Classical music

Fall 2023

A composer’s journey to poetry and music

Eric McElroy is an American pianist and composer who released his debut album, Tongues of Fire, in March 2023 on Somm Recordings. He wrote the songs to accompany poems from modern poets W.S. Merwin, Gregory Leadbetter, Grevel Lindop, Alice Oswald, and Robert Graves. The poems are sung by acclaimed English tenor James Gilchrist and McElroy performs on piano.

McElroy graduated from Washington State University and then continued his postgraduate education in Vienna and Oxford University.

In this episode, Washington State Magazine editor Larry Clark talks with McElroy about the new album, his creative process, poetry, walking, and his influences at WSU and beyond.

The … » More …

Fall 2023

Eric McElroy

The pianist and composer releases his debut album, Tongues of Fire. » More ...

Fall 2017

Briefly noted

The Positive Leader: Five Leadership Strategies for Attaining Extraordinary Results

Howard Gauthier ’81

Sports Leadership Publishing Company: 2016

Through a series of parables, this book gives leadership strategies designed to build successful teams in the workplace, on the playing field, or in the boardroom. Gauthier is a former college basketball coach and athletic director, and is currently an associate professor of sports science at Idaho State University-Meridian.

Midwives and Mothers: Medicalization of Childbirth on a Guatemalan Plantation

Sheila Cosminsky ’64 MA

University of Texas Press: 2016

In this exploration of birth, illness, death, and survival on a Guatemalan sugar and coffee plantation, Cosminsky … » More …

Fall 2013

Charles Argersinger 1951–2013: Equilibrium

Charles Edward Argersinger, emeritus professor of music at Washington State University and a resident of the Palouse area since 1988, died April 16, 2013, in Pullman, after a long illness. He was 61.

Charles was born October 15, 1951, in Schenectady, New York, and his family traded snow for sun a few years later, moving to Phoenix, Arizona. After graduating from Central High School, he attended Arizona State University, earning his bachelor’s and then, in 1977, his master’s degree in music. During his college years, he played saxophone in a rock band called Christopher Blue. In 1977, Jana Jennison, who fell in love with him … » More …

Winter 2002

A common reader: Trouble in Dusty Gulch

I really should be more worried about this. It’s my living, after all. For 20 years I’ve been presenting a kind of music so wildly varied in time (seven centuries and more), in style (Morris dances, Joplin rags, Mahlerian stairways to heaven, Copland cowboy ballets), and in instrumentation (shawms and zithers along with the violins and cellos), that the term “classical” is as inadequate in describing it all as calling the United States of America, Dusty Gulch, Nevada, just to avoid the complexities. But we call the music Dusty Gulch anyway, and there’s trouble in Dusty Gulch. Always has been, to tell you the truth.

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Winter 2002

Sonata Concertante for Cello and Piano and other works

In the course of his 26 years at Washington State University, Lothar Kreck, who retired in 1997, served as director of Hotel and Restaurant Administration (1971-79) and was the program’s first Ivar B. Haglund Distinguished Professor. He also pursued an avocation as a composer and performer, playing viola in orchestras in the U.S. and Europe. Sonata Concertante for Cello and Piano and other works presents seven of his compositions.

Although he began writing music in 1953, the earliest piece on this CD dates from 1985. The disc includes performances by WSU piano faculty Susan Chan, organist and pianist David Hatt, and the Maui … » More …