Past McCormack Endowed Visiting Artist-Scholar Residents
fall 2023: Rita dove and richard danielpour
Rita Dove Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate is the author of a novel, a book of short stories, essays, and numerous volumes of poetry, including the National Book Award finalist and NAACP Image Award winner “Collected Poems 1974-2004” and her latest release, “Playlist for the Apocalypse” (W.W. Norton, 2021). She also edited “The Best American Poetry 2000” and “The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry” (2011) and wrote weekly poetry columns for The Washington Post from 2000 to 2003 and The New York Times Magazine from 2018 to 2019.
Dove received the Pulitzer Prize for her third collection of poetry, “Thomas and Beulah,” in 1987, and served as U.S. Poet Laureate at the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995.
Her drama “The Darker Face of the Earth” opened at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1996 and the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1997, followed by its European premiere at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1999. Her song cycle “Seven for Luck,” with music by John Williams, was premiered by Cynthia Haymon with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in 1998, and her song cycle “A Standing Witness,” 14 poems with music by Richard Danielpour, was originally sung by Susan Graham at the Kennedy Center and other venues in 2021 and 2022.
Dove’s numerous honors include, most recently, lifetime achievement medals from the Library of Virginia and the Fulbright Association, the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the 2021 Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters — as the 16th (and third female and first African American) poet in the Medal’s 110-year history — and the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in 1996 and the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2011, making her the only poet ever to receive both medals. To date, Dove is the recipient of 29 honorary doctorates, among them Skidmore College (in 2004) and Duke University, Emory University, Yale University, Smith College, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Iowa.
She has served as president of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), as a chancellor of Phi Beta Kappa, and as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. A member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she is the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
Grammy Award-winning composer Richard Danielpour is celebrated for his ability to communicate deep, important emotions through simple, direct means and a distinctive American musical voice. His work has attracted an illustrious array of champions, and he has had a significant impact on a younger generation of composers as a devoted mentor and educator.
Richard Danielpour’s first opera, Margaret Garner, written with Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, took critics and audiences by storm with sold-out houses in its 2005 premiere by the co-commissioning opera companies of Detroit, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia. During the 2007 McCormack Endowed Visiting Artist-Scholar Residency at Skidmore College, Danielpour and members of the Margaret Garner cast participated in classes and special campus and community events.
He has received such prestigious honors as the American Academy of Arts & Letters’ Lifetime Achievement Award and Charles Ives Fellowship; the Guggenheim Fellowship; The Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin; two Rockefeller Foundation grants; the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, and fellowships and residencies from The Bogliasco Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House, and the American Academy in Rome.
Danielpour’s work has been performed throughout the world, and he has written for the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, American Composers Orchestra, and Seattle, Pittsburgh, Pacific, National, Atlanta and Baltimore symphonies, among many others. Danielpour has also composed two major scores for the New York City and Pacific Northwest Ballets. He became only the third composer – after Stravinsky and Copland – to be signed to an exclusive recording contract by Sony Classical, and he is one of the most recorded composers of his generation.
Danielpour is also an active educator who believes deeply in the nurturing of young musicians. He served on the composition faculty of Manhattan School of Music from 1993 to 2017 and has been on the composition faculty of The Curtis Institute of Music since 1997. In 2017, he accepted a tenured position in composition at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where he now teaches. Danielpour has served as composer in residence with the Seattle Symphony (1991-92), the Pacific Symphony (1998-2001), and the Pittsburgh Symphony (2009-10).
In 2019, Danielpour composed five works, the most significant of them being “A Standing Witness,” a series of 15 songs which are settings of poems written by celebrated poet Rita Dove. Composed for mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and Music from Copland House, this 74-minute monodrama which witnesses the last 50 years of our American history was premiered at the University of Chicago and later received performances at the Kennedy Center and at Tanglewood.
Danielpour is currently a Distinguished Professor of Music at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He is also the recipient of the Susan B. and Mitchell D. Covel Chair in Music. He is currently completing his second opera, The Grand Hotel Tartarus, which will premiere in Los Angeles in May 2024, at the Freud Theater.
