University of Alaska Fairbanks pianist Dr. Ilia Radoslavov took gold at the Seattle International Piano Competition held in October. Dr. Radoslavov performed in the professional division. The award included a cash prize and a recording contract with Emergence Records. The recording contract includes the production of a full length solo album, the first for Radoslavov, and will be recorded in the spring of 2010.

The Seattle International Piano Festival invites pianists of all ages from around the world. The festival features the piano competition, guest recitals, master classes and lectures.

The competition consisted of two rounds of judging. Judging in the preliminary round was based on anonymously labeled recordings submitted by each artist. Artists progressing to the final round of competition were invited to perform live at the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall in Seattle’s Benaroya Hall. The competition drew over 100 entries in the professional division with six artists progressing to the final round.

Following the competition Dr. Radoslavov was invited to perform as a guest artist at a recital series sponsored by the Cornish College of the Arts and to serve as a judge at the 2010 Seattle International Piano Competition.

A native of Bulgaria, Dr. Radoslavov has been performing professionally for nearly 20 years. His performances have received accolades by audiences and critics alike, while appearing in numerous solo and chamber performances in prestigious venues in the United States and Europe.

Dr. Radoslavov holds degrees in Piano Performance from the University of Wisconsin Madison, Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the State Conservatory of Music, Sofia, Bulgaria. He is the recipient of many awards to include the Missouri International Piano Competition, Joplin, Missouri; the Hague International Piano Competition, the Netherlands; and first prizes from the UW Concerto Competition and UW Beethoven Piano Competition, Madison, Wisconsin; Saint Louis Artist Presentation Society, St. Louis, Missouri; National Mozart Competition, Sofia, Bulgaria; and the National Piano Competition, Provadia, Bulgaria.
 

The UAF Brass Choir will present its fall concert this Thursday November 19, 2009 at 8:00 PM in the Davis Concert Hall. Admission is free. Donations are appreciated.

The concert, directed by James Bicigo and conducted by Karen Gustafson features Eino Rautavaara's "A Requiem in Our Time" and Edvard Grieg's "Funeral March" as well as popular favorites "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's opera "Turandot", "Scarborough Fair", and "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho."

All shows are in the Fine Arts Complex Room 313. The gallery is open from 8:00am to 5:30pm M-F.

August 31-September 18, Faculty Show
September 21-25, Sakura K. Studio
September 28-October 2, Jessica Z. Studio
October 5-9, John Smelter Performance
October 12-16, Lacie Stewing
October 19-23, BA Art Exhibition
October 26-30, BA Art Exhibition
November 2-13, Kim Walker, BFA Painting
November 16-20, Winter Shorts Show
November 23-December 4, Phil Carrico, MFA Printmaking
December 7-18, Student Art Show

Click the link below to read the 2009 CLA Special Edition newsletter. Articles included:

• Truth and Fiction
• UAF College of Liberal Arts Going Global
• UAF Percussionists Having an Impact
• There’s More to “Elder” Than Being Old
• From the Classroom to the Supreme Court
• DEW Line Passage
• It’s About Attitude
• Thank You Rudy Krejci!

http://www.uaf.edu/cla/news-events/CLA.special.edition.2009.small.pdf

Are you giving oral presentations this semester? The UAF Speaking Center can help you! The Speaking Center, run by the Department of Communication, provides assistance with topic selection, presentation organization and, most importantly, presentation practice complete with video recording. Students receive constructive feedback for improvement from a Speaking Center coach. Practice time without coaches is also available. Hours of operation are: Monday 11am-3pm and 5:30pm-8:30pm, Tuesday 5:30pm-8:30pm, Wednesday 11am-3pm and 5:30pm-8:30pm, Thursday 1pm-3pm. The Speaking Center is located in Gruening room 507. To schedule an appointment, students may call 474-5470. For more information on the Speaking Center contact Dr. Christine Cooper, 474-5060, cecooper@alaska.edu or Dr. Robert Arundale, 474-6799, rbarundale@alaska.edu.

University of Alaska Fairbanks journalism professor Brian O’Donoghue and three students will leave Fairbanks this weekend for an assignment that many journalists will never experience.

