Emeritus Faculty & Staff

Steven Dennis Bodner (1975-2011) was Music Director of the Symphonic Winds and Opus Zero Band at Williams College, where he also taught classical saxophone, coached chamber music, and taught classes in music fundamentals and aural skills acquisition. He earned a B.A. in philosophy and a B.M. in saxophone performance from Miami (OH) University in 1997, and a M.M. in wind ensemble conducting with academic honors and distinction in performance from New England Conservatory in 1999. At the time of his passing, he was a Ph.D. in Music Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he conducted the Youth Wind Ensemble for four years and was Interim Director of Bands, 2002-2003. He has taught at the Hartwick College (2002) and South Shore Conservatory (2003) Summer Music Festivals, as well as in the New England Conservatory Preparatory School (1999-2004); in demand as a guest conductor and clinician, Steven guest conducted ensembles in Massachusetts, Vermont, Ohio, New York, and Virginia, and he adjudicated the Maine High School Band and Vermont Music Educators Association Festivals. An advocate for the creation and performance of new music, he commissioned and premiered numerous works both for wind ensemble and for saxophone. His interpretations received praise from composers such as Louis Andriessen, Michel van der Aa, Andres Carrizo, Shih-Hui Chen, Stephen Dankner, John Frantzen, Nancy Galbraith, Kyle Gann, Michael Gandolfi, Michael Gordon, Judd Greenstein, David Maslanka, Andrea Mazzariello, Barton McLean, Michael Weinstein, and Pulitzer Prize winner Karel Husa. His primary conducting teachers included Frank Battisti, Malcolm W. Rowell, Jr., Gary Speck, and Gunther Schuller.

Also active as a saxophonist, Steven frequently performed with I/O New Music, which he codirected with Matthew Gold. He also performed with the Williams Chamber Players, the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra, the microtonal ensemble NotaRiotous and at the Manchester Music Festival. He recorded works by David Kechley and Curtis Hugues, released on CD in 2011. His primary saxophone teachers were Michèle Gingras and Kenneth Radnofsky.

Steven Bodner's Williams Symphonic Winds website

Remembering Stephen Dennis Bodner

There aren’t words to express what we are all experiencing now, with the sudden, inexplicable, cruel death of Steve Bodner.  He was a true force of nature, with a heart as big as the universe, and what has happened makes no sense at all.  The hole this leaves in our lives, individually and collectively, is huge, and the loss to our department immeasurable.
 
Department faculty and staff will be here all day to offer what support we can; there will be an email from the Chaplain’s Office this afternoon about an opportunity later today for the entire college community to gather together to remember Steve.  Jenny Dewar has created an online message board  to share memories and pay tribute to a superb musician, teacher, colleague, mentor, and friend.  I will keep you all informed, and please be in touch with any faculty or staff here in the department if there is anything we can do to help at this terrible time.
 
Jennifer
 
 
 
M. Jennifer Bloxam
Professor of Music and Chair
Department of Music
Williams College
 
Bernhard Music Center
54 Chapin Hall Drive
Williamstown, MA 01267

Cellist Douglas Moore, a native of Iowa, is the Mary A. and William Wirt Warren Professor of Music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a cellist with the Williams Chamber Players. He was cellist with The Williams Trio for 29 years. He has been at Williams since 1970, and served as department chairman from 1979 to 1986, 1995 to 1997 and in 2001-2002. He is keeper of the Willem Willeke Collection of Music and the Arthur Foote Collection. He holds the Bachelor of Music degree from Indiana University where he studied cello with Fritz Magg and chamber music with Janos Starker. His Master of Music (1970) and Doctor of Musical Arts (1977) degrees are both from Catholic University in Washington, DC.

Douglas Moore has appeared with orchestras and in recitals throughout the United States. He has played at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and at the Great Music West (Utah), Saratoga Baroque, Music Mountain, and Newport music festivals. Moore is an artist/teacher at the Manchester (VT) Music Festival. Concerti by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Schumann, Lalo, Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Arthur Foote, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Bloch and Hindemith are in his repertoire. He has been principal cellist with the Great Music West Festival, Albany (NY) Symphony, Berkshire Symphony and Lake George Opera Festival orchestra. He served the national College Music Society as Vice-President from 1987 through 1990 and as Special Projects Committee chair from 1991 through 1993.

In 1976 Douglas Moore played the world premiere of Cello Sonata by the American composer Arthur Foote. His edition of the complete music for cello and piano by Foote was published by A-R Editions on the Recent Researches in American Music series in 1982. The first modern-day performance of Foote's Cello Concerto took place in 1981 with Douglas Moore as soloist; since then he has performed the work with orchestras in Connecticut, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, Vermont, Illinois and Iowa. He has performed and/or read papers at regional and national meetings of the College Music Society and Sonneck Society for American Music.

Douglas Moore has made five recordings. The first was a 1979 Musical Heritage Society release of the complete cello/piano music of Arthur Foote. Another, with music by Arthur Farwell and Charles Wakefield Cadman, was issued in 1981 and was selected Best of the Month by Stereo Review magazine. Both discs were world premiere recordings of the repertoire. The Williams Trio's recording of the two piano trios of Arthur Foote was issued by MHS in 1983; their disc of trios by Rachmaninoff and Arensky (including the premier recording of the Trio No. 2 by Arensky) appeared in 1985 on Grand Prix Records. His recording of Winter Branches: Sonata for Cello and Piano by David Kechley appears on a Liscio Records compact disc.

Douglas Moore's four-cello arrangement of Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever is published by Theodore Presser. He self-publishes over two dozen other arrangements for from three to eight cellos. They are available at http://www.playmoorecello.com/