KU News Release

Music festival in Italy founded by KU piano student outgrows location, scope

Nathanael May

LAWRENCE — A music festival in Italy founded by a University of Kansas doctoral student and co-sponsored by the KU Department of Music and Dance has grown so popular that it will relocate and revise its focus in 2008.

Nathanael May, doctoral student in piano who has taught and performed abroad, has renamed the festival formerly known as the Cortona Contemporary Music Festival to “soundSCAPE,” with SCAPE standing for Sound, Composition and Performance Exchange. The “soundSCAPE” festival will be relocated from Cortona to Pavia, Italy, south of Milan. May said the attendance and scope of the original festival had outgrown the Cortona site.

In 2008, the festival will be in the Istituto di musica Vittadini, which is housed in a 16th century building featuring a newly renovated 350-seat concert hall as well as ample teaching and practice facilities.

The next festival is set for July 15-25, 2008. The event also is sponsored by the Biquadro Cultural Association of Pavia.

“In the three years since its founding, the Cortona Contemporary Music Festival has established a unique niche in the international new music scene, having more than doubled in its original size and scope,” said May. “The new location in Pavia will allow us to offer so much more, from concert performances of chamber opera to collaboration with nearby conservatories in Milan and Cremona. We wanted the festival name to reflect the various genres of modern concert music and to embrace the wide range of activities we offer at the festival.”

The mission of “soundSCAPE” is to facilitate the exchange of new music, ideas and culture between new musicians and composers. Participants experience workshops, master classes, lectures, and performances by master teachers and composers. The summer of 2008 will
feature the following visiting artists: international mandolin sensation Avi Avital; Martin Scherzinger, associate professor of musicology at the Eastman School of Music; and the German microtonal composer Michael Quell. Additionally, participants can take part in new courses in contemporary voice, percussion, Italian language, and improvisation.

At KU, May is a Lawrence graduate teaching assistant in piano under Jack Winerock, KU professor of piano. May is working toward a doctor of musical arts degree in performance. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1996 from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and a master's degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.

From 2001 to 2005, May taught in the music department at Eastern Mediterranean University on the island of Cyprus. He has also taught at the Eastman School of Music and the Hochstein School of Music & Dance, both in Rochester, N.Y., and Lake Country Conservatory in Oconomowoc, Wis.

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