The Department of Music will present a guest artist recital in the recital hall of the Bologna Performing Arts Center Feb. 27 at 7:30 p.m.
The guest artists, Dr. Jacob Coleman (piano) and Elise Blatchford (flute), will share the musical works of Frank Martin, Darius Milhaud, Randall Woolf, and Carl Vine.
A native of Athens, Georgia, Coleman keeps a busy schedule collaborating with a broad range of performers throughout the U.S. He is currently on faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he directs the Collaborative Piano Program. From 2014-16 Coleman served as a visiting assistant professor of collaborative piano at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. During the summer, he is a member of the piano staff at Meadowmount School of Music founded by Ivan Galamian.
As a collaborator, Coleman has performed with artists such as Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinetist Franklin Cohen, bassoonist William Ludwig, St. Louis Brass member Jeff Nelsen, flutist Leone Buyse, Oregon Symphony principal cellist Nancy Ives, Metropolitan Opera baritone Frederick Burchinal, as well as the Kenari Quartet. He has also performed for a number of master class clinicians including Gil Shaham, Angela Hewitt, Donald McInnes, Warren Jones, Ransom Wilson, Mark Nuccio, Julianne Baird and Cho Liang Lin. As a vocal coach, he has held staff positions at the University of Georgia Opera Theater and the Astoria Music Festival. Additionally, Coleman has served as the principal keyboardist for the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra and The University of Texas Wind Ensemble under the direction of Jerry Junkin. In 2012, he was a collaborative piano fellow at the Music Academy of the West, where he worked with Jonathan Feldman. In 2016, he served as the official pianist for the MidSouth Flute Festival in Memphis, Tennessee. Coleman has also performed at the North American Saxophone Alliance and International Double Reeds Society conferences.
Coleman is an avid performer of new music. As a soloist, he gave the Georgia premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s “Two New Etudes” in 2003. In April of 2016, he premiered a new work by Lansing McLoskey for oboe and piano with ToniMarie Marchioni at Spectrum. Coleman holds degrees from The University of Texas at Austin (DMA, collaborative piano), University of Oregon (MM, collaborative piano), and the University of Georgia (BM, piano performance). His primary teachers were Richard Zimdars, David Riley and Anne Epperson.
A flutist who embraces the independent, experimental and the DIY, Elise Blatchford is a professor, a member of the City of Tomorrow wind quintet, and a frequent soloist and recitalist. Her solo playing has been hailed for its “superb command of color and nuance,” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Blatchford is the assistant professor of flute at the University of Memphis Scheidt School of Music. With the contemporary music wind quintet the City of Tomorrow, she has won a gold medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and toured across the U.S.
Blatchford’s willingness to take risks has extended to multidisciplinary performance art at the Next Wave Festival at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), touring with the amplified cello rock band Portland Cello Project, and arranging and performing an entire album by singer-songwriter Mirah with her partner Leander Star.
Also at home in the traditional orchestra world, Blatchford has performed with the Oregon Symphony, the Memphis Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the YOA Orchestra of the Americas. With YOA, she toured extensively throughout South America, the Caribbean and mainland China, made an appearance at Carnegie Hall with Valery Gergiev, and recorded with Philip Glass.
A dedicated and inventive pedagogue, Blatchford has given master classes at New England Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory, Williams College, Longy School of Music and Skidmore College, among many others. She completed degrees in flute performance at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory.
The recital is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Department of Music at 662-846-4615.
