PROJECT OVERVIEW & SIGNIFICANCE
The bassoon lacks the substantial repertoire of many of its instrumental counterparts. The Lionel Hampton School of Music (LHSOM) has a legacy of successful leadership among its regional peers. The naming of the school itself after the African-American jazz musician Lionel Hampton is unique among American music institutions. Conversely, there is still also a dearth of representative art music written by female African-American composers published and recorded for commercial and scholarly distribution. Dr. Nansi Carroll has written over 300 vocal, choral, and piano works during her career. In the past 25 years she has concentrated on instrumental music, writing works featuring the bassoon and dedicated to me. This proposal establishes a collection at the Lionel Hampton School of Music and University of Idaho Libraries that contain the engraved published scores to Dr. Carroll’s previously self-published works. This collection will be recorded throughout the sabbatical period, published, housed, and distributed within the Lionel Hampton School of Music and University of Idaho Library, establishing the Nansi Carroll Collection. Future growth is expected through subsequent commissions, scholarly reviews, and album and published music distribution. These activities contribute to the regional and national reputation of the Lionel Hampton School of Music by allowing its faculty to perform direct recruitment activities with students throughout the region.
Nansi Carroll (b. 1946) studied voice at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, the Tanglewood Music Center, and Yale School of Music, where she received her Doctorate in 1982. Her principal teachers were Marjorie Thomas and Phyllis Curtin. Carroll is also active as a composer with a current catalog of over three hundred works. She is published by GIA, and her music also appears in the volume Sacred Sound & Social Change. For 25 years, she served as the Music Director for the St. Augustine Catholic Student Center at the University of Florida and is currently Co-Artistic Director of A Musical Offering, 501(c)3, which administers the Jubilus Festival in Gainesville, FL. Carroll’s music focuses on settings of African-American Spirituals.
Javier Rodriguez, D.M., is the Associate Professor of Bassoon and Director of Graduate Studies at the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho where he teaches undergraduate and graduate studio bassoon, graduate courses in bibliography and research, undergraduate courses in career skills and world music, and performs with Northwest Wind Quintet, Hammers & Reeds Faculty Trio, and co-directs the LHSOM Double Reed Ensemble. His research focuses on commissioning and performing chamber music from underrepresented composers. For these efforts, in October 2020 he was awarded a University of Idaho College of Letters Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) Humanities Fellowship endowed program to foster teaching in the Humanities, and a 2022 Presidential Mid-Career Excellence Award.
Rodriguez has held numerous orchestral positions throughout the United States including engagements with the Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Valdosta, and Walla Walla Symphonies, the Louisiana Sinfonietta, the Natchez Opera Festival Orchestra, and the Ars Nova Chamber Orchestra. He has also performed with the Austin, Jacksonville, Kentucky, San Antonio, Tallahassee and Monterrey (Mexico) symphonies.
In the summer, Rodriguez teaches at the University of Idaho Summer Music Camp, and has previously taught at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, the Vianden International Music Festival and School in Luxembourg, the LSU Honors Chamber Winds Camp, the FSU Summer Music Camps Double Reed Workshop, and has served as a Teaching Assistant at the Brevard Music Festival.
Rodriguez is a founding member of the Post-Haste Reed Duo (PHRD). Along with performances and master classes at numerous colleges and universities though out the United States, PHRD has also appeared at College Music Society (CMS) and International Double Reed Society (IDRS) national conferences, the Society for Electro Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), the North Atlantic Saxophone Alliance (NASA), the Association for Technology for Music Instruction (ATMI), the White Lake Chamber Music Festival (MI), Chamber Music Montana Summer Festival, the Center for New Music in San Francisco, Spectrum Contemporary Music Venue in Brooklyn, and Future Music Oregon (FMO). PHRD has also served as Ensemble-In-Residence at the Jubilus Festival in Gainesville, FL, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and as the pilot ensemble for Classical Revolution Portland’s (CRPDX) Outreach Series. PHRD’s two albums, Beneath a Canopy of Angels…A River of Stars (2016) and Donut Robot! (2019) are released on the Aerocade Music Label and have been received with critical acclaim.
As a soloist and chamber musician, Rodriguez has commissioned works by composers including Daniel Asia, Alexis Bacon, Drew Baker, Jenni Brandon, Nansi Carroll, Stephen Coxe, Edward J. Hines, Cindi Hsu, Simon Hutchinson, Michael Johanson, Joshua Keeling, Lanier Sammons, John Steinmetz, U of I alumnus Paul Taylor, Greg Wanamaker, Ethan Wickman, and Bang on a Can co-creator Michael Gordon. He holds a Doctor of Music degree from Florida State University, Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Louisiana State University, and has also studied at the University of Cincinnati College‐Conservatory of Music. His teachers include Jeffrey Keesecker, William Ludwig and William Winstead.
