Index08.html

	Joan Heller Senior Lecturer, formerly Associate Professor email: jheller@smu.edu Chair of the Voice Department Music Division Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University Additional Information: Concert Schedule Reviews Recordings Conductors Lectures Master classes Premieres Recitals Broadcasts
Concert in Brazil, August 2007 Joan Heller, Soprano	Classes and Syllabi for Fall 2008 Music (book) List for Fall 2008

Noted for impressive musicality, incredible technique, dead-on pitch, an extraordinary upper range, and imparting the sense and drama of the texts, soprano Joan Heller has performed under the direction of such notable conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Gunther Schuller, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Arthur Weisberg. Her longstanding advocacy of twentieth-century and American music is reflected in her numerous recordings and performances; the latter, both here and abroad, have included the world premieres of more than forty compositions, many written specifically for her.

Highly regarded for choosing music which embodies musical, poetic, and expressive extremes, Heller, in collaboration with pianist Thomas Stumpf, has published two solo compact discs, To the Verge and Walt Whitman and Modern Music. Six additional compact disc recordings feature her as soloist in works by America composers Robert Cogan, Irwin Bazelon, Peter Child, and Charles Schwartz. A recipient of an individual artist grant in 1994 from the United States National Endowment for the Arts, she recorded works by Luciano Berio, Milton Babbitt, Charles Fussell, Robert Cogan, and Thomas Stumpf, for her first solo compact disc, To the Verge, published by Neuma the following year. In 1999, a Southern Methodist University Meadows Development Grant facilitated the production of her second solo recording, three complete Whitman cycles composed by Kurt Weill, George Crumb, and Lawrence Kramer, and the first recording of four Whitman songs composed in the 1920s by Marc Blitzstein. In the spring of 2000, Garland Press released a book of essays and this CD as Walt Whitman and Modern Music. The release of Heller’s ninth and tenth compact disc recordings were released in 2005: Samuel Adler’s Snow Tracks with the Meadows Wind Ensemble, GSCD-358 on Gasparo Records, and Robert Cogan’s Celan Portrait/Celanporträt in five movements (2003), Joan Heller, soprano, and Jon Sakata, piano, CRC-2722 on Centaur Records.

Joan Heller has given vocal master classes in the US, UK, and former USSR and served on the music faculties of Yale University, Boston University, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Currently she is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Voice Department, in the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University.

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