Keyboard Faculty

She has participated in Suzuki and pedagogy workshops throughout the country and in Australia and New Zealand. She was one of twenty Suzuki teachers invited to contribute to Teaching Suzuki Piano edited by Giles Comeau. She is a former member of the Suzuki Association Board of Directors, Co-Chair of the 2006 Suzuki National Conference, Past-President of the Tennessee Music Teachers Association and Director-Elect of Southern Division of Music Teachers National Association. Mrs. Adams was named the Tennessee Teacher of the Year in 1996 by the Tennessee Music Teachers and has received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Tennessee Governor’s School. She has received a Chancellor’s Citation for Service to the University of Tennessee, the first annual Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award for the UT School of Music, the UT Volunteer Spirit Award and the YWCA Tribute to Women in the Arts Award. Mrs. Adams teaches applied piano, undergraduate and graduate piano pedagogy, and Suzuki pedagogy.

MP3 Music Samples:

• MozartTrio Number. 4 _
• Chopin Preludes 13 & 14

FULL BIO: Fay Adams

Research/Creative Activity 2006: Fay Adams

John Brock, Professor of Music, teaches organ, harpsichord, and music theory.  He is a graduate of the University of Alabama, where he was an organ student of Warren Hutton.  He is the author of an organ method, Introduction to Organ Playing in 17th and 18th Century Style, an outgrowth of his interest in early music performance practice.  His recordings include two volumes of A Tennessee Organ Tour and the complete organ works of Hugo Distler.  His career as a performer has taken him to many parts of the U.S. and to The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, where he has performed on both historic and modern organs.  He also performs frequently as a harpsichordist.  Mr. Brock is Assistant Organist at Church of the Ascension, Knoxville, and is active in the American Guild of Organists, both locally and nationally, as well as several other professional organizations.  Organ, harpsichord, music theory. 

MP3 Music Samples: > Hugo Distler (from the CD entitled Hugo Distler with John Brock as the organist)

FULL BIO: John Brock.pdf

David Brunell, Associate Professor of Music, has concertized widely in the United States, Latin America and Europe.  With numerous concerto performances with orchestras and solo recitals to his credit, his performances have also been broadcast on many radio and television stations in many countries including New York City’s WQXR. He has also made several recordings for Enharmonic Records in concerto, solo, and collaborative performances with such artists as violinist Andres Cardenes. The many awards Dr. Brunell has received include first prizes in the Music Teachers National Association National Piano Competition, the Beethoven Sonata competition, and the prize for the best performance of the required work in the New Orleans International Competition.  He also won top prizes in the Young Keyboard Artists, New Orleans, and Louise D. McMahon International Competitions, and was selected to the Artistic Ambassador Program of the United States Information Agency.  As an Artistic Ambassador, Dr. Brunell premiered "Abandoned Bells" by distinguished American composer William Mayer. Dr. Brunell is also an active church pianist.  He has recorded a CD of hymn arrangements by Mark Hayes, and has been heard performing sacred music on national television several times on Dr. D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Hour.  As a teacher, Dr. Brunell’s students have achieved distinctions including winning the MTNA Southern Division collegiate piano competition. Dr. Brunell’s teaching awards include the Tennessee Music Teachers Association Teacher of the Year Award and the Tennessee Governor’s School of the Arts Outstanding Teacher Award.  Dr. Brunell’s studies were at Indiana University, where he received the University’s highest musical and academic awards, the Joseph Battista Memorial Award, the Performer’s Certificate, and the John H. Edwards Fellowship. Prior to coming to Tennessee, Dr. Brunell taught at Saint Olaf College and at Indiana University.  Dr. Brunell has also been a guest teacher at the Carson Newman College Summer Music Camp.

