Indiana University Professor of Composition Jeffrey Hass was recently awarded a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship to live and work at the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities on the Mediterranean coast south of Genoa, Italy. Hass, who also serves as director of the Center for Electronic and Computer Music at the Jacobs School of Music, will begin the fellowship in September 2009. The fellowship announcement follows three other honors for Hass, including a $17,000 IU New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities grant; first prize and an orchestral commission for a work for the 2009 Utah Arts Festival in Salt Lake City; and having a piece accepted for performance at the 2009 conference of the International Computer Music Association in Montreal this August.   Full Story

Soprano Olivia Hairston, a graduate student at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, took home the Grand Prize of $5,000 from the 2009 Indiana Campus Super Star competition April 19 at the historic Madame Walker Theatre in downtown Indianapolis.   Full Story

The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music today (April 23) announced the appointment of Kathleen McLean, one of the most acclaimed orchestral bassoonists in North America. She will join the Jacobs faculty roster as associate professor in the fall of 2009.   Full Story

Comedy, tragedy, magic, madness, jealousy, deceit and fantasy all will take center stage at IU Bloomington's Musical Arts Center during Indiana University Opera and Ballet Theater's 2009-2010 season. Among the highlights will be Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, in celebration of the recent unprecedented gift from the family of Leonard Bernstein that contains the contents of his Fairfield, Conn., composing studio, and the history of Bernstein's long association with the Jacobs School.   Full Story

Indiana University's public radio station, WFIU, will celebrate the end of Jazz Appreciation Month with a series of performances, on-air specials, a listener survey . . . and a jazz-loving guest DJ, IU President Michael McRobbie. McRobbie will be in the WFIU studio on Friday, April 24, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. playing his favorite jazz tunes -- by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Eberhard Weber, Carla Bley and IU's own legendary David Baker -- on Joe Bourne's "Just You & Me" program.   Full Story

The Indiana University Bloomington Contemporary Dance Program and Jacobs School of Music Student Composer Association have teamed up for the fourth year in a row to create the "Hammer and Nail" concert. This year's event will feature 14 new works created by a group of 30 student artists.   Full Story

Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music will host its annual Big Band Extravaganza Saturday, April 25, at 8 p.m. in the Musical Arts Center. This year's concert, titled "When Swing Was King," will present music from many of the most famous bands of the Swing Era, including those of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman, performed by two outstanding student big bands led by IU jazz faculty members David Baker and Brent Wallarab. Returning by popular demand are two exceptional jazz vocalists, Delores King Williams and Everett Greene, who performed in the concert last year.   Full Story

Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music will present its annual "Ballet at the BCT: The Choreography Project" at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in downtown Bloomington on April 15-16 at 8 p.m., with a matinee performance April 16 at 2 p.m. The event is free, open to the public and appropriate for all ages.   Full Story

The Orion String Quartet, the resident quartet at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, will be premiering a new work by Jacobs Professor and Composition Department Chair David Dzubay in a free concert on Monday, April 13, at 8 p.m. in Auer Hall.   Full Story

The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music has appointed Joyce Ritchie as director of development, starting in April (2009). Over a 30-year career, Ritchie, an Indiana native, has led extensive development and public relations programs in music and the arts, as well as in social services and public media. She joins the Jacobs School after a decade at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.   Full Story