2003-05-01. MUN Gazette, vol. 35, no. 17

              Memorial
f University of Newfoundland
Publications Mail
Registration No. 40062527
Volume 35 Number 17
A MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND PUBLICATION
May 1,2003
Budding composers
get a big audience
By Ivan Muzychka
Three Memorial music students shared
the concert program with
Mendelssohn and Mozart on April
26, at a Sinfonia Series concert performed by
the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra.
Adam Foran, Jason Noble and Clay
Puddester were in the audience and, in addition to enjoying the pieces by Mozart and
Mendelssohn, they also heard chamber
orchestra pieces they themselves had written
as part of their participation in an innovative
composition seminar they attended over the
last year.
Their respective musical compositions
were crafted and polished with the guidance
of professional composer and music school
professor Dr. Clark Ross, who led the seminar,
the first of its kind at Memorial, and possibly
the first time that a Canadian professional
orchestra has sponsored the creation of new
works by three students, and agreed to play
them as part of a regular concert series, sight
unseen. The result, according to both the audience and the musicians involved, seems to
have been an unqualified success.
Dr. Ross said that the process of preparing
a score they knew would be played added a
dimension to his students' growth as
composers.
"Composing the music for the Sinfonia
Series was perhaps the most important exercise they have done," he told the Gazette. "It's
one thing to play your music back to a teacher,
another to have it played publicly. They had
all year to prepare for this and do as good a job
as they could do. They had to learn the detail
work required to write music for a large
number of instruments."
Dr. Peter Gardner, the symphony
conductor and recipient of an honorary
doctorate from Memorial, noted that the
arrangement that made it possible for student
work to be featured at a Sinfonia Series
concert grew out of the close connection the
School of Music has with the Newfoundland
Symphony Orchestra.
"We have a close and successful partnership with the music school," Dr. Gardner said.
"This sort of opportunity will really give our
students a leg up. Now all three have experience in the act of having a piece they
composed played publicly, similar to the
essential experience that soloists and
performers have when they reach graduate
school."
The three composers were chosen by Dr.
Ross and Dr. Tom Gordon, director of Memo-
rial's School of Music. The three had to
compose within a set of parameters, set out by
Dr. Gardner, outlining the kind of music (it had
to be scored for chamber orchestra with
specific instrumentation) and length (six to
eight minutes).
Clay Puddester, a fourth-year music major
who plans to continue his studies in a graduate
composition program at the University of
Toronto next year, said that, at its simplest, the
challenge was producing an interesting and
enjoyable work.
see COMPOSERS, page 2
New online
Research Directory
The Office of Research has launched
an online and electronically searchable Research Directory. Currently
containing records on about 400 faculty
researchers at the St. John's campus, the
Marine Institute and the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College campus, the directory will be
continuously updated and added to as information is received from faculty members.
Faculty members, department heads,
deans and directors are encouraged to view
the directory at www.mun.ca/research/direc-
toryl. Each entry typically provides name,
rank, department or other academic unit, a list
of keywords, and a brief summary (in point
form) of current, past, and potential research
interests. If applicable, specialized research
equipment and facilities may also be listed.
The information presented in the directory, although brief in terms of an individual
record, is of considerable interest to students,
media, the general public, other researchers,
government officials and agencies, and business. The Office of Research has received
many requests over this past year for an
updated and more comprehensive Research
Directory which could be appropriately
searched. With the assistance of David
Cantwell and Steven Penney of ccwebworks,
this need for an efficient and effective search
engine has been met.
Faculty members who currently have a
record in the directory, are invited to review
their entry. For those faculty members whose
information is not captured in the directory,
please provide your information to the Office
of Research. To receive a blank form you can
contact the Office of Research or see
www.mun. ca/research/directoryl.
Completed forms can be forwarded to
the Office of Research by e-mail, fax, or
regular mail. To receive a paper copy of the
research record form or to change an existing
record, contact Elizabeth Noseworthy,
Office of Research, at ext. 8251 or by e-
mail at elizaben@mun.ca. Comments are
welcome from those who have an opportunity to view the directory. ^3^
Taking stock
The Residence Recycling Program has been successful this year, stocking residence foodbank
cupboards for a second term. The foodbank cupboards - one in every student lounge in the dormitory residence - provide canned and non-perishable goods to residence students who don't have
the means to provide for themselves. The food is purchased with money collected through the residence recycling program. As well, now that the term is coming to an end, students are stocking the
cupboard with the canned goods they won't be bringing home. Any food that goes unused is
donated to the Bay of Islands Ministerial Association Food Bank Network. Here, first-year Fine Arts
student Valerie Thompson adds some canned goods to the foodbank cupboard in her residence
lounge.
Initiative in the Arctic
Dr. Don Deibel will participate in an
international scientific mission in
the Canadian high Arctic in the fall
of 2003. Dr. Deibel, research professor at the
Ocean Sciences Centre of Memorial University, is a biological oceanographer who has
been working in the arctic for the past 15
years. He is a co-principal investigator on the
CFI award to Laval University to refit the
Coast Guard icebreaker, the Sir John
Franklin, for arctic marine research.
Dr. Deibel's research in the arctic deals
with the role of zooplankton in the carbon and
nitrogen cycles of polynyas, which are areas
of open water in the midst of ice-covered
seas. He is discovering that zooplankton are
important in the sequestration of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, by polynyas, and
thus is helping to put together a picture of the
role of polynyas in global climate change. In
2003-2004, Dr. Deibel and his students will
be part of an international team using the
newly refitted scientific icebreaker to conduct
an annual study of the impact of the
Mackenzie River on the carbon cycle of the
Beaufort Sea Shelf.
Memorial's participation is made possible
following the announcement by the Canada
Foundation for Innovation (CFI) of an investment of $27.7 million to retrofit an existing
icebreaker supplied by the Canadian Coastguard. The research ship will be equipped with
state-of-the-art instrumentation to undertake
environmental and marine sciences in
Northern areas that were not previously accessible to international as well as Canada's
research communities.
The new icebreaker's first international
research mission will be to study the ecosystem
impacts of melting ice in the Western Arctic.
Funding for the multi-year, multi-university
project - almost $ 10 million - was announced
by Industry Minister Allan Rock on behalf of
the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council. The vessel will sail in
August and over winter in the Beaufort Sea.
"This is welcome excellent news for all
members of Canada's research community,
but especially for researchers and students at
Memorial University, where we concentrate on
questions related to harsh, cold environments,"
said Memorial president Dr. Axel Meisen.