MUSIC IS A FAMILY AFFAIR!

Posted on October 19, 2020

Pictured above is the Givens family.

By Lori Givens (Prep 1987-1988, PYP 1988-1993) and Nathan Givens (PYP 1997-1998)

We’re the Givens family! We are both violists. Lori graduated from Indiana School of Music in Music Performance, and Nathan graduated from Portland State University in Music Performance. We own a music school, Concert School of Music, and a violin shop, Quartet Violin Shop. The... Read More ›

REMEMBERING MARY CHARLOTTE BROWN BRAWLEY

Posted on May 29, 2020

(PJS 1956 - 1962)

PYP has received word that alumna Mary Charlotte Brown Brawley passed away on January 17, 2020, from complications related to dementia. Mary Charlotte was a violist, but she loved to tell the tale of how she volunteered to learn a mandolin part for Mr. A’s composition Phases of the Great Land (Nov 22, 1958). She was an avid... Read More ›

Recollections of Mary V. Dodge

Posted on February 28, 2020

By Janet Dodge Martin

The previous Alumni News issue included an excerpt from an interview with Linda Neale (PJS 1967), granddaughter of Ruth Saunders Leupold, a violin student of Mary Dodge in rural Harney County, Oregon, beginning about 1910. This account of Mary Dodge’s life is from a conversation with Janet Dodge Martin, her granddaughter. Many of Janet’s recollections are from her... Read More ›

RECOLLECTION & APPRECIATION BY GERRY AMATO (PJS 1976)

Posted on November 22, 2019

It is true what they say…...that when one reaches a certain age he or she reflects back to important events in their life. This is certainly the case for me being a member of the PYP back in the early to mid ‘70s. The experience I gained as a musician cannot be forgotten. It was a time of great importance for me,... Read More ›

Avshalomov/Bernstein 1: Introduction

Posted on January 28, 2019

Bernstein: 1918-1990

Avshalomov: 1919-2013

Leonard Bernstein and Jacob Avshalomov: one shot like a rocket into the international classical music stratosphere; the other wound his way through the world and built his reputation year by year.  A year apart in age, both were part of the legendary post-WWII mid-twentieth-century American composers’ “circuit,” as Avshalomov put it.  Both their similarities and their differences informed their different... Read More ›

Avshalomov/Bernstein 2: Bernstein’s early years

Posted on January 28, 2019

As a young man, Leonard Bernstein’s Orthodox Jewish father emigrated from a shtetl in the Ukrainian area of the “Pale of Settlement”, where the Imperial Russian government allowed Jews to live, to New York and eventually to Lawrence, Massachusetts.  Leonard grew up in a tightly disciplined, observant Jewish family with two siblings, was drawn to piano before he could walk, and... Read More ›