Fall 2017: Caryl Phillips
Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts and came to Britain at the age of four months. He grew up in Leeds and studied English Literature at Oxford University.
He began writing for the theater, and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S. Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), Foreigners (2007), In the Falling Snow (2009) and The Lost Child (2015). His nonfiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001) and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies, Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River, which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Open Book Award. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts and a recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India and the United States and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002–03 he was a fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently a professor of English at Yale University. He is an honorary fellow of Queen's College, Oxford University.
Spring 2017: Janine Antoni and Stephen Petronio
Janine Antoni was born in Freeport, Bahamas, in 1964. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in New York and earned her M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at numerous institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Haywood Gallery, London; and Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany. She has also been represented in international biennials including the Whitney Biennial; Venice Biennale; Johannesburg Biennial; Kwangju Biennial, South Korea; Istanbul Biennial; S.I.T.E. Santa Fe Biennial; Project 1 Biennial, New Orleans; and Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India.
Antoni is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the IMMA Glen Dimplex Artists Award in 1996, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur fellowship in 1998, the New Media Award, ICA Boston in 1999, the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 1999, an Artes Mundi, Wales International Visual Art Prize nomination in 2004, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 2011, 2012 Creative Capital Artist Grant, Anonymous Was A Woman Grant in 2014 and a project grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to collaborate with choreographers Anna Halprin and Stephen Petronio at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, for the 2016 exhibition Ally.
Stephen Petronio was born in Newark, New Jersey, and received a B.A. from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he began his early training in improvisation and dance technique. He was greatly influenced by working with Steve Paxton and was the first male dancer of the Trisha Brown Dance Company (1979 to 1986). For 30 years, Petronio has honed a unique language of movement that speaks to the intuitive and complex possibilities of the body informed by its shifting cultural context. He has received numerous accolades, including a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship, awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, an American Choreographer Award, and a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award. He has collaborated with a wide range of artists in many disciplines over his career and holds the integration of multiple forms as fundamental to his creative drive and vision.
Petronio is a leading contemporary dance-maker. New music, visual art and fashion combine in his dances, producing modern landscapes for the senses. He has built a body of work with some of the most talented and provocative artists in the world, including composers Clams Casino, Atticus Ross, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, Fischerspooner, Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Son Lux, James Lavelle, Michael Nyman, Sheila Chandra, Diamanda Galás, Andy Teirstein, Wire, Peter Gordon, Lenny Pickett and David Linton; visual artists Janine Antoni, Cindy Sherman, Anish Kapoor, Donald Baechler, Stephen Hannock, Tal Yarden, Arnaldo Ferrara and Justin Terzi III; fashion designers Narciso Rodriguez, John Bartlett, Jillian Lewis, Adam Kimmel, Benjamin Cho, Michael Angel, Tony Cohen, Rachel Roy, Tara Subkoff, Tanya Sarne/Ghost, Leigh Bowery, Paul Compitus, Manolo, Yonson Pak and H. Petal; and Resident Lighting Designer Ken Tabachnick.
Founded in 1984, Stephen Petronio Company has performed in 26 countries, including more than 40 New York City engagements with 21 seasons at the Joyce Theater. The company has been commissioned by Dance Umbrella Festival, London; Hebbel Theater, Berlin; Scène Nationale de Sceaux, Festival d’Automne à Paris, CNDC Angers, France; the Holland Festival; Festival Montpellier Danse; Danceworks UK Ltd; Festival de Danse de Cannes; and in the U.S. by San Francisco Performances, The Joyce Theater, UCSB Arts & Lectures, Wexner Center for the Arts, Walker Art Center and White Bird, among others. [Read More.]
Fall 2015: Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon and Toshi Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagon, scholar, singer/song leader, and activist for more than half a century, has been a profound contributor to African-American and American culture. Born in southwest Georgia, her singing style and traditional repertoire are grounded in her experiences in church, school and political activism. As a composer, she has created a narrative of her social and political activism through her songs and larger compositions. She performed as a member of the SNCC Freedom Singers during the '60s and founded an all-women a capella ensemble, the Harambee Singers, during the Black Cultural Movement. She also founded and led the internationally acclaimed Sweet Honey in the Rock for 30 years until retirement.