MP3 Music Samples:

• Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (movements I, VIII, X, XI, XII) by David DeBoor Canfield performed by David Brunell with the Indiana University Orchestra conducted by Keith Brown, courtesy of Enharmonic Records.
• Blumenstück, Op.19 by Schumann
• Wilde Jagd by Franz Liszt

Research/Creative Activity 2006: David Brunell

David Brunell Publicity Flyer

For the largest part of her career at the University of Tennessee, she has created three learning projects which define her teaching philosophy and curriculum. These three projects address communication through music. The first project is a compilation of a phenomenology study of more than 500 responses, with the purpose of discovering what and how western classical music communicates to the listener of various cultures. She collected these responses concurrent with her recital and concert tours in South America, Europe, Africa, India, the Middle East, Indonesia, and the United States. The second project, exploring how and what indigenous music communicates to its native people, was supported by two grants: a Fulbright Senior Research and Teaching Grant (1989) at Yarmouk University in Irbid Jordan and by American Center for Oriental Research (ACOR;) (l997) in Amman, Jordan. The resulting collection of Jordanian traditional music contains 40 sound cassettes and 30 video cassettes and in 2001 was placed in the Library of the National Music Conservatory/Noor Al Hussein Foundation Amman, Jordan. The third project involves a collaboration using her reading method, which aims to impart to students the total meaning of a musical composition as well as how to communicate this meaning in performance teaching. This skill is based on her books Sight Reading Hymn Texture (2006); Sight Reading Homophonic Texture (1998) Piano, Group Piano, Zagorski Sight Reading Method with Four Keyboard Textures (3rd edition, 2000; The 2nd edition was published and distributed in Russia (1996).

Born in Belgium, pianist and conductor Kevin Class has enjoyed much success as a soloist in many of the world’s major musical centers.  Since his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 19, he has regularly performed in venues such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Musikverein and Geneva’s Victoria Hall.  Following several seasons of annual performances in The Netherlands and Belgium, including the complete piano sonatas of Schubert in Amsterdam in 1997, the Belgian government named Kevin a Fellow of the Flemish Community in 1998.

Kevin Class most recently served on the Opera Studies faculty of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music where he was Music Director and Conductor for Martina Arroyo’s Advanced Opera Program.  Prior to that, Kevin spent four seasons as Resident Conductor and Guest Music Director of the Illinois Opera Theatre at the University of Illinois where he conducted numerous productions ranging from the Da Ponte operas of Mozart’s to French Grand Opera.  As conductor of the Theatre’s Workshop productions, Class presided over performances of a series of American operas including Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, Hugo Weisgall’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and Russell Smith’s Unicorn in the Garden.  With more than 40 operas in his active repertoire, conducting activities have found him on the podium at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden and the National Opera Studio in London, the National Opera Theatre La Monnaie in Brussels.  In orchestral repertoire he has appeared in front of the Chicago Youth Symphony, Northern Illinois Philharmonic, Peabody Conservatory Orchestra, the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, and as a resident conductor of the Illinois New Music Ensemble.  He has served as assistant conductor for productions of Rigoletto and La Cenerentola for Utah Festival Opera, and as a Principal Guest Conductor for Opera Illinois, he recently conducted Puccini’s Il Trittico to critical and audience acclaim.

FULL BIO: Kevin Class.pdf

At his New York debut recital at Carnegie Recital Hall, the New York Times called David Northington “an immensely gifted musician…who combines the technical mastery of a virtuoso with the musical sensitivity of a poet.”   Such critical accolades have followed Northington throughout the world in concerts and concerto engagements.  His tours have included the United States, eastern and western Europe, Canada, China, and Russia.  In addition to recitals and concerto engagements, he has given master classes at many of the leading conservatories in these countries.  David Northington’s masterful pianism has won him first prizes in the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the East/West Artists Competition, the American Music Scholarship Association’s International Competition, the unanimous Judges Prize at the Fourth Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, and selection to the Artistic Ambassador Program sponsored by the United States Information Agency.  As an Artistic Ambassador for the United States, Northington has toured extensively in France, Spain and Portugal.  In addition to broadcasts throughout Europe on the Voice of America, he has filmed recitals in the historic Tallyrand Theatre in Paris for telecast on French National Television. Recently, Northington celebrated the international release of a compact disc featuring of the waltzes of Chopin on the Centaur Records label. After this release, Dr. Northington was invited to perform solo recitals in the United States, Italy and Poland.  Since receiving his degrees at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the Yale University School of Music, David Northington has taught on the faculties of several universities.  His many teaching awards include the Tennessee Music Teachers Association’s Teacher of the Year Award and the Tennessee Governor’s School of the Arts “Outstanding Teacher Award’.  Dr. Northington has also been the recipient of the Tennesssee Arts Commission’s Artist of the Year Award.

MP3 Music Samples:

• Chopin Waltz in D Flat
• Chopin Waltz in A Flat
• Chopin Waltz in G Flat

FULL BIO:David Northington.pdf