Dolly Eugenio Kessner, Ph.D., Department Chair, Music & Dance at Moorpark College has been selected for a Fulbright Senior Specialists project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology from October 27 to November 11, 2007. Kessner, pianist and music theorist (in a program together with her husband, composer and flutist, Dr. Daniel Kessner) will share their expertise on musical performance, composition, and theory.
The Fulbright Program, America’s flagship international educational exchange activity, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Kessner is one of over 400 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program. The Fulbright Senior Specialists Program, created in 2000 to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, provides short-term academic opportunities to prominent U.S. faculty and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at post secondary, academic institutions around the world.
Over 285,000 emerging leaders in their professional fields have received Fulbright awards, including individuals who later became heads of government, Nobel Prize winners, and leaders in education, business, journalism, the arts and other fields.
Kessner is the college’s lead faculty of Theory/Composition/Aural Skills, Director of Chamber Ensembles, and Coordinator of the Music Computer Learning Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Music Theory from the University of Southern California, and bachelor's and master's degrees from UCLA, where she studied theory and composition with Henri Lazarof and piano with Aube Tzerko.
She specializes in contemporary classical piano music, and has premiered works of several Los Angeles composers in New York, Europe, and El Salvador as well as throughout the Los Angeles area. She has performed as soloist with the Black Sea Philharmonic (Romania), Orquesta Sinfónica de El Salvador, and the Moorpark Symphony Orchestra. She appears regularly in several music festivals in Europe.
Recordings of her performances of Lyric Piece for Piano and Orchestra by Daniel Kessner as well as other chamber works are produced by Capstone Records. She taught at UCLA, CSUN, and USC before accepting the teaching appointment at Moorpark College in 1990. She did extended tours in Europe in 1998 (as part of her one year sabbatical leave) and again in 2003. For the Spring 2006 semester she took a leave of absence to teach 20th Century music theory as a guest lecturer at the University of Hawaii.
“I am extremely excited to be given this opportunity to travel to Norway to perform, to coach their chamber ensembles, and to exchange ideas on the pedagogy of musicianship and composition skills. It is also fantastic that the Norwegian University and Fulbright have requested that my husband and I do this as a team,” Kessner said.
For further information about the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program, please contact FULSPEC@cies.iie.org or consult www.cies.org.
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