Toshi Reagon, singer, composer, musician producer, founder and leader of her own ensemble, Toshi Reagon and Big Lovely, has been described as “a one-woman celebration of all that’s dynamic, progressive and uplifting in American music.” Collaboratively these two master socially conscious women artists have created two operas, The Temptation of St. Anthony and Zinnias, The Life of Clementine Hunter, the music score for Africans in America on PBS and BEAH: A Black Woman Speaks for HBO and numerous studio recordings. Their latest project is an Opera based on the novel Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. Whenever the opportunity presents, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Toshi Reagon join each other on stage in live performance.
Fall 2014: David Lang
David Lang (b. 1957) is a New York-based composer who is active in many genres and media. His piece the little match girl passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and a Grammy Award in 2010. Lang is Musical America's 2013 Composer of the Year and recipient of Carnegie Hall's Debs Composer's Chair for 2013–14. An active collaborator, he has worked closely with a diverse group of artists including Peter Greenaway, Benjamin Millepied, Susan Marshall, Darren Aronofsky, Ann Hamilton and Mark Dion. Lang is co-artistic director of New York's Bang on a Can, which he founded in 1987 with composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, and he is professor of music composition at the Yale School of Music.
Spring 2014: Anne Bogart
Anne Bogart is a prolific and award-winning American theater and opera director. She is currently Artistic Director of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a professor at Columbia University, where she runs the graduate directing concentration and is the author of three books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book and And Then, You Act. Conversations with Anne, a collection of interviews she has conducted with various notable artists, was published in March 2012. She is the recipient of two Obie awards, a Bessie Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. Recent works with SITI Company include Café Variations (Arts Emerson), Trojan Women (The Getty Villa) and The Rite with choreographer Bill T. Jones. Bogart’s influence is felt throughout contemporary theater: through the widespread use of SITI’s training methods of Viewpoints and Suzuki, her oeuvre of groundbreaking productions and her guidance at Columbia University of such diverse talents as Pavol Liska, Diane Paulus, Kim Weild, Jay Sheib, Darko Tresnjak and many others.
Spring 2013: Karole Armitage
Hailed by some critics as an heir to both George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, Karole Armitage showcased her new Fables on Global Warming, a "performance art musical" about sustainability based on traditional animal fables from around the globe. The hourlong work explores the connections between humans and animals, culture and nature, science and art, entwining dance, song and visual puns with Asian theatrical traditions. [Read more.]
Spring 2012: Angela Brown
Angela Brown personifies the ideal American dramatic soprano: sheer vocal power; luxurious finesse; shimmering, high pianissimos; and a charming personality larger than life. Her highly successful Metropolitan Opera debut in 2004 sparked a media excitement with reviews from the New York Times: "At last an Aida," the Associated Press: "she combines a potent, dusky lower register with a striking ability to spin out soft high notes of shimmering beauty. There's no doubt her voice is powerful enough for Verdi," CBS Evening News: "The future of opera has arrived," and features on the front page of the New York Times and in Oprah, Essence and Ebony magazines, Classical Singer, Reader's Digest and Psychology Today.
Brown is a trailblazer on a mission to bring operatic and classical vocal performance to a diverse audience. Her witty and inspired recital program, titled "Opera ... from a Sistah's Point of View," dispels the myths of opera through lively commentary on opera plots and characters, show-stopping arias, poignant art songs and moving spirituals. A live performance of "Opera ... from a Sistah's Point of View" was recorded in October 2010 at the Musical Arts Center of Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and is available for download via Amazon.com and Itunes.com and as a compact disc. "Opera ... from a Sistah's Point of View" has been presented throughout the country in concert halls, recital series, schools, community centers and churches and featured on CNN and in print media nationwide.
