But Zahler fully intends to make the U a leader in changing that perception. Another of his priorities: recasting the arts as an essential part of the academic ecosystem.
"When it comes to research, people understand what scientists do," Zahler says. "Scientists look at the world and they ask 'Why?' Artists see and hear imaginary worlds and ask 'How?' The results are different, but the process of asking questions is very similar.
"That's one of the most exciting things about being in a university setting. The arts and sciences can feed off each other. There are things that happen in the sciences that affect the arts—and vice versa."
As he looks ahead, Zahler sees the School of Music changing fundamentally, realizing its central place within the college, the University, and the international academic music scene.
"As we move toward becoming an internationally recognized school," Zahler emphasizes, "we have to take the steps that clearly demonstrate that we're worthy of that recognition. There's certainly no doubt in my mind that we're ready."