O’Donoghue, along with seniors Jennifer Canfield, Tom Hewitt and Jessica Hoffman, will board a plane to Kuwait, where they will join members of the 25th Infantry's Fairbanks-based Stryker Brigade Combat Team as embedded reporters in Diyala province in eastern Iraq.

The students and professor will spend most of August covering the war for Alaska media partners in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau.

O’Donoghue said the project will provide an immersive learning experience for students, as well as a public service. The students will be filing radio, television and print stories from the field, along with posting to a blog. Their coverage will be available to print and broadcast media outlets throughout the state.

“Alaska is a state with a deep connection to the military,” said O’Donoghue. “Here on campus we often have soldiers or their spouses in classes. Though interest in coverage of the brigade's activities remains high, most commercial newsrooms can't afford to send reporters right now."

This is not the journalism department’s first foray into military reporting. O’Donoghue’s students have been embedded on training exercises prior to previous deployments from Fort Wainwright during the fall 2004 semester and the spring 2008 semester.

O’Donoghue said UA President Mark Hamilton first raised the possibility of embedding student reporters this April with editors of the Sun Star, UAF's student-run campus newspaper. The journalism department explored the feasibility with brigade officers and put together a proposal, which Hamilton approved.

The project’s $35,000 price tag is funded through private donations to the university. It covers travel and war zone insurance for the foursome, as well as about $11,000 in audio, video and photography equipment, as well as field-grade laptops. The equipment will see continued use in the department for years to come, addressing the need for field-editing of video by today's roving journalist.

Canfield, Hewitt and Hoffman were selected from among a dozen students who applied to participate in the project. As a team, the students offer a broad array of media training: Canfield has radio experience, Hoffman is a video specialist and Hewitt, The Sun Star's new editor, is a strong print reporter, O’Donoghue said.

"I've found in my own career that nothing sharpens skills like intense assignments of finite duration covering a story of importance," O'Donoghue said. "This offers all of that and more. Former embedded journalists we've approached for advice have all encouraged us to go for it."

CONTACT: Marmian Grimes, UAF public information officer, at 907-474-7902 or via e-mail at marmian.grimes@alaska.edu.

View the Student’s blog at: shorttimers.blogspot.com
Listen to an interview given by Brian O’Donoghue and aired on the Alaska Public Radio Network

Read any of the many articles relating to this story:

Fairbanks Daily News Miner: 08/31/09: Alaska Strykers teach final lessons before returning home

KTUU Anchorage: 08/27/09: Strykers wrap up training with Iraqi army, police

Fairbanks Daily News Miner: 08/24/09: Strykers teach ‘crash course’ in Humvee repair

KTUU Anchorage: 08/20/09: Iraqis, Strykers battle heat together on aerial assault

Fairbanks Daily News Miner: 08/12/09: Fort Wainwright soldiers find themselves on a different kind of mission

KTUU Anchoarge: 08/07/09: Sweeping for Bombs with the Stryker Brigage
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: 08/07/09 - A Tangled Justice Weaves its Way in Iraq

Editor & Publisher: 08/05/09, A Close Call Already for Embedded Journalism Students in Iraq

Anchorage Daily News: 08/01/09: UAF quartet joins Fort Wainwright soldiers in Iraq

The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - photo
Editor & Publisher
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Fairbanks Journalism Students Embedded with Strykers
KTVA Anchorage

Composer and UAF alumna Sheri Throop and James Bicigo, Music Department, each received praise for recent compositions in the October 2009 edition of the International Trumpet Guild Journal. The journal reviewed Bicigo’s The Bremen Town Musicians and Throop’s Playford Dances.

Artwork by Art Department faculty members Da-ka-xeen Mehner and Erica Lord will be on display during the Alaska Native Photographer's Invitational Exhibit at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation gallery in Anchorage. The exhibition will run September 4-November 4, 2009. For more information visit www.alaskanativearts.org

An online magazine review of work by UAF art associate professor David Mollett, recently on display at New York ’s Bowery Gallery, is available at http://www.artezine.com/.