A noted interpreter of African-American spirituals, Brown produced Mosaic, a collaborative recording featuring spirituals with guitar and piano, in October 2004 (available from Albany Records). A live Christmas concert with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and Indianapolis Opera Chorus was recorded by WFYI-PBS in 2005 and airs on PBS television stations throughout the United States each Christmas season. She guest-starred on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor in June 2009. In July 2010 Brown was presented in Shanghai at the World Expo 2010 as a guest of USA Pavilion and the U.S. Consulate. She was the only opera singer invited to perform for the USA Pavilion. She also opened the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington, D.C., by singing the national anthem on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and was the guest soloist with Marvin Hamlisch for the Indianapolis Prize gala. [Read more.]
Fall 2010: Emanuel Ax
The ninth McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar was world-renowned classical pianist Emanuel Ax. Ax was in residence at Skidmore October 14–16, 2010. While over the past two years the McCormack resident has operated in collaboration with the First-Year Experience (FYE), bringing to campus composer and musician Terrence Blanchard and choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones, this year the Office of Special Programs has collaborated with the Office of Advancement and the Department of Music in order to dedicate the McCormack Residency to the inaugural year in the Arthur Zankel Music Center. Consequently, during his residency, Ax worked with music students and faculty and during the dedicatory concert perform solo and chamber music and culminate the festivities with a piano concerto, joined by the Skidmore Orchestra.
Ax is renowned not only for his poetic temperament and unsurpassed virtuosity, but also for the exceptional breadth of his performing activity. Each season includes appearances with major symphony orchestras worldwide, recitals in the most celebrated concert halls, chamber music collaborations, the commissioning and performance of new music and additions to his acclaimed discography on Sony BMG Masterworks.
Born in Poland, Ax moved to Canada with his family when he was a young boy, later settling in New York City. Studying at the Juilliard School and Columbia University, Ax captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. Soon afterward, he won the Michael Award of Young Concert Artists and the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. He made his Sony Classical debut with a collection of Chopin scherzos and mazurkas. Ax's third volume in the recording cycle of Haydn Piano Sonatas received a Grammy Award in February 2004; the previous recording in the cycle also won a Grammy. Ax also contributed to an International Emmy award–winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Devoted to chamber music literature, Ax has worked regularly with such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Serkin and Jaime Lardo, and he was a frequent collaborator with the late Isaac Stern. Ax's recent projects have included a duo recital tour with Yefim Bronfman with performances at Chicago's Orchestra Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall and Carnegie Hall; a performance with Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall; and solo recital tours in both North America and Europe. Recent releases include two discs of two-piano programs with Yefim Bronfman and period-instrument performances of Chopin's complete works for piano and orchestra. For more information, visit .
Fall 2009/Spring 2010: Bill T. Jones
The eighth McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar was multi-talented artist, choreographer, dancer, theater director and writer Bill T. Jones. Jones was in residence at Skidmore October 25–26, 2009, along with members of his company from October 25 to 29. Just as in 2008, the McCormack Residency operated in collaboration with the First-Year Experience (FYE) providing curricular, cocurricular and residential opportunities as part of the yearlong FYE program, which for the class of 2013 examined the American presidency. [Read a Scope News article regarding his residency.]
Jones has graced the cover of Time and was recently featured in the acclaimed HBO documentary The Black List. As an artist, Jones creates groundbreaking, interdisciplinary dance pieces that
examine such issues as race, politics, love, aspiration, war and faith. His iconic
choreography and unflinching social provocation have earned him a prominent place
in the history of contemporary performance. On an international scale, his works stimulate
ideas, raise questions, promote public dialogue and bear out his conviction that art
is a catalyst for reflection, engagement and action.
In 2009, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Since its founding
by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the academy
has elected as members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation,
including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster
and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the
20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than
60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
He has also won a 2007 Tony Award, 2007 Obie Award and 2006 Callaway Award for his
choreography for the Broadway hit Spring Awakening. He is the recipient of the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award
for Lifetime Achievement, the 2005 Wexner Prize and the Aaron Davis Hall Harlem Renaissance
Award. He is also a MacArthur "genius" award recipient in 1994, named one of America's
Irreplaceable Dance Treasures by the Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000 and was awarded
the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for reshaping the cultural landscape.
He began his dance training at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where
he studied classical ballet and modern dance. After living in Amsterdam, Jones returned
to SUNY, where he became co-founder of the American Dance Asylum in 1973. Before forming
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982, Jones choreographed and performed
nationally and internationally as a soloist and duet company with his late partner,
Arnie Zane.
In the summers of 1992, 1998 and 2007, Jones was in residence with his company at
Skidmore College and in 2008 he received an honorary doctorate during commencement.
Fall 2008/Spring 2009: Terence Blanchard
From 1939 to 1975 Blue Note Records signed or recorded just about every notable trumpet player in jazz. It is fitting, but no mere coincidence, as the label celebrates its 70th Anniversary, that its current roster includes one of the most celebrated, influential and gifted trumpeter-composers of all time: Terence Blanchard.
Born in New Orleans, Blanchard began playing trumpet at an early age and was later
tutored by legendary jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis before going on to attend Rutgers
University on a music scholarship. Time spent performing with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra
and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers prepared him to later lead a quintet with Donald
Harrison and his ensuing solo career.
Blanchard's work as a film-score composer came to fruition through an association
with film director and actor Spike Lee. Initially a soloist on Lee's soundtracks,
he has gone on to compose scores for more than 50 major motion pictures including
Miracle at St. Anna, Malcolm X, The 25th Hour, Inside Man, Talk to Me, Jungle Fever, Bamboozled and She Hate Me. His numerous awards for his contributions to film include multiple Emmy and Golden
Globe nominations for Mo' Better Blues, The Heart Speaks, The Promised Land, and The 25th Hour.
Another collaboration with Lee in 2006 produced the four-hour Hurricane Katrina documentary
for HBO, When the Levees Broke. The subsequent album, A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina), garnered the composer a Grammy Award in 2007 for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.
Requiem is the featured reading for the First-Year Experience.
The trumpeter's other critically acclaimed solo albums include Simply Stated, Romantic Defiance, Jazz in Film, Let's Get Lost and Wandering Moon. Bounce was released on Blue Note Records in 2003, followed by Flow in 2005, which was produced by legendary pianist Herbie Hancock. Blanchard and Hancock
completed a 10-week tour in the fall of 2008. In February, Blanchard received another
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Solo on Be-Bop, of the album Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival. In addition to receiving the award, he performed live at the 51st Annual Grammy
Awards telecast in Los Angeles.
Earlier this month Blanchard took part in "Honor: a Celebration of the African American
Cultural Legacy," presented at Carnegie Hall and curated by legendary soprano Jessye
Norman. He is director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance in New
Orleans. His latest project, Choices, a mix of spoken word, hip-hop, rhythm & blues and jazz, will feature Cornel West
(author, Democracy Matters) and rhythm & blues vocalist Bilal. The album will be released on Blue Note Records
later this year.
Spring 2008: Sir Jonathan Miller
Sir Jonathan Miller, author, lecturer, humorist, television producer and presenter and film director, was in residence during the spring of 2008. Born in London, he studied natural sciences and medicine at St. John's College at the University of Cambridge and University College London and went on to work as a hospital doctor after graduating in 1959. He was heavily involved in the university drama society and the Cambridge Footlights and helped write, produce and star in the legendary comedy revue Beyond the Fringe, which helped launch the careers of Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Miller went on to become the editor and presenter of the BBC's flagship arts programme Monitor and wrote, produced and directed various films, operas and Shakespeare plays. Miller was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1983 and knighted for his services to the arts in 2003. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London and Edinburgh and a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. During the first week of April, Miller met with faculty, students and members of the Skidmore and surrounding Saratoga Springs communities. In addition to a series of films, the following events were offered to the public free of charge: "Laughing Matters: Humor & Comedy" (a lecture with Jonathan Miller); "Film and the Imagination" (a panel discussion with faculty and students); and "A Conversation with Jonathan Miller" (with Skidmore faculty).