The University of Alaska Board of Regents approved a new Ph.D. program in indigenous studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks . The indigenous studies Ph.D. was developed in collaboration with several Alaska Native groups. One of its goals is to help address a shortage of Alaska Natives with advanced degrees; another is to advance knowledge and scholarship on subjects important to Alaska Native people and communities.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Wind Symphony , Jazz Band and Brass Choir are heading down to the Anchorage area on an educational tour for middle and high school students from April 22-24. This is the second year that the groups have toured in Alaska to bring concerts and educational clinics to communities and schools. Last year the Jazz Band toured to Delta Junction, Glennallen, and Valdez while the Wind Symphony and Brass Choir presented concerts and clinics in Nenana, Healy, and the Matsu Valley . The concerts will be performed for all ages of students in hopes of encouraging an interest in music and the value of music education, as well as showing the students the ensembles they may participate in while attending UAF. The groups will also provide free clinics to students already involved in their school music program. These same groups at UAF initiated these educational tours in 2007-2008 using monies brought in by ticket sales of several previous years of concerts. This year, however, music department chair Dr. John Hopkins has pitched in by seeking funding to encourage this educational venture and wonderful recruiting effort for UAF. Wind Symphony director Dr. Karen Gustafson , Jazz Band director Prof. Daniel Cathey and Brass Choir director Dr. James Bicigo will lead the groups down on a coach bus next Wednesday in this educational tour.

The Borealis Brass (Jane Aspnes, Karen Gustafson and James Bicigo) have released their CD Roman Holidays. The CD features music by women composers that was composed for Borealis Brass to perform in Rome on their three concert series there that were sponsored by the Foundation Adkins-Chiti: Donne in Musica. There is a wide variety of styles from African-American spirituals to contemporary classical music. CD's are available at Gulliver's Bookstore or from a member of borealis brass and cost $15. They will be available on CDbaby.com soon. The proceeds from the CD go to fund further commissions from composers and performance and recording activities of Borealis Brass.

Words of the Real People: Alaska Native Literature in Translation edited by Ann Fienup-Riordan and Lawrence D. Kaplan was selected as “2008 Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice magazine. Choice is published by the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Words of the Real People, published by the University of Alaska Press , is a collection of life stories, poetry and oral literature from Alaska Native speakers of Yupik, Inupiaq and Alutiiq.

Choice magazine has included Words of the Real People in a list of outstanding academic titles that were reviewed during 2008. Books are judged on overall excellence in presentation, scholarship and their importance relative to other literature in the field. Selection for this list brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community.

The book’s co-editor Ann Fienup-Riordan is the author of numerous books on the people of Alaska and has been recognized by the Alaska Federation of Natives for her work. Lawrence Kaplan is the director of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks .

Available at bookstores and online at www.uaf.edu/uapress. For further information please contact Garry Utermohle, UA Press Book Publicist, at (907) 474-6544 or fngou@uaf.edu.

University of Alaska Fairbanks professor emeritus Michael Krauss has been named a Linguistics Society of America Fellow for his distinguished contributions to the field of linguistics. Krauss and 11 other individuals were elected LSA Fellows and were recognized at the society's 83rd annual meeting in San Francisco. Krauss, funded by a $1.2 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation, is leading a team of veteran linguists who are working to document endangered languages in and near Alaska.

Artwork by UAF faculty members and artists David Mollett and Jessie Worth Hedden is currently on exhibit at the Bowery Gallery in New York City . The exhibit, which features paintings and prints by Mollett and paintings and collages by Hedden opened November 29^th and runs through the end of December.

Mollett, an Associate Professor at UAF, is well known throughout Alaska and has 31 solo exhibitions to his credit. He is currently showing landscape images from the Alaska Range as well as the Interior and South Central regions of Alaska . His paintings are structurally drawn and painted broadly with attention to color sequence and interval. Hedden, an Adjunct Instructor at UAF has shown widely in Alaska , recently exhibiting at the International Gallery in Anchorage and Alaska House in Fairbanks . In her collages and paintings, she builds an abstract image based on color and spatial studies from nature. The work of both Mollett and Hedden is closely tied to the Alaskan wilderness.

More information on the exhibit can be found by visiting the Bowery Gallery online at www.bowerygallery.org.

Tanya Aguińiga, a 2006 United States Artists Fellow who participated in the Alaska artist-in-residence program with the UAF Native Arts Center , recently closed a show at Los Angeles ’s Reform Gallery in which she displayed three pieces created while in residency at the Native Arts Center . The UAF art department will host another artist-in-residence, Gwendolyn Magee, during the spring 2009 semester. Magee is a textile artist and a 2007 United States Artists Fellow. The artist-in-residence program is supported by a grant from the Rasmuson Foundation.

UAF’s S. Craig Gerlach, Philip Loring, Archana Bali and Gary Kofinas discuss the effects of climate change and rising energy costs on food supply in northern communities in two recent articles in Science. The articles “Researchers at AAAS Arctic Division Meeting Link Climate, Energy to ‘Food Insecurity’” and “Scientists Link Climate, Energy to Growing Arctic ‘Food Insecurity’” are written by Edward W. Lempinen and discuss research presented at the AAAS Arctic Division annual meeting held September 15-17, 2008 in Fairbanks.

UAF Professor Emeritus Michael Krauss and Clara Johnson, director of the Interior-Aleutians Campus, were recipients of major awards at the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention in October. Krauss received the Denali Award, the top honor given by the AFN to non-Natives. Johnson was the recipient of the AFN President’s Eileen Panigeo MacLean Education award.

The Alaska Historical Society recognized UAF Northern Studies alumnus Chris Allan with the Alaska Journal Best Article Award and a $500 cash prize at their 2008 conference, held October 16-18 in Anchorage . The conference was organized by another Northern Studies alumna, Katie Johnson Ringsmuth, and featured presentations and participation by the following Northern Studies program students, alumni and faculty: Chris Allan, Ross Coen, Janine Dorsey, Kathy Price, Talis Colberg, Roger Kaye, Bob King, Katie Johnson Ringsmuth, Terrence Cole, Kes Woodward and Judy Kleinfeld. Student membership in the Alaska Historical Society is available. Membership benefits include travel grants and publication opportunities in the journal Alaska History. More information on the Alaska Historical Society can be found at http://alaskahistoricalsociety.org.

Alaska Native Language Center instructors and SLATE Ph.D. students Walkie Charles and Hishinlai' “Kathy” Sikorski will present papers during the Presidential Session at the 2008 American Anthropological Association annual meeting to be held November 19-23 in San Francisco. Instructor Charles will present Critical Pedagogy: A Yup’ik Eskimo Perspective which examines and redefines the traditional role of the male in the Yup’ik family. Instructor Sikorski will present Interface of Ideology, Identity and Politics: Effects on Ancestral Language Learning which provides a rich ethnographic exploration of the author's experiences as she learns her ancestral language. Lawrence Kaplan, Director of the Alaska Native Language Center will participate in the annual meeting as a discussant. Visit http://www.aaanet.org/meetings for more information on the American Anthropological Association annual meeting.  

The Alaska House gallery in the SoHo District of New York will feature artwork by UAF alumni Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Da-ka-xeen Mehner in i-den-ti-ty, a group show curated by the Alaska Native Arts Foundation running November 1-December 29, 2008. The show features video, digital photography, 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional pieces which question the cultural standards by which our society defines race, and in particular American Indians and Native Americans. For more information on the Alaska House visit http://www.alaskahouseny.org.

Bryr Ludington, a MFA Nonfiction candidate at UAF, wrote a feature article “Pioneer of the Alaska Highway” in the October 2008 edition of Alaska Magazine. The article chronicles Elden Borders’ 1941 winter trek across a proposed route for the Alaska Highway. Ludington is currently researching and writing two books: one about Borders, and her first collection of essays. Her work has received recognition including an Honorable Mention from the AWP Intro Journal Awards. She lives in Fairbanks with her husband, fiction writer and fellow MFA candidate James Harris, and their two children. Ludington's article on Borders can be read at: http://www.alaskamagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1021&Itemid=46.