Spring 2007: Richard Danielpour
In the spring of 2007 Grammy Award–winning composer Richard Danielpour visited Skidmore
on three separate occasions. He is best known for his collaboration with Nobel Laureate
Toni Morrison on the creation and development of Margaret Garner, his first opera. Danielpour and members of the Margaret Garner cast participated in classes and took part in special campus and community events.
Their visit culminated with the presentation of a staged concert performance of selections
from the opera and a post-concert conversation.
Danielpour is one of the most gifted and sought-after composers of his generation.
His music has attracted an illustrious array of champions, and as a devoted mentor
and educator, he has also had a significant impact on the younger generation of composers.
Danielpour has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia and
Stuttgart radio orchestras, Orchestre National de France, Chamber Music Society of
Lincoln Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and San Francisco, Pittsburgh, National
and Baltimore symphonies. His work has been championed by Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman,
Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Gary Graffman, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson
Trio, the Guarneri, Emerson and American string quartets and the New York City and
Pacific Northwest ballets. Danielpour's many honors include a Lifetime Achievement
Award and Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a Guggenheim
Award, Bearns Prize from Columbia University and grants and residencies from the Barlow
Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House and the American Academy in Rome.
In fall 2002, he became one of the first recipients of a coveted Alberto Vilar Fellowship
and Residency at the American Academy in Berlin.
Spring 2006: Nnenna Freelon
The fourth McCormack Resident, Nnenna Freelon was in residence at Skidmore in April
2006. Freelon, a six-time Grammy Award nominee, has earned a reputation as a compelling
and captivating live performer. She is a skillful interpreter of even the most familiar
jazz standards and a creative educator. An accomplished singer, composer, producer
and arranger, Freelon has dedicated herself to educating young people, both musicians
and non-musicians. She toured the United States for four years as the national spokesperson
for Partners In Education.
Freelon made her feature film debut in the Mel Gibson hit What Women Want and sang a remake of Sinatra's classic "Fly Me To The Moon" for The Visit, starring Billy Dee Williams. She is also a winner of the Eubie Blake Award and has
twice been nominated for the "Lady of Soul" Soul Train Award. Freelon has performed
and toured with a veritable who's who in jazz, from Ray Charles and Ellis Marsalis
to Al Jarreau and George Benson, among many others. For more information on Nnenna
Freelon, visit her website at: .
Spring 2005: Robert Pinsky
Skidmore College welcomed the third McCormack Resident, Robert Pinsky, to campus in April 2005. Pinsky is an innovative poet who often draws on personal experience and contemporary themes in his work. He served as poet laureate of the United States (1997–2000) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997. While in residence, Robert gave a public reading, collaborated with students and faculty in classes, participated in an open event at the Tang entitled "Favorite Poems About the Heavens" and spent a morning with the Saratoga Springs High School advanced placement English students and another morning with Lake Avenue Elementary School first-graders.
Fall 2004: Joshua Redman
Skidmore's second McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar, Joshua Redman, was in residency
October 11–15, 2004. Described as "one of the jazz world's most prominent, profound
saxophonists," Redman interacted closely with Skidmore students, including a class
of saxophonists, the Skidmore Jazz Orchestra, several Skidmore jazz ensembles, a Music
Department senior seminar, and a gathering of ALANA* students. In addition, he worked
with the Saratoga Springs High School Jazz Orchestra. His schedule included four events
open to the public: a CD signing at Borders Books and Music, an open rehearsal, a
master class and a concert. Redman's jam-packed week also included several occasions
to collaborate closely with members of the campus and Saratoga Springs communities.
*African-American, Latino, Asian-American, and Native American
Spring 2003: Michael Ondaatje
Skidmore launched the McCormack Artist-Scholar Residency in spring 2004 with a highly successful visit by noted author Michael Ondaatje, who gave a public reading, led a discussion about film, met with classes, collaborated with faculty and participated in a range of small gatherings with members of the campus and Saratoga Springs communities. Perhaps best known as the author of The English Patient, which was made into an Academy Award–winning film, Ondaatje is the author of 11 books of poetry and of a number of novels. His latest book, The Conversations, explores the art of